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The Military Hardware

Ukraine Halts Half of World's Neon Output For Chips (cnn.com) 108

Posted by BeauHD from the bad-news-for-the-supply-chain dept.
Ukraine's two leading suppliers of neon, which produce about half the world's supply of the key ingredient for making chips, have halted their operations as Moscow has sharpened its attack on the country, threatening to raise prices and aggravate the semiconductor shortage. CNN Business reports: Some 45%-54% of the world's semiconductor grade neon, critical for the lasers used to make chips, comes from two Ukrainian companies, Ingas and Cryoin, according to Reuters calculations based on figures from the companies and market research firm Techcet. Global neon consumption for chip production reached about 540 metric tons last year, Techcet estimates. Both firms have shuttered their operations, according to company representatives contacted by Reuters, as Russian troops have escalated their attacks on cities throughout Ukraine, killing civilians and destroying key infrastructure. The stoppage casts a cloud over the worldwide output of chips, already in short supply after the coronavirus pandemic drove up demand for cell phones, laptops and later cars, forcing some firms to scale back production.
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Ukraine Halts Half of World's Neon Output For Chips More

Ukraine Halts Half of World's Neon Output For Chips

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  • produce Neon ?

    Its a noble gas

    You can produce Helium by fusing Hydrogen

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fazig ( 2909523 )
      You can produce helium by exploiting the radioactive decay of an alpha emitter.

      Alpha particles just fast helium cores. Slow them down and let them snag two electrons from somewhere and you have a brand new helium atom.

      Neon on the other hand is extracted from sources were it was already present in trace amounts.

      • Neon is produced from the fractional distillation of air. The Ukrainian steel industry uses a lot of LOX, and neon, argon, krypton, and xenon are all byproducts.

        Neon has a concentration of about 18 ppm in the atmosphere. It is rare on earth but abundant in the solar system and universe.

        The reason neon is so rare on earth isn't entirely clear. It has a molecular weight of 20, heavier than water vapor. One hypothesis is that the neon was lost during the collision with Theia [wikipedia.org], in which the earth also lost i

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by fazig ( 2909523 )
          Despite of its relative rarity given the molecular mass, extracting Neon can be done on an industrial scale. And since the gas is dense enough to mostly remain in our atmosphere, these are two main differences between Neon and Helium.

          My main reason to comment was because "You can produce Helium by fusing Hydrogen". While technically true, it's ignorant of what we actually do, namely wait for alpha emitters to decay and provide us with new Helium. The energy investment here is very low, though we are tied

    • produce Neon ?

      You take it from where it is, and you put it into canisters and sell those canisters to people who want neon from a canister, and don't want to have to liquify, separate and purify it from the air themselves.

      • It's produced from liquidifed air
      • Couldn't you just mine it? There's a large site right at the southern tip of Nevada which has more neon reserves than any other place on earth.
        • Really? In what form is the neon in Nevada? Neon doesn't have a solid form, and I'm not aware of any natural stable compounds, so I can only imagine its simply the gas trapped in some other minerals? In which case you still need to release, capture, and liquefy the air.

          Definitely not mixing it up with Helium? (Which has lots of natural compounds!)
    • Neon apparently is collected as a byproduct during some of the metalworking processes. In the specific case of Ukraine Neon production, it was produced at the smelters in the south of Ukraine. That is 100% under Russian control.

      We can congratulate CNN for their phenomenaly astute reporting. They noticed this two weeks into the conflict. All Russian language media giggled on the subject on the day USA and Eu ordered TSMC, AMD and Intel to stop shipments to Russia as a result of sanctions.

      I am taking bets

      • So you're saying CNN is doing its job by reporting on this and enlightening the world to another ramification of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

        Sounds like they're doing exactly what they're set up to do: report on news and inform the public.

        • I think the point is that CNN (and others) aren't just reporting on these things in a manner meant to inform the public. They are carefully slicing the stories up so that they can trickle them out over time. It's one headline for a few days, then when people stop clicking they pump the next one.

