<h4>Chapter 153: The K Penins Industrial Campus</h4>


    While Anastasiya was reflecting on her recent life choices and absentmindedly fiddling with a folder, Eleanor entered the dining room and took a seat across from her.


    "When did youe?" she asked, adjusting her chair.


    "Not long ago. Here... I came to give you this," Anastasiya said, immediately sliding the folder across the table toward Eleanor.


    "This is the final n for the K Penins Industrial Campus. Miss Kournikova said this will serve as our base blueprint moving forward. Some minorponents may still need adjustment, and the actual costs could exceed twenty billion during implementation, but overall, the project will remain more or less the same," Anastasiya exined.


    Eleanor picked up the folder and took out a stack of papers bound together. She nced over the summary page first, then asked, "Did Teresa and Lily approve this project n?"


    Anastasiya replied, "Yes. They were both present at today’s project team meeting."


    Eleanor nodded. "Can you give me a brief overview of the project? I don’t want to go through all the details right now."


    Anastasiya nodded and said, "Okay, I can do that."


    Inwardly, she knew Eleanor was testing her... gauging how much she had learned in the meantime.


    With that thought in mind, she began.


    "The industrial campus will be built to produce AI surveince GPU cards, full telemetry and guidance logic boards for satellites, flight controlputer modules for both LEO and GEO orbits, edge-processing boards for drone swarms and autonomous surveince towers, and cryptographic authentication chips for secure military infrastructure. We’ll sell them to the Russian government and also use them in our other production bases. The campus will be fully autonomous... we won’t rely on external sources for any part of the production process."


    She looked at Eleanor carefully. Seeing that she was listening intently, she continued, "The industrial campus will be built on the K Penins near Murmansk, because the deep-water harbour there remains ice-free year-round thanks to the North Antic Current. This will ensure uninterrupted arrival of chemicals and the smooth departure of finished crates along the Northern Sea Route and through the Barents gateway to the Antic."


    She paused, then said, "The campus will be fully autonomous. Its independence is anchored by a private, heavy-fuel-oil thermal power nt with a capacity of 180 megawatts. The nt will be outfitted with three high-efficiency, low-emissionbustion turbines and a closed-loop steam recovery system to maximize thermal output and ensure year-round energy stability. It will operate with full redundancy, incorporating dual fuel feed systems and maintaining a 90-day on-site reserve of low-sulphur fuel oil, stored in Arctic-hardened containment tanks to withstand extreme conditions. To stabilize demand and reduce peak-load strain, lithium-iron-phosphate battery farms will be deployed across the grid, enabling fast-response load levelling and critical power buffering."


    She paused, then added, "We’ll also have high-voltage links to the 1.76-gigawatt K Nuclear Power nt, which will remain avable but serve strictly as a tertiary fallback."


    ncing at Eleanor, she continued, "Utility self-sufficiency will be reinforced by in-house generators for liquid nitrogen, argon, and hydrogen to supply essential process gases. A seawater desalination and de-ionization train will provide ultrapure water for fabrication use. Toplete the system, a full-cycle waste-gas scrubber facility will ensure emissions remain within environmental regtions and safeguard the surrounding Arctic ecosystempleting the factory’s enclosed and self-reliant utility profile."


    Eleanor said, "Okay, I understand the autonomous process. Tell me about the operation."


    Anastasiya replied, "The operation will begin at the raw materials terminal, where Karelia quartzite, Norilsk matte containing nickel, cobalt, and copper, as well as concentrates bearing tinum-group and rare-earth elements are received and siloed. Russia’s position as the world’s secondrgest ferrosilicon producer will allow continuous rail delivery of metallurgical silicon, which will be chlorinated and distilled into eleven-nines polysilicon. This will then be processed through Czochralski and float-zone pullers to produce two-hundred- and three-hundred-millimeter boules, destined for wafer slicing,pping, and epitaxy."


    After a slight pause, she added, "Apanion metallurgy hall will refine cobalt to battery grade and electrolytically te high-purity copper and nickel interconnect stock. This process will depend on how much cobalt we can secure from K MMC’s annual capacity of three thousand tons, following its recent reconstruction."


    She paused, adjusted her posture, then continued, "The crystal warehouse will feed three front-end fabs. The first is a rad-hard CMOS line, qualified at 180 to 90 nanometers, for satellite control ASICs and radiation-tolerant microcontrollers. The second dedicates its clean bays to silicon carbide power devices and gallium-nitride RF amplifiers for phased-array payloads. The third fab, designed for future immersion lithography, opens at 130 nanometers, with a locked-in tool path to 65 nanometers once domestic deep-ultraviolet steppersplete qualificationter in the decade."


