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A Second World War era bomb was found at the construction site of TSMC’s new chip factories in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. The firm is currently building five leading-edge chip manufacturing plants in the area. These factories are expected to produce chips with the 2-nanometer and below manufacturing technologies. The details reveal that a bomb likely belonging to the US military was found at the site and has been removed since then.
World War II-Era Bomb Discovered At Refinery Being Prepared For TSMC’s Chip Factory Construction
The Kaohsiung site is one of the most important in TSMC’s portfolio since it will be responsible for producing 2-nanometer chips. This site will house five fabrication plants, out of which the first one, or P1, is expected to enter mass production by year-end. The first plant will produce TSMC’s 2-nanometer chips after the firm started to install equipment at the P1 site late last year.
TSMC is also building four additional chip plants at Kaohsiung. These are the P2, P3, P4 and P5 factories. Among them, P2 is also expected to produce 2-nanometer chips, while the others should either produce 2-nanometer or more advanced products, such as those made with TSMC’s 1.4A chip technology.
Now, local media reports from Taiwan share that an unexploded World War II-era bomb was discovered for the third time at the Kaohsiung plant construction site. This region belongs to an old oil refinery, which was the target of US bombing runs during the war since the island was controlled by Japan’s Imperial Army.
The bomb discovered is the third of its kind recovered from the area. It was discovered at 11:30 in the morning, local time yesterday, according to Focus Taiwan. The Taiwanese army was immediately notified about the bomb and they removed it an hour later. Yesterday’s discovery came after construction workers discovered unexploded bombs at the site in August and November last year.
The previous two bomb discoveries at the site involved air-use bombs, with one of them weighing 1,000 pounds and the other 500 pounds. Like the latest discovery, they were also severely rusted, which made it impossible to discover their material or batch number.
According to the Taiwan army, the bomb did not pose any threat to the workers who discovered it. It has been shifted to a warehouse and will be disposed off in accordance with the necessary procedures.
