Could not even be the cheapest, Just the refinement process was developed for this particular sand. A different sand might have different impurities and need different processes to handle.

Availability, production scale, and knowledge base.

I think things will probably pan out okay, maybe a rough month or two as roads (even if rough cut new logging roads), utilities, and prioritized community services get fixed up. Synthetic option is available, apparently, just a bit costly.

Yeah, this is being overblown. It may very well be that there will be a short term constriction as competitors ramp, but to argue that this is some kind of fundamental bottleneck in semiconductor production is ridiculous.

It's quartz: literally the single most common crystal on the surface of the planet. Now, sure, I'm sure this particular mine had great stuff, but it's not like it's hard to find.

No, surely what we have here is a single source provider precisely because the material is so cheap to mine (and therefore unprofitable to try to compete with from scratch).

>> and 70% of the world's supply comes from just one place in North Carolina

> A quick search seems to say there are more places available for getting that than North Carolina.

I mean, I deduced it straight from “70%”.