          This pattern will continue until interest in the conflict begins to wane in general, or is replaced by the next Big Story. The end goal is not to Inform the public, it's to maximize traffic to their site.

          • It's one headline for a few days, then when people stop clicking they pump the next one. [...] The end goal is not to Inform the public, it's to maximize traffic to their site.

            Which is the right thing to maximize the amount information that reaches the public. Choosing which order the investigative stories are getting published is one major task the for the editorial board of papers that do investigative journalism. You want to give time for each story each story to be carefully crafted, and you want people to be available to think about it and politicians to debate the actions to take. The other option is to rush everything together, which gets the stories buried into the noise,

          • No they aren't trickling this out. In fact, they mentioned the whole neon thing back on March 4th:
            https://www.google.com/amp/s/a... [google.com]

            What they are reporting now is that production actually stopped because the plant shut down. They couldn't have reported on that before because it just happened. They said before it was a possibility. Now it's an actuality. But please don't let that ruin your conspiracy theory.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jvkjvk ( 102057 )

            >They are carefully slicing the stories up so that they can trickle them out over time. It's one headline for a few days, then when people stop clicking they pump the next one.

            I think you mean, things continue to evolve on the ground so there is likely new news every few days. Or that they can't possibly cover everything about something all at once (and who would read it all?) so they triage and report what becomes low hanging fruit at the end of the story pipeline.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by chill ( 34294 )

        Actually Spain is warning on corn shortages for hog feeds, as they come mainly from Ukraine and Russia for them.

        If the EU lifts the ban on importing GMO grains, the US can pick up most of the slack.

        • Banning GMO to begin with is absolutely brain dead fucking stupid and based on what is nothing more than a religion full of scaremongering adherents. Conventional agriculture will never keep up with the ever increasing global food demand without totally draining this planet of its resources, and Organic is even more wasteful. GMO is literally the only theoretically possible way that the food supply can continue to scale. The scientific consensus is very, very clear on that.

          • Conventional agriculture will never keep up with the ever increasing global food demand
            As conventional agriculture is actually keeping up just fine, you seem to have some religious interest in pushing GMOs.

            GMO is literally the only theoretically possible way that the food supply can continue to scale. The scientific consensus is very, very clear on that.
            There is no scientific consensus on that. I doubt it is even a topic amoung scientists, you are simply full of shit.

            If you like GMOs, buy them. But don't

            • As conventional agriculture is actually keeping up just fine, you seem to have some religious interest in pushing GMOs.

              Actually it really isn't. And there are many indicators of this. Here's a hint: Deforestation. If you're not too inept you can figure out what that means.

              You might try doing at least a little bit of research before stating things like this. Of the two times you've replied to me this week, this is the second one where you've failed quite hard at that.

              There is no scientific consensus on that. I doubt it is even a topic amoung scientists, you are simply full of shit.

              Again, you might want to do a bit more research: (I know, I'd be tired of hearing this all the time too if I was you. But your coworkers are also tired of clean

              • A single scientist in a newspaper does not make a "consent about scientists".

                No idea what you mean "with cleaning up my code" ... you are just silly. You have never seen my code.

                Here's a hint: Deforestation
                Yepp, but not for food. But for industialized production of stuff you simply could grow naturally. E.g. Palm -oil.

                The main reason for stuff like this is certainly not "we need food" but it is "we do not want to pay a fair price".

                Hence deforestation happens in countries that are under military rule or ha

      • Neon production was discussed as a consequence on the first day of the invasion on CNN and on threads on slashdot.

      • The US is by far the largest producer of corn, followed by China and then Brazil. It's a new world crop but naturally China has got a foot up in there. Argentina is #4 and, surprise, Ukraine is[/was] #5. There probably won't be a popcorn shortage any time soon.

        We could produce most of this stuff in the USA, but it would be expensive because of labor costs and, if any are left since Trump, EPA restrictions.

        • The problem is not corn, the problem is wheat.
          However corn is a problem for cattle raising in Europe (and it seems China, too).

