Vertical farming does not save space(lowtechmagazine.com)
lowtechmagazine.com
Vertical farming does not save space
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2021/02/vertical-farming-ecosystem-services.html
449 comments
> If we look into the relatively near future, fusion energy is going to account for a rapidly increasing share of energy production by the end of this decade.
I really don't think by the end of this decade there will be any commercial fusion production. I'm sure we will be closer but it is still some decades away.
ITER proposes to follow up their current research reactor with a successor (DEMO) which they plan to start building around 2040 and begin operating in the 2050s. Then they expect DEMO to be followed by their first commercial power station, PROTO. They probably won't even start building PROTO until the 2050s or 2060s, so we could easily be looking at 2070-2080 before it comes online.
Now, there are other teams working on fusion, there is always the possibility some other team could leapfrog ITER. It is also possible that with increased investment timelines might come forward. But I'm very confident that come 2030, the amount of fusion power in the commercial energy markets is going to still be zero.
I really don't think by the end of this decade there will be any commercial fusion production. I'm sure we will be closer but it is still some decades away.
ITER proposes to follow up their current research reactor with a successor (DEMO) which they plan to start building around 2040 and begin operating in the 2050s. Then they expect DEMO to be followed by their first commercial power station, PROTO. They probably won't even start building PROTO until the 2050s or 2060s, so we could easily be looking at 2070-2080 before it comes online.
Now, there are other teams working on fusion, there is always the possibility some other team could leapfrog ITER. It is also possible that with increased investment timelines might come forward. But I'm very confident that come 2030, the amount of fusion power in the commercial energy markets is going to still be zero.
When I read that timeline, it doesn't sound serious to me. If you're planning to do something in 40 years, then you don't have the faintest clue how to do it now, which means you don't know when you will know how to do it. It could be 5 years or 1,000 or never. You don't know what you don't know.
"First commercial fusion power station will start construction between 2050 and 2060" is mostly guess, but it is an educated guess based on some trends/predictions/achieved work.
But compare it to "First commercial perpetum mobile power station will start construction between 2050 and 2060" or "First FTL spaceship will be launched in 2050s".
But compare it to "First commercial perpetum mobile power station will start construction between 2050 and 2060" or "First FTL spaceship will be launched in 2050s".
The educated guess for the last 50 years was 20-30 years away
My wife showed me once a chart of both founding and the estimation of the fusion spark (plus net energy). It explained pretty good why the estimation had changed.
My impression is that if humanity had focused on the question and not the politics we would already have fusion capacity.
But do not forget, we still do not know if it is financial benefit to use fusion in the future.
My impression is that if humanity had focused on the question and not the politics we would already have fusion capacity.
But do not forget, we still do not know if it is financial benefit to use fusion in the future.
For the last 60 years even! Fusion power was ~20 years away in Stanislaw Lems Summa Technologicae in 1961.
This is mostly because it has not been funded to the level required for that timeline to be accurate.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/U.S._his...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/U.S._his...
Funding at the level in that chart would not have given us fusion. That chart is based on a crash program to develop tokamaks, but assumed tokamaks work better than they actually do. The main product of that crash program would have been tears and frustration, not practical fusion.
One can turn this around and say that fusion not getting the funding in that chart is evidence it was not seen as a promising place to invest. One cannot simply presume it's a good investment and ignore any evidence to the contrary.
One can turn this around and say that fusion not getting the funding in that chart is evidence it was not seen as a promising place to invest. One cannot simply presume it's a good investment and ignore any evidence to the contrary.
> But compare it to [perpetual motion or faster-than-light space travel].
That's a completely inaccurate comparison - perpetual motion and faster-than-light violate fundamental physical laws as we understand them. Net-positive power from fusion is fully within the laws of physics – we've got an example in the daytime sky, and trillions in the nighttime sky. The difficulties with fusion come with shrinking it to a scale that humans can build.
That's a completely inaccurate comparison - perpetual motion and faster-than-light violate fundamental physical laws as we understand them. Net-positive power from fusion is fully within the laws of physics – we've got an example in the daytime sky, and trillions in the nighttime sky. The difficulties with fusion come with shrinking it to a scale that humans can build.
What fusion does is come close to ignoring the laws of engineering and economics. That's not quite the same as ignoring the laws of physics, but either of those is capable of rendering a technology a nonstarter.
