Those gases are storeable, so it's surprising there wasn't enough tank capacity to deal with outages.

The site plan [2] shows "Gas Plant 1", and future "Gas Plant 2" and "Gas Plant 3". The gas plants are across a small road from the fab and feed the plant directly. Once Gas Plants 2 and 3 were built, there would be redundancy, but at this stage, there isn't a backup. The plan doesn't show a large tank farm, so they can't store gases in bulk.

[1] https://www.aztechcouncil.org/utility-company-makes-progress...

[2] https://semiwiki.com/forum/threads/tsmc-phoenix-arizona-fab-...

> As a result, the company had to scrap thousands of wafers

Anything involving wet chemistry, photoresist, furnaces, etc. is very time-constrained. You can't let wafers sit around indefinitely. Certain process steps must be followed up very quickly to avoid scrap.

This is why you dont see redundant power for manufacturing lines. A 3nm line needs hundreds of megawatts to operate. You cant clear queued lots without a fully functional line. There's not much you could save by keeping part of the line operational.

so it always comes to those out of the loop as a bit of a surprise but from what I've read from individual Taiwanese workers and their feedback its clear that there is significant regret from one side.

and it doesn't seem to limited to just TSMC but another large company as of recent that receive icey reception for their large investment in America manufacturing.

i think this is a big reason why lot of these jobs simply wouldn't stay in america as the consumer would not be able to foot the costs added by "cultural premium" faster than what innovation can reduce.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17686310 ("Computer Virus Cripples Several Taiwan Semiconductor Plants (bloomberg.com)"—2018, 100 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19214952 ("TSMC's Photoresist Material Incident: $550M Loss (anandtech.com)"—2019, 15 comments)