          I wonder if anyone here is reacting quick enough and planting corn this (right now upcoming) season.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by drwho ( 4190 )

        Now I wish Slashdot had a like button, or similar. Yeah, people are pretty ignorant of how the world's economy is interlocked, and how the supply of boring, icky things effect their lives. Imagine, for instance, if something were to interrupt the supply of cobalt as well.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        You mean CNN didn't exhaustively shake down all the precious commodities and put it out there for you to snipe that they didn't do this or that other thing? Damn, I thought CNN was like, omnipresent and could ascertain everything about everything everywhere. Shame on them.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tom ( 822 )

        I am taking bets on how long it will take for CNN to notice that most modern chips are made on top of industrial sapphire plates, 90% of which are also produced in Russia.

        This.

        There's also a few other rare earths where 100% of the world supply comes from Russia.

        I wait for CNN to notice several other critical materials for the modern industry which are produced there such as Palladium (car and chemical industry catalysts), Titanium, Nickel, a whole raft of precursors for plastics (and explosives), etc.

        Turning Russia into a 2nd world raw material exporter after the 90s may yet turn out to be an expensive mistake.

    • To bad only Ukraine has those valuable neon mines.
      If only other countries had exploited their reserves of neon we wouldn't be in this squeeze.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by amorsen ( 7485 )

      We talk about copper production or oil production or uranium production all the time. Why do you have a problem with neon production?

    • Me? I just dig in my junk box for some neon bulbs. There are at least a hundred lurking in there.

      • To support the war effort during this neon crisis, I'm starting a drive to collect all the nixie tubes from the geeks on this site. Especially those giant vintage Soviet tubes. Just send them to me, and I'll take care of the rest.

    • I think nobody, except the grammar police, took "produce" to mean they assembled protons/neutrons together.

    • 1. Liquify air. 2. Fractionally distill all individual (while liquid) gases. 3. Package and sell. The cost of manufacturing such a plant isn't very high. But, the cost of extracting the gases is and building a new large plant takes time.
  • This is one of the biggest reasons why the west doing sanctions etc. Especially the US as 90% of neongas used in the US comes from the Ukrain. If the Ukrain didn't have these valuable resources the west wouldn't have given a shit, like they ignore so many other wars around the world.

    • This is one of the biggest reasons why the west doing sanctions etc. Especially the US as 90% of neongas used in the US comes from the Ukrain. If the Ukrain didn't have these valuable resources the west wouldn't have given a shit, like they ignore so many other wars around the world.

      Neon is distilled from air https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      • If it's that easy, and requires no other resources, why would you want to import it as it would make much more sense to just produce it locally.
        • Probably because, like a lot of other stuff (e.g. clothing), it's probably cheaper to import rather than manufacture locally.
          (Or was).

        • If it's that easy, and requires no other resources, why would you want to import it as it would make much more sense to just produce it locally.

          Exploitation of cheap labor. The same reason that billions of dollars worth of goods are manufactured in 3rd world shithole countries instead of in the U.S. or Europe.

          • It can't take much labor. It must be exploitation of cheap energy instead.

            • Not necessarily, as another poster poster this link: https://youtu.be/SwcCC3tKZ3E [youtu.be] I decided to have a look and found that the neon from Ukraine is a by-product of oxygen production/distilling. So it's a bit more complicated than where the energy is cheap.

              • is a by-product of oxygen production/distilling

                Which serves the Ukranian/Russian steel working industry. Without which, the separation of neon from air would be ridiculously expensive. It's a shame that the USA never had a steelworking industry which would support all of these secondary businesses. Or a supply of cheap labor wading across our border or living in tents on sidewalks to sustain them.

                • Thank you, the side sponsoring of neon extraction by the steel industry was missing in my view until now. I'm guessing that they'll not be doing business with Russia, so perhaps the world will have to get alternative sources quite soon...

          • Exploitation of cheap labor. The same reason that billions of dollars worth of goods are manufactured in 3rd world shithole countries instead of in the U.S. or Europe.

            Yeah. Fuck those Ukrainians. They don't need jobs that pay well FOR THEIR REGION. No.. everybody has to be paid on a western scale.