Specifically, for fundamental reasons DT fusion will have much lower power density than a fission reactor, and so have to be much larger, and therefore have to be much more expensive.
Specifically, for fundamental reasons DT fusion will have much lower power density than a fission reactor, and so have to be much larger, and therefore have to be much more expensive.
I think you misunderstood the GP comment.
I understand the GP comment as saying "First commercial fusion power station construction will start 2050-2060" is different from "Perpetual motion machine construction will start in 2050-2060" or "FTL spaceship construction will start in 2050-2060" for the very reasons you gave (among others).
You read the GP as saying something different from what you are saying, but I think you are actually both saying the same thing.
I understand the GP comment as saying "First commercial fusion power station construction will start 2050-2060" is different from "Perpetual motion machine construction will start in 2050-2060" or "FTL spaceship construction will start in 2050-2060" for the very reasons you gave (among others).
You read the GP as saying something different from what you are saying, but I think you are actually both saying the same thing.
I would compare it to a space elevator (for earth, not the moon). Do you think we can attach a timeline to that?
Musk somehow got a bunch of those right. Not as complex, but still filled with unknowns.
My gut tells me that fusion power is better analogized to a space elevator than reusable rockets.
But you're suggesting what I already alluded to as a reason for doubting that economic fusion power will ever happen - he's the type of person who would be pursuing fusion if it seemed feasible. It's not that he's the only one, or that he knows about nuclear physics, but it's the sort of risk he would plausibly take if he didn't know of a good reason why it can't be done. Also, of course, you need power for Mars bases.
But you're suggesting what I already alluded to as a reason for doubting that economic fusion power will ever happen - he's the type of person who would be pursuing fusion if it seemed feasible. It's not that he's the only one, or that he knows about nuclear physics, but it's the sort of risk he would plausibly take if he didn't know of a good reason why it can't be done. Also, of course, you need power for Mars bases.
I'm not a huge SpaceX watcher, but I suspect it's harder to build electric cars than rockets. Yes, rockets are crazy expensive and time consuming but the fundamental principles are relatively understood.
https://qz.com/1244768/why-are-electric-cars-so-much-harder-...
Tesla's continual hitting of projected targets is much more impressive to me.
You're generally right though: the maturity, risk, and timelines of fusion are much greater than either of these. Better suited to long-term gov't/military spending.
But the general principle applies. Everything is measurable and can be modeled with a predictive distribution. The more unknowns, the more variable the distribution is.
https://qz.com/1244768/why-are-electric-cars-so-much-harder-...
Tesla's continual hitting of projected targets is much more impressive to me.
You're generally right though: the maturity, risk, and timelines of fusion are much greater than either of these. Better suited to long-term gov't/military spending.
But the general principle applies. Everything is measurable and can be modeled with a predictive distribution. The more unknowns, the more variable the distribution is.
We have fusion making consistent and significant gains right now.
We have wind and solar making even faster gains, and being real, right now as well.
Sure, but solar won't be enough to power us forever, and doesn't scale like fusion eventually will.
We will have energy needs orders of magnitudes more than we do right now within the next 20 years. I'm all for solar, but fusion will be necessary just in terms of dealing with climate change and the energy needs that alone will bring with it. Carbon sequestration, water desalination, etc... are all going to need serious energy behind them and will be knocking on humanity's door before the 2050s.
We will have energy needs orders of magnitudes more than we do right now within the next 20 years. I'm all for solar, but fusion will be necessary just in terms of dealing with climate change and the energy needs that alone will bring with it. Carbon sequestration, water desalination, etc... are all going to need serious energy behind them and will be knocking on humanity's door before the 2050s.
So what is the plan for the nuclear waste (neutron capture from the hull activates it badly)?
The nuclear waste problem is drastically overstated and, like almost every other aspect of nuclear power, is generally fear-mongered and cherry-picked as some sort of "gotcha".
https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-...
From the article: "the U.S. has produced roughly 83,000 metrics tons of used fuel since the 1950s—and all of it could fit on a single football field at a depth of less than 10 yards."
I'd be more comfortable with a nuclear waste storage facility in my area than I would be with a coal power plant polluting the same given area.
https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-...
