Unit costs of goods sold would be interesting, compared to 'traditional' classic modern intensive farm price.
An observation from the article also could be answered: what areal space is required to generate the power?
Neither of these are meant to be thunderclap proof-it-fails critique, they're just interesting.
In food miles, freshness and lack of need for water, fertiliser and pesticides its winning hands down for feeding its urban population surrounding it. Repurposed brownfield site, existing buildings would also reduce impact.
I fear a loss of jobs and richness in ag. Supporting towns. Jobs are empowering, even crap ag. jobs but a reality here is that farming is overwhelmingly industrialised and jobs are either kept in the family or massively exploitative piece rate so this isn't a killer argument against either, but I do worry the rural area depopulation is a continuing trend.
Too late for that. My family are big baseball fans, and we go to the baseball hall of fame for tournaments or indications every few years.
That drive from Albany to Cooperstown is progressively more depressing first as small dairy was destroyed by deregulation and later as agricultural policy put everyone out of business unless you grow corn or flowers or farm tourism.
Traditional farms aren't going to be upset by this approach. It more of an answer to how we are going to feed 14 billion people than it is a threat to our current way of growing things to eat.
Also, by not growing these products on other farmland, other crops, which aren’t suitable for vertical solutions, can be grown on that land. There is a shortage of farmable land, so this is another piece in the puzzle.
So I know nuclear is supposed to be able to handle current power needs of humanity for quite a while, but if we fill earth with super intensive vertical farms powered by artificial light...
Anyone ran the numbers on how long uranium would last running sun-less agriculture for a few billion people?
When fusion arrives in the next 40 years: "Lithium from sea water would last 60 million years, however, and a more complicated fusion process using only deuterium would have fuel for 150 billion years." [calculated at 1995 global power output]
Why will fusion arrive in the next 40 years? I feel like that's what was stated 40 years ago too. Are there 0 barriers at this point and it's just a matter of obtaining funding and starting to build plants and by then there will be a big enough track record for widespread deployment?
Despite this attitude being memed, multiple efforts to refine fusion reactors to the point they are useful for energy purposes have made fairly constant (albeit slow and incremental) progress over the years. Furthermore, all the science and engineering concepts are sound based on the physics models.
One thing people don't get is we only need a tiny fraction of net positive output due to the insanely large amount of fuel available to us. 2-3% positive output is all we're talking about and it'll be able to economically replace most other energy sources (though it will take time to ramp up of course.)
Basically it's just a matter of time and continued advances in material sciences. Purity of materials and perfection of manufacturing are the primary barriers. Operational consistency a secondary one (and continued improvement in microcontroller tech and data analysis/AI/etc. will help here.)
One example, in focus fusion, the current progress has definitely been incremental but basically every step of the way the progress has been hindered by exactly the same problem: the materials and apparatus have to be nearly perfect to increase plasma duration sufficiently; to avoid contamination of the self-sustaining plasmoid. And indeed, the progress on that end has been continuous. Once it's proven it will be a matter of perfecting the manufacturing process and automations/etc. to ensure that degree of material quality and device engineering and voila we'll have cheap scalable power.
Based on what I've been watching for the last 15 years, I think within 40 years is quite reasonable. In fact, I think it would not be a surprised to see consistent 0.5% net positive or better in the next 5-10 years, whether it is focus fusion or tokamak or whatever.
TL;DR: Fusion is a 100% sound energy generation avenue that is simply waiting for its "welding" moment. By which I refer to the point where gas production became suddenly economically viable due to the invention of welding (which was motivated at least partly by the desire to improve gasoline production.)
That is certainly an exaggeration on the low end. By some estimates we don't have more than about 100 years of nuclear power. It's not really beneficial to give these wildly overoptimistic estimates of recoverable resources.
Right now human civilization is running off something like 18TW of energy.
If you add in 2000 kilocalories per day for 7.8 billion people, you add another 750 GW; if you add in a factor of 10 for biological & technological inefficiencies on actually turning electricity into edible calories, you're up to 7.5TW.
As long as you don't throw another factor of 10 on top of that -- imagine growing all food indoors, and then feeding it to cows, before subsisting entirely on beef -- you're probably looking at an amount of energy comparable to that used by humans currently.
Obviously it doesn't make a lot of sense to just switch over to indoor agriculture when there's free sunlight outside, but if we were to do so, the energy demands are probably on a scale comparable to what we're working with already.
So you're probably only halving or so the runway of available uranium.
What they say in their interview is scaling this to make it economically is possible if they just have the scale. Personally I’m extremely skeptical of their success...