            Fuck you mouth-breathers.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Strider- ( 39683 )

          It's more that it isn't economical to extract it for itself, but rather it's a valuable byproduct that comes out of larger air distillation systems. I remember going on a tour of a smelter here in BC. They had an Air Liquide distillation plant on site that was provided to them for free. The smelter provided the (significant) power to operate it, and in return got all the Argon they wanted. Air Liquide took all the other gasses as payment for the plant.

          • This is why I stay on Slashdot. I come here knowing a geek working in the particular industry in question will speak authoritatively on a subject (and hopefully get into a squabble over details with another specialist in the same area; we onlookers learn the most observing those)

        • If it's that easy, and requires no other resources, why would you want to import it as it would make much more sense to just produce it locally.

          If you're suggesting that neon is produced differently from the link I provided reasoning backward from your assumptions about the war in Ukraine, I'm just not playing that game.

      • Only 18 pippahoom in the atmosphere. Harder to extract from air than Co2

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by amorsen ( 7485 )

      This ridiculous meme about all wars being about resources just has to stop.

      The only major resource of interest in this war is water, and by itself it would not be enough to start or sustain the war.

      • The only major resource of interest in this war is water, and by itself it would not be enough to start or sustain the war.

        Only if Putin were substantially more forward-looking than he actually is. But Russian food production capability is expected to decrease with AGW, and Ukraine is a massive food exporter right next door. Russia's ability to feed itself is literally at risk. Further, Ukraine's mineral resources under Russian control would assist them in rebuilding their aging military for any further conquest of other nations... with other resources they want.

        Sure, sometimes rules go off the deep end and do stuff for apparen

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hey! ( 33014 )

          ... or he could establish friendly relations with his neighbors, then allow food to enter Russia without tariffs.

          Conquering Ukraine in order to secure resources (in this case food) would be the same mistake the Japanese made in WW2. They though they needed an empire to secure resources like oil and rubber for their economy. After Japan's imperial ambitions were twwarted they achieved levels of industrial development beyond the wildest dreams of pre-war planners simply by buying the resources they needed o

          • Putin has demonstrated a willingness to make mistakes, some of them are costing him dearly. If he had 1/2 the force at double the readiness he'd have rolled right through Ukraine before anyone could say boo. For that matter, even with the military in its current state of readiness, if they'd stopped after the initial successes and just sat there like a boss, he could very likely have gotten away with a huge piece of Ukraine at very little cost to Russia.

          • They though they needed an empire to secure resources like oil and rubber for their economy.
            They were right.
            As the USA pushed the rest of the world to put an oil and rubber embargo on Japan.

            After Japan's imperial ambitions were twwarted they achieved levels of industrial development beyond the wildest dreams of pre-war planners simply by buying the resources they needed on the open market.
            That is true.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gtall ( 79522 )

          Resources won't put moral character back into the Russian military, not that it ever had much. The atrocities in Ukraine by Russians will help drain it faster. And Russia's military is run by a bunch of kleptocrats; any "resources" would only get siphoned off by them. Until the big shots start taking it in wallet, the war will continue.

          At some point, the rest of the world must realize the Russians are seriously degenerate when put in charge of a country. First it was the Tsars and their horrors. Then it was

      • There are plenty:
        - land
        - oil
        - women
        - slaves
        - access to the ocean (or a particular ocean - that was one of the main reasons Serbia invaded its western neighbours, they thought at least one will falter and they have a harbour at the sea)

        Or any other resource. Often the raided country simply gets stripped from its gold (e.g. all gold Iraq had when USA invaded it: is now in USA).

