Posted on Wednesday, June 08 2011 @ 21:47 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
DailyTech
reports seven Intel employees were injured by an explosion at the company's Fab 22 manufacturing facility near Chandler, Arizona.
The blast
occurred in a solvent waste treatment room and will not have a material impact on production.
The explosion comes just weeks after a tragic explosion at a Chinese plant owned by Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd. (2317) subsidiary Foxconn. The Chinese plant was being used to manufacture Apple Inc.'s (AAPL) iPad 2 at the time, and has since reopened. The incident claimed three lives as fires and secondary explosions raged for some time after the incident.
By contrast the damage at the Intel fab was limited by high tech safety systems. Seven workers were in the room when the explosion occurred and six were outside of it. Fire controls kicked in, as designed, limiting the extent of the damage.
The employees were evacuated for precautionary purposes, but there was no major damage to the Fab or disruption of production. One worker was taken to the local Maricopa Medical Center with serious, but non-life threatening injuries. Two others were transported to local hospitals immediately after the incident with less serious injuries. And a fourth worker was hospitalized later in the day.
