Helene takes ultrapure quartz mines offline, threatens tech supply chains. Spruce Pine, NC contains largest known deposit of high-purity quartz.

This article is all over the shop.

>HPQ drives a $500 billion microchip industry that is core to the $3 trillion global tech sector.

~~I don’t quite get how hard they’re hyping up quartz. We use it for… oscillators? and that’s kind if it.~~ It’s a huge bummer that they’re shut down, but after everything that happened with supply chains in 2020 everyone is accounting for like 6-8mo lead instead of 2-3. I just don’t see this singular mine having an effect like they’re playing up in the article.

edit: I didn’t realize that quartz was ground into sand to make silicon for chips. Thanks to u/ for pointing out that I’m an idiot.