    • The west is acting on principle, because popular opinion forced their hand. Leaders in the west expected something closer to what Putin expected - some skirmishes maybe, but Ukraine accepting the bit & bridle of Russian domination with not much to be done about it. It's the people of Ukraine, foremostly Zelensky, who blew up that narrative by violent resistance and also by making impassioned calls on the West to stand up. Unfortunately it's difficult to see how this leads anywhere other than the deva

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        "because popular opinion forced their hand. "

        No. The Western governments were behind Ukraine before their people could even find it on a map. . .well, the Orange Shitgibbon did but only because he was trying to shake them down for a dirty campaign favor. Once Russia invaded and the West's people saw what an unguided monster Russia has become, then they got behind their governments.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Tom ( 822 )

          Once Russia invaded and the West's people saw what an unguided monster Russia has become, then they got behind their governments.

          That's not how politics work. It's just how it wants you to believe it works.

          Once Russia invaded, there was a narrative that was clear and easy, and it was repeated ad neuseaum on every available channel. Catching narratives like that tend to go viral and are hard to resist, so they crowd out other narratives and then there's "the" story that everyone agrees on, and that's how you get the population to unite.

    • the west wouldn't have given a shit, like they ignore so many other wars around the world.

      Which war specifically was ignored, where a country invaded another sovereign country? You don't know, you just made stuff up.

      The Ukraine war has a clear "good guy", unlike the conflict in Mali, where it's not clear who to support.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tom ( 822 )

        unlike the conflict in Mali, where it's not clear who to support.

        Don't know what you're smoking, but if one side is head-chopping islamist fuckers, it should be pretty clear who to support.

        • Both sides are overly violent. Choosing one side in that war won't solve anything.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Tom ( 822 )

            In most conflicts, both sides are wrong.

            But many times, there's a side you definitely don't want to win.

            • I don't know, Mali doesn't seem very clear to me. But if you are more familiar with the conflict, then maybe you're right. I don't oppose people just for being Muslims, though.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Tom ( 822 )

                I don't oppose people just for being Muslims, though.

                Not for being muslim, no. For being islamists of the "cutting off your head" kind, yes.

                • Both sides are killing each other, so that's not much of a determinant.

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by Tom ( 822 )

                    Yeah, in a war soldiers kill each other. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the "unless you submit completely to our extreme interpretation of this old book, we'll murder you" thing.

                    • Ah, you're really in favor of the "freedom of religion" aspect.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by Tom ( 822 )

                      I'm mostly in favor of the "freedom to be alive" aspect.

                      So yeah, if your religion infringes upon my freedom to live, then it's your religion that needs to give way.

                    • Ah, you're one of those peasants who insists on the right to live. What is the world coming to.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by Tom ( 822 )

                      To hell in a handbasket, totally. Next thing you know, peasants want a say in how the country is run.

    • This is just ridiculous. There are so many reasons to be upset about this war. Most importantly, it is a democratic country in the heart of Europe, lots of similarities in culture and people. Also, if Russia would have it easy there some NATO countries might be next (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tom ( 822 )

        That's so wrong on so many levels.

        First, we didn't much care that the people of previous yugoslavia are similar in culture etc. when we (i.e. NATO) bombed them.

        Ukraine is also not a stable democracy. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It's one of the most corrupt countries in the world. In fact, the current president became famous with a TV series making fun of just how corrupt the whole politics is.

        The only reason we need to be upset is that war is a shit and innocent people die. It shouldn't matter if they're s

    • This is one of the biggest reasons why the west doing sanctions etc. Especially the US as 90% of neongas used in the US comes from the Ukrain. If the Ukrain didn't have these valuable resources the west wouldn't have given a shit, like they ignore so many other wars around the world.

      Actually it's completely irrelevant as to why the west is responding. There are many reasons why the response to this is so extreme:

      1) Putin attacked Ukraine for three reasons. The first is he wants their land, either annexed directly or as a client state in his empire. The second is the Ukraine is becoming more Democratic and less corrupt, and the last thing Putin wants is a bunch of Russian speakers in Ukraine telling people about how great freedom and Democracy is. And finally, he lost all influence with

  • Neon isn't in short supply, you can make neon anywhere by liquifying air. Yes, it's probably cheaper to do in Eastern Europe, but the cost of neon is about 0.0001% of the cost of the hard UV lasers needed for chip production. Not to mention the fabs operating at small feature sizes use argon lasers nowadays, and the shortage of chips of large feature size has more to do with design and logistics problems than supply and demand.

