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Fertilizer Dump Spoils Intel's Pure Water
An anonymous reader writes "Intel had to shut down part of its Irish plant for a while because of the extreme cold and the fact the local council polluted the water supply with fertilizer. Apparently it got down to -12 degrees C at the Intel plant in Leixlip, County Kildare. But to make matters worse, the local council ran out of rock salt to grit the roads and opted for fertilizer instead. There were fears that ammonia and nitrates in the fertilizer might have contaminated the local water supply. The problem for the chipmaker is that it needs extremely pure water for its manufacturing processes."
Well, that's just a shitty thing to do.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
It's got what plants crave!
Brawndo's got what plants crave. They crave Brawndo. It's got electrolytes.
I daresay people also need 'extremely pure' water to... you know... drink and suchlike. Right?
One would think that a company with their resources would have a filtration system in place if the need for pure water is such a priority that the lack of it risks shutting down the whole operation.
Wow, something like this get's modded Insightful?! Do you think only morons work at Intel? You just can't filter everything.
Intel processors stink.
thats a Frosty Irish piss in your chips
Hm, maybe those "morons," should have had a contingency in place for an occurrence such as this. Water pollution is quite common.
Why they even bother salting roads when there is -12 degrees Celsius? Salting is only sensible when there is about -4 degrees (at least that is a rule of thumb here in Finland). Also, using fertilizers is so completely boneheaded move because that's plain and simple polluting. I guess that someone made a risk analysis and decided that polluting groundwater supplies causes less deaths than icy roads. But I can't help but wonder what the long-term effects are for environment and groundwater.
Alcohol melts ice, right? And Ireland is awash in whiskey . . . well at least Killinaskully seems to be. So they could have sprayed whiskey on the roads instead of fertilizer.
Of course, the road crews would ask:
"So we're to be spraying good whiskey on the roads to clear them of ice, are we? Do ye mind if we pass that whiskey through our kidneys first?"
I'm not sure what effect whiskey in the water supply would have on Intel's manufacturing process, but the public wouldn't mind having a wee bit in their morning tee.
Actually, the general public would be so toasted that wouldn't give a damn about Intel.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
rock salts can go down to -12 or something If I recall correctly, whereas afterward you have to use other type of salt (potassium or calcium chlorid?) which go down to -22C.
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They did. The plan is to take the plant offline.
I guess they might work with the local government to make sure they have enough salt in the future (by paying for extra storage or whatever).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Normally they would use salt for roads. Salt cannot be removed either by filtration. I think ammonia get filtered by active coal, but salt not?
anyway, the beer they make will taste worse with fertilizer thatn with salt.
What had actually happened, as we found out three months later, was that on Christmas Eve the engineers at the local reservoir decided to celebrate. They were supposed to stay on site, so what they did was to dump 100 times the standard level of chlorine into the water supply, then go off and have a Christmas party. That chlorine totally ruined our semiconductor plant. The result was that the Americans said, "These Brits don't know what they're doing. Get rid of them!". The semiconductor facility was taken away and put under the control of the Americans who were deemed to understand these things.
Seems the the Yanks can't defend themselves against this sort of thing either! http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/CCS/res/res33.htm/
The sites intel left in the USA to be cleaned up by the US gov.
A generation later Intel now needs its water cleaning up.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I just don't get this. Chip fabs don't filter water, they force it through reverse osmosis, and then deionize it. It doesn't matter what's in the water to begin with, after that process is complete, there's absolutely nothing left. This story therefore, makes no sense.
Ah, fuck it
That could take care of the pure water problem. But I am not sure Intel thought of that with all that brain power there.
it was a inside job put out by AMD to slow them down and get ahead of the compatation.
They sell studable winter tires, although in many places they are illegal, for the reason you pointed out, plus they destroy the pavement. On the up side, if you can use them, I hear you can stick to ice as if it were pavement. Though with modern winter tires, even 10" of snow isnt a major issue even for most vehicles. I have only had issues in my corolla with Gislavid winter tires when the snow was high enough to start coming up the hood and over the windshied. If i stopped I couldnt get moving forward again wthout reversing and making a running start at it.
So a county polluted the water supply of production facility.....
They may not want to spend the money on a real purifying system. They are very expensive but the water will have a greater than 18 megaohm resistance. I work in a pharmaceutical plant and our water is what they call nanopure. We have a Reverse Osmosis deionizing system. The water that goes in has visible rust or dirt floaties. The ions in our water are removed. A conductivity meter reads 0 microsemens at the faucet. It is possible to have clean water, but it'll cost.
The really bad part is that most people don't have any kind of filtration system at home so they will be drinking all the fertilizer contamination. Cheap, but decently performing RO systems can be had for 200 bucks in the States. I got one that takes incoming 250-400ppm total dissolved solid city water and outputs 10-20 ppm water. purewaterclub.com is where I got mine. took a bit of effort to fix leaky connectors, but for the price some of that was expected.
This is why Beer was the drink of choice for so long. People drank beer day and night because... The water wasn't safe to drink.
The guy who is responsible for that, should be transferred to cleaning public urinals in Kairo.
Use water synthesis:
1. Buy hydrogen and oxygen.
2. Burn the pure hydrogen with pure oxygen into a fuel cell.
3. Get electricity in the process
4. Get pure water
Sure, the process would not be cheep.
Léa Gris
Sales taxes in the US are low by European standards, nearly all of which are in the 15% to 25% range. However I find it much easier in Europe as the VAT is included in the price displayed, rather than added on at the till like US sales taxes.
It wold be nearly unheard of for anyone in Ireland to have winter / snow tires, as they might only be needed for a couple of days every few years. The normal adverse weather we have to contend with is rain, at any time of the year.
Wait, -12 C is extreme cold? then what is our current -21 C in Canada? it's not even in the extremes!
Water supplies in the US and around the world are being contaminated to unsafe levels by industrial waste, agricultural runoff and mining effluent on a daily basis. Nobody cares until Intel can't use it to make chips? Slashdot is a strange place....
Urea is used all the time in place of salt because it will melt ice without the corrosive effects of salt. Pretty much every airport on earth uses it to de-ice its runways already.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.