Hurricane Helene Shutters ‘Critical’ Quartz Mines That Power the World’s Electronics, Solar Panels and A.I.

High-quality quartz is the cornerstone of the semiconductors operating nearly every tech gadget worldwide. Cellphones, solar panels and artificial intelligence all rely on this resource.

However, such pure quartz is rare—it can only be found at a handful of places on Earth. And a North Carolina town home to the world’s biggest deposit of the mineral was just hit by Hurricane Helene.

Sitting an hour northeast of Asheville, the small town of Spruce Pine, also known as Mineral City, is home to about 2,000 people. It also contains a crucial supply of the natural high-purity quartz required for the computers and devices that run our modern world.

When Hurricane Helene struck, Spruce Pine was doused in more than two feet of rain, flooding its downtown, knocking out power and forcing businesses to shutter. The quartz mines in Spruce Pine, owned by Belgian mining company Sibelco and the local Quartz Corp, supply 80 to 90 percent of all high-quality quartz in the world, per CNN’s Clare Duffy and Dianne Gallagher. But the two companies closed down operations a day before the storm crossed the region, with no word on when work would resume.

“I don’t think the nation really realizes how this little, small town is so critical,” Michael Vance, a local real estate developer who has been informally coordinating some relief efforts after the storm, tells the Washington Post’s Eva Dou.

Quick explainer about Spruce Pine here pic.twitter.com/gFTlPMaApO

— Stephen Stapczynski (@SStapczynski) October 2, 2024

Spruce Pine’s bounty of quartz and other minerals was formed millions of years ago, when Africa and North America’s tectonic plates smashed together to create the supercontinent Pangea. This collision forced the heavier oceanic crust to drop underneath North America, bringing the ocean’s sediments to higher pressure and temperatures as they became closer to the planet’s hot mantle.

The friction and heat generated from this 380-million-year-old collision melted rock miles below the Earth’s surface, as local geologist Alex Glover told North Carolina’s Our State magazine in 2014. This magma then pushed through the cracks in the rocks around it, cooling and crystallizing over millions of years to form Spruce Pine’s bounty of pegmatites—igneous rock that’s chock-full of quartz crystals.

The town’s pegmatites are composed of about 65 percent feldspar, 25 percent quartz, 8 percent mica and trace amounts of other minerals. These have been used by Spruce Pine locals for centuries, and for millennia, Native Americans mined mica to create beads, decorative belts and money, according to Our State magazine.

It’s the quartz, however, that stands out today. Because the mineral formed in an area with almost no water, it’s exceptionally pure—water would have introduced impurities into it. The process to create semiconductors requires quartz with little to no impurities.

As journalist Vince Beiser explains in The World in a Grain, the semiconductor silicon can “conduct electricity at certain temperatures while blocking it at others”—a trait that allows it to work well in transistors, the small electronic switches that control the flow of electricity within gadgets.

But to be used in transistors, pure silicon must be melted down. As it melts, it must be held in a container made of a specific material—one that’s capable of withstanding high temperatures without contaminating the silicon. High-quality quartz (or silicon dioxide) is the only material for this job. If impure quartz is used, the outside materials can hamper the effectiveness of the transistor.

“Purity really does matter,” Ed Conway, author of Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization, tells NPR’s All Things Considered. “You’re talking about a process to create the silicon wafers that later become silicon chips, where one single atom being in the wrong place,” might throw off production.

The highest-quality Spruce Pine quartz has an open crystal structure that, after rounds of treatment to dissolve impurities, can be transformed into Iota quartz—which Beiser calls the “industry standard of purity.”

As a result, the quartz found in Spruce Pine is the workhorse of a $500 billion microchip industry, writes Tommy Greene for WIRED. But following Hurricane Helene, it might be weeks before the mines reopen, potentially causing shortages in the supply chain.

Currently, the mining companies are coping with the storm’s disruptions to infrastructure—roads are closed, and in some cases washed away, and cell service is down. Some mine employees are missing.

“Our top priority remains the health, safety and well-being of our employees, as well as ensuring the security of the Spruce Pine facility,” Sibelco says in a statement. “Our thoughts are with everyone affected by Hurricane Helene, and we thank you for your understanding during this time.”

Olatunji Osho-Williams | READ MORE

Olatunji Osho-Williams is an intern with Smithsonian magazine.