    • The most commonly used laser (for the 193 nm tools) is an ArF exicimer laser. However the supply gases for these lasers (which is a consumable) is ~95% Ne / 5% ArF. If think they use Ne in the 248 nm tools (KrF) too. I'm not sure how the economics work out though.

  • Neon and semi-conductors (Score:4, Informative)

    by kyoko21 ( 198413 ) on Saturday March 12, 2022 @06:59AM (#62350471)

    If you want to know learn more about learn more about Neon and semi-conductors, check out the new view from Asianometry's channel specifically about this topic.

    https://youtu.be/SwcCC3tKZ3E [youtu.be]

    It's well worth the watch.

    • Sure was worth the watch, thanks. What gets me is how much energy people waste creating cryptocurrencies when they could actually invest those dollars into something tangible such as this.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by vyvepe ( 809573 )
        Creating too much money by central banks leads to inefficiencies in the economy. One of them is investing in e.g. cryptocurrencies instead of e.g. neon production (or whatever else is more important).

        • Creating too much money by central banks leads to inefficiencies in the economy. One of them is investing in e.g. cryptocurrencies instead of e.g. neon production (or whatever else is more important).

          Not creating enough money by central banks leads to shortages in the economy. Not enough money, no investment in neon production.
          It's a balancing act.
          Changing that to something fixed like crypto would be like going back on the gold standard, tying both hands behind our backs.

          • Shh... stop talking about monetarism to libertarian crypto-ideologists. They don't get it. They can't get it because it would mean revising their beliefs. They think that dropping the gold standard was a bad thing.
        • It's getting too much of it to the top. You create money because your economy grows. If you stop doing that you can strain your economy and eventually have a recession. Contrary to what gold bugs think that's why we came off the gold standard. The human economy has gotten too lodged to be represented by a physical good. It needs a well regulated currency with governments and militaries backing it and laws that prevent money laundering and currency manipulation.

          The problem you're seeing now is because we

          • Perhaps you should read up who the funk Elon Musk actually is and then count his products.

            Putting him into the same league like Mark Zuckerberg is an insult.

      • Some cryptos have actual value. You canâ(TM)t buy molly over the Internet with Visa... but you can with Monero
        • So you're saying that despite the west's best efforts at hitting the Russian oligarchs where it hurts, they can still get drugs & hookers?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Tom ( 822 )

            The super-rich, no matter which country they are from, have spent the last decade or two insulating themselves from the rest of the world. Sure, they'll lose a billion or two, but "hurt"? Nah, aside from some pride when their favorite yacht is impounded, they'll be fine.

            The same way western super-rich make sure to not pay taxes, oligarchs have surely stashed a good part of their fortunes away in places nobody will reach. They won't be starving.

    • Indeed, well worth watching.

      I cannot help wondering, how long would it take to install the extra equipment to an already working facility to extract neon? For example, I've seen from a transfer coach from Barcelona airport to El Tarter, an Air Liquide plant that looks like it extracts rather more than just oxygen and nitrogen. I know little about the process but there's many gas containment vessels of various sizes....

  • From a quick review of important exports it looks like battery grade graphite could be at risk as well.
  • There's nothing like putting most of your eggs in one basket.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tom ( 822 )

      Wait till the rest of the world realizes that Russia - which we just cut off from world trade - is the primary (and in a few cases ONLY) source of some rare earth critical for chip manufacture.

  • Now my "Bros before Hos" sign for my man-cave is delayed indefinitely.

  • Economic speedbumps are temporary and not cause for concern.

  • There are companies called "Linde" and "Airgas" which also produce industrial gasses, even in bulk cryogenic form. I've been a Linde customer for years, and now might be a good time to buy stock in them, seeing as there is going to be a demand for neon shortly....

  • nyan (Score:2)

    by drwho ( 4190 )

    Here's some nyan to relieve the shortage: meow meow me0w meow meow me0w m30w m3ow meow me0w

  • I dunno, ask the Sun!

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