From the article: "the U.S. has produced roughly 83,000 metrics tons of used fuel since the 1950s—and all of it could fit on a single football field at a depth of less than 10 yards."
I'd be more comfortable with a nuclear waste storage facility in my area than I would be with a coal power plant polluting the same given area.
The radioactive strength and decay time is not that long, right?
I don't know about commercial by 2030 but leap frogging ITER doesn't seem far fetched at all because of the all signficant advances in superconductors achieved after ITER was planned out. Also, if the new superconductors do work out, it's very likely that all other forms of energy generation and grid level storage will become almost immediately obsolete and any additional focus moving forward would be only on improving the efficiency of fusion. The remaining use cases for solar would probably then be on small off-grid type situations.
I'm a nuclear engineer working at a laboratory known for fusion research. Commercial fusion power at any scale is not happening by 2030. 2040 or 2050 are more realistic and may still be a stretch.
What signs do you see that it might work at all (and that it's not a hopeless endeavor)? As a layman it's so hard to understand how something so hot and so confined could ever be made to react reliably with continuous fuel and energy production to produce power on a large scale.
I don't think anyone is proposing continuous fuel (even fission reactors typically don't work like that - you have to shut them down to swap out the fuel rods periodically). The idea is that you inject (say) some deuterium into a blast chamber, it explodes like a miniature thermonuclear bomb, and you gather the explosive energy in vaguely the same way a internal combustion engine (like in cars) gathers energy from fuel-air bombs in its engine cyliders.
And we already know (roughly) how to build that, it's just that the version we know how to build is so ridiculously, impractically huge that you could fit a small city in its blast chamber... because it runs on actual, non-miniature, thermonuclear bombs. The difficulty is scaling that down to something that doesn't have a upfront cost measured in multiples of the world GDP before it starts generating power (in quantities measured in multiples of current global electrical consumption, and likely multiples of global energy consumption period).
And we already know (roughly) how to build that, it's just that the version we know how to build is so ridiculously, impractically huge that you could fit a small city in its blast chamber... because it runs on actual, non-miniature, thermonuclear bombs. The difficulty is scaling that down to something that doesn't have a upfront cost measured in multiples of the world GDP before it starts generating power (in quantities measured in multiples of current global electrical consumption, and likely multiples of global energy consumption period).
The blast chamber that you chuck nuclear weapons in is not a good analogy, I suspect we don't know how to build such a thing that has a net positive energy yield when you factor in how much energy it takes to build a thermonuclear weapon and the terrible thermal efficiency such a contraption would have. Inertial confinement fusion is basically a more manageable version of this idea and we still haven't hit breakeven there. Magnetic confinement fusion is widely believed to be the more viable path to commercial fusion energy anyway. Right now fusion is largely a game of chasing margins to get things efficient enough that first the plasma is self sustaining (ignition) and then second yields a net positive of energy. ITER or its successor will hopefully achieve the first goal (ITER was originally supposed to but is no longer targeting full ignition, at least initially), then hitting the second goal is what will be needed to be practical as a power source.
Also, just to add to your point there are (basically) continuously fueled fission reactors, see e.g. CANDU as well as some more exotic actually continuously fueled designs that use liquid fuels. Continuously fueled designs would probably be more desirable if they weren't such a proliferation concern but that's a different story.
Also, just to add to your point there are (basically) continuously fueled fission reactors, see e.g. CANDU as well as some more exotic actually continuously fueled designs that use liquid fuels. Continuously fueled designs would probably be more desirable if they weren't such a proliferation concern but that's a different story.
Wait, are you saying we know how to build a World Wonder that produces infinite energy, but we’re not doing it? What’ll we do if Ghandi builds it first?
Because we don't have enough energy demand to make it worthwhile. Even if we had enough money (and political will) to fund it, we'd be better off spending it on a space elevator, since we can actually use that enough to cover the costs.
With the only issue being that we don’t actually know how to build a working space elevator yet. Last I heard anyway.
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Stars and fusion nuclear weapons exist.
And I'm only half joking. The energy yield of fusion is there and the basic physics are pretty well understood. Progress has been agonizingly slow but steady. We generally understand what needs to be done to get there, but it's a slow and complicated process that will take a long time and several more expensive, large-scale tests like ITER to push it along. The payoff is still a ways away and the up front costs are high, so barring investment on the scale of the Manhattan project it is something we will have to continue slowly grinding away at. The upside is fusion research is truly pushing the bounds of engineering, which will continue to yield benefits in other areas along the way.
