Due to a quirk of geology, the purest quartz in all the world comes from the picturesque town of Spruce Pine, North Carolina.

Hurricane Helene's closure of two essential quartz mines in North Carolina reveals the precarity of the solar energy product pipeline.

Those mines are now closed indefinitely, after Hurricane Helene dumped 2 feet of water on Spruce Pine, devastating the area.

Hurricane Helene has been one of the deadliest storms in US history, massively impacting the semiconductor in North Carolina ...

The town of Spruce Pine, North Carolina, is home to two mines that are major sources of high-purity quartz, a key material ...

Hurricane Helene forced the shutdown of two key quartz manufacturing facilities in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, operated by ...

Deep in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina lies the small town of Spruce Pine, which also happens to ...

The small town of Spruce Pine, North Carolina, is one of the only sources of high-purity quartz on Earth, but it has been ...

To be clear, Spruce Pine is not the only place on the planet with high-purity quartz. Quartz, which is mostly made of crystallized silicon, is the second-most abundant mineral in Earth’s crust.

Hurricane Helene's impact on a small North Carolina town reveals the tech industry's vulnerability to disruptions in the supply of critical minerals like quartz.

Spruce Pine received 24.12 inches of rain from Helene ... it would “pose a serious problem for the production” of silicon ingots needed in the photovoltaic, or PV, industry.