    After taking a deep breath, she added, "All three share a central chemical-mechanical-polish loop, copper damascene ting, atomicyer deposition ovens using titanium and hafnium precursors synthesized in the adjoining high-κ chemistryb, and an in-house resist nt... cutting dependency on foreign suppliers down to specialty photo-initiators alone."


    She paused and nced at Eleanor, who gave a subtle nod to continue. Anastasiya resumed, "Wafers will be transported by automated shuttle to a back-end vige that handles copper-pir redistribution, through-silicon-via drilling, and flip-chip attachment onto aluminium-nitride ceramic interposers. Finished die stacks will then proceed to a board-assembly hall, where surface-mount robots install memory modules, secure boot managers, and radiation-hardened regtors onto carbon-fiber PCB panels. This producesplete graphics cards capable of sixteen tera-operations per second inference at 120 watts, designed for low-Earth-orbit edge processing. Each board will undergo approximately a forty-hour thermal-vacuum and total-ionizing-dose regimen before automated crates roll to the quayside for direct loading."


    After she finished, Eleanor asked, "Tell me about the design and simtion tower."


    Anastasiya cleared her throat, then answered.


    "The design and simtion tower will be a criticalponent of the industrial campus. It houses a state-of-the-art data center equipped with electronic design automation (EDA) servers and an AI-elerated digital twin system. This digital twin creates a real-time virtual replica of the entire manufacturing process, tracking every batch... from raw quartz feedstock to the final packaged semiconductor module."


    She paused, then continued, "By mirroring all production parameters... such as temperature, humidity, ion dosage, and etching precision... the system enables predictive maintenance, capable of anticipating and preventing equipment failures, thereby minimizing downtime. It also facilitates yield optimization by allowing real-time adjustments to manufacturing variables, improving the number of functional chips produced per wafer."


    After a pause, she added, "Importantly, this entire infrastructure operates entirely on-site, without reliance on external cloud services... ensuring data sovereignty, enhanced security, and resilience against potential geopolitical disruptions."


    She looked at Eleanor and continued, "Adjacent to this, the campus includes a specialized polymer and gas synthesis facility, responsible for producing the high-purity process gases essential to semiconductor fabrication. This facility generates hydrogen for annealing and reduction processes, nitrogen for inert carrier and purge roles, argon for ion imntation and shielding during sma etching, and sne gas, which is critical for chemical vapor deposition of siliconyers."


    She paused, then added, "By synthesizing these gases on-site, the campus reduces its dependence on imported specialty gases... resources that are costly, difficult to transport, and vulnerable to supply chain disruptions. This approach not only lowers operational costs but also guarantees a steady, uninterrupted supply necessary for continuous fab operations."


    Eleanor showed a rare smile upon seeing how diligently Anastasiya was presenting her knowledge. Noticing that slight smile, Anastasiya felt a quiet surge of happiness.


    She continued, "Complementing these utilities, a zero-liquid-discharge chemical recovery nt has been constructed to manage and recycle the hazardous acids used extensively in wafer cleaning and etching. Hydrofluoric acid and sulfuric acid... both vital to the fabrication process... are recovered and purified within this system, allowing for the reuse of a significant portion of these chemicals."


    She paused, then added, "This approach drastically reduces the need for fresh acid imports, minimizes hazardous waste discharge to near zero, and ensurespliance with the stringent environmental regtions necessary to protect the fragile Arctic ecosystem surrounding the facility. Such chemical recycling not only reinforces the campus’s operational autonomy and environmental stewardship but also safeguards continuous manufacturing amid potential supply constraints."


    She took a deep breath, then continued, "Security around the campus is maintained by awork of radar towers and passive sensors, strategically positioned along the perimeter. These instations monitor for unauthorized ess by air ornd, detect environmental hazards such as wildfires or adverse weather, and identify anomalous equipment vibrations or electromaic interference."


    She paused for a moment, then said, "All sensor data is processed locally by advanced AI systems, running on purpose-built inference hardware developed within the facility itself. This edge AI operates entirely independent of externalworks, delivering real-time anomaly detection and alerts with zerotency. By eliminating reliance on outsidemunication channels or cloud infrastructure, the campus ensures robust, tamper-resistant security... vital for protecting the highly sensitive and proprietary semiconductor technologies housed within."


    She looked at Eleanor and added, "Together, these integrated systems form a self-sufficient, intelligent backbone for the industrial campus. They enableprehensive oversight of design, production, chemical supply, environmental impact, and security... all managed internally, without external dependencies. This autonomy is essential for a manufacturing environment dedicated to producing advanced AI and satellite-grade semiconductors, where reliability, confidentiality, and continuous operation are paramount."


    When she finished, Eleanor asked, "What about the budget allocation?"