And what is the price for the produce in those areas? Less as well. In these areas, it's highly unlikely this system would be feasible if land costs are relatively low and energy prices are a relatively higher expense compared to incomes in higher earning countries (as a percentage of income).
Only because externalization of costs of storage as well as start up and shut down of more consistent power sources that supplement their variable electricity generation.
Isn't that only due to the insanely strict safety regulations nuclear plants need to adhere to? After the Fukushima disaster, France, Germany, and China stopped nuclear operations or added more regulation that increased the cost of operating their power plants (despite, of course, nuclear being on average safer than fossil fuel plants, and even hydroelectric having a bigger death toll).
Yes? The high cost being the result of overregulation and overzealous safety standards points to a trivial (in terms of engineering difficulty, not political difficulty) solution to reduce those costs, and nuclear power is region-agnostic, unlike solar, wind or hydroelectric. It can be utilized, along with vertical indoor farming, in areas of otherwise marginal utility.
I doubt you'll be able to muster the political will to deregulate nuclear and design and build a sufficient number of cheap nuclear plants before renewables will have made the whole thing obsolete.
I agree with the first part of your comment, though not the second. From 2000-2013, the share of global energy produced by renewables has only grown by 0.8%[0]. (Fun fact; when Germany started their nuclear phase out in 2011, they replaced the mothballed nuclear plants with new coal power plants, not renewables). There's frankly not enough time to rely on the growth of renewables; it looks like we're stuck with fossil fuels until the bitter end.
That's not an accurate comparison. You are then using that 20% to power grow lights for photosynthesis. How efficient is photosynthesis using grow lights? Even if it's twice as efficient, you're then looking at 4% of 20% which is 0.8%.
Sure, this can be used used land not suitable for agriculture. I only see this really being helpful in cities that have old industrial buildings that are sitting vacant (reuse existing infrastructure and reduce transportation).
Environmental impact needs to be calculated as well. The only concern I have is soil, nutrient supplementation quality - profit focus would dictate trying to include bare minimum nutrients which doesn't necessarily yield the best food but "good enough" being produced.
Yep, we already see this in many cultivars today - they are less nutritious than many heirloom varieties because they prioritize production (paid by the pound).
I suspect these target a market intensely focussed on nutritional value, as well as price. Good food commands a premium. Yes, naked competition would force costs down and if nutritional value was costly that would drop, but this technology is early phase, may well still be more expensive than bulk commercial agriculture and succeed because of the variance of price and value and the huge amount of price elasticity inherent in food choices.
I think you're arguing too strongly from reductionist economic theories. I already am willing to pay significantly higher prices for brie over US cheese blocks, and I pay over the odds for tomatoes I like.
In Food economics, competition is not solely driven by price basically.
That may be true for people who are well off, but there is a large segment of the population who are food insecure and many others that do not have that level of disposable income. Then you have the segments of the population that don't see any benefit to more nutritious foods and thing they are all the same.
For example, why is organic farming not the predominant method?
>Environmental impact needs to be calculated as well.
The first comment on the articles page was addressing some of that impact.
Does it feed insects and birds and support biodiversity? Does it sequester carbon in the soil, making below-ground life healthy, increasing access of plants to nutrients, and hence produce healthier food? Does it help water infiltrate into the ground, this replenishing ground water and aquifers? Does convert sunlight into latent heat via plant transpiration, and thus support the Small Water Cycles that cool the surface of the earth and convey water (via rain) downwind to drier land? Does it engage the senses with beautiful sights and smells? Does it engage humans in an honest day's work, making them proud contributors to society?
It doesn’t do any of that. Vertical farms and other indoor Ag works in places that already have a handicap. Like in deserts(Middle East), lack of arable land(Japan), harsh winters(New England/Canada).
To maximize the efficiency for indoor farming, you have to install these systems in the most arid or hostile locations where nothing has been grown before. For example, California or pacific north west doesn’t need this.
We can do better with crop rotation and crop diversity in most parts of the world where we grow food and it can be done in an environmentally friendly way.
An observation from the article also could be answered: what areal space is required to generate the power?
Neither of these are meant to be thunderclap proof-it-fails critique, they're just interesting.
In food miles, freshness and lack of need for water, fertiliser and pesticides its winning hands down for feeding its urban population surrounding it. Repurposed brownfield site, existing buildings would also reduce impact.
I fear a loss of jobs and richness in ag. Supporting towns. Jobs are empowering, even crap ag. jobs but a reality here is that farming is overwhelmingly industrialised and jobs are either kept in the family or massively exploitative piece rate so this isn't a killer argument against either, but I do worry the rural area depopulation is a continuing trend.