Edit: I'll also add that we have already built fusion reactors, we just haven't gotten them efficient enough that they generate enough energy to sustain themselves.
And I'm only half joking. The energy yield of fusion is there and the basic physics are pretty well understood. Progress has been agonizingly slow but steady. We generally understand what needs to be done to get there, but it's a slow and complicated process that will take a long time and several more expensive, large-scale tests like ITER to push it along. The payoff is still a ways away and the up front costs are high, so barring investment on the scale of the Manhattan project it is something we will have to continue slowly grinding away at. The upside is fusion research is truly pushing the bounds of engineering, which will continue to yield benefits in other areas along the way.
Edit: I'll also add that we have already built fusion reactors, we just haven't gotten them efficient enough that they generate enough energy to sustain themselves.
>barring investment on the scale of the Manhattan project
The Manhattan project cost about $30 billion in today's dollars, I believe.
We have IPOs that raise close to that amount of money these days (e.g. Alibaba).
It's half a percent of federal spending in 2020 (admittedly not a normal year).
GameStop has lost over $30 billion from its peak valuation.
Your matter of fact claim that there's not enough capital in today's world for fusion power development really makes me wonder.
Once upon a time, I read a comment by someone somewhere that "everyone" (who is "in the know") knows fusion break-even is infeasible, but the research is relevant to maintaining nuclear weapons stockpiles.
Besides, if fusion power was possible...wouldn't Elon Musk be working on it?
The Manhattan project cost about $30 billion in today's dollars, I believe.
We have IPOs that raise close to that amount of money these days (e.g. Alibaba).
It's half a percent of federal spending in 2020 (admittedly not a normal year).
GameStop has lost over $30 billion from its peak valuation.
Your matter of fact claim that there's not enough capital in today's world for fusion power development really makes me wonder.
Once upon a time, I read a comment by someone somewhere that "everyone" (who is "in the know") knows fusion break-even is infeasible, but the research is relevant to maintaining nuclear weapons stockpiles.
Besides, if fusion power was possible...wouldn't Elon Musk be working on it?
Comparing the raw numbers in terms of cost I don't think quite gives the right picture, you have to think about scale of investment. Whole (large) towns and biggest-in-the-world facilities were raised and the brightest minds committed. And it would likely take longer. Maybe a better comparison would be to the Manhattan project and the atomic weapons research apparatus in the decades that followed. Current input to fusion research is a big monetary investment worldwide, but I think in terms of effort it's not quite the same scale especially if you talk about the whole world committing to that degree.
I will add that I'm not sure it would be worth committing this amount of resources solely to fusion. Obviously I think it's worth pursuing long term, but not necessarily at that scale given the costs it would have in terms of other scientific research. I never claimed the amount of capital isn't there nor meant to imply it; it probably is possible (by 2040-2050, 2030 seems impossible to me) but not realistic barring some dramatic changes in the world.
Regarding why wouldn't Elon Musk be working on it... let's ignore that several other prominent billionaires have invested in fusion. But currently fusion is not an appealing private investment outside of philanthropy. There are a lot of up front costs and uncertainty for a payoff that is way down the road. Whether it's worth investing in is up to him, but "whether or not Elon Musk is doing it" is not a good measure of viability.
Regarding the comment that everybody in the know thinks breakeven is infeasible, that's certainly not the prevailing nor even a common view with the people I know working on fusion. Opinions are mixed on how far we are from breakeven and how far we are in terms of the technology required to achieve it, but as I noted previously the basic energy yield of fusion is there and the route to get there is mostly clear, if long. ITER has little cross-application with nuclear weapons, that would be facilities like NIF which aren't the main focus of research towards power production.
I'll add that I have no skin in this game, my research is unrelated to fusion I just happen to talk with those guys a lot and took some classes in grad school. I see none of those sweet gubbment fusion research bucks.
I will add that I'm not sure it would be worth committing this amount of resources solely to fusion. Obviously I think it's worth pursuing long term, but not necessarily at that scale given the costs it would have in terms of other scientific research. I never claimed the amount of capital isn't there nor meant to imply it; it probably is possible (by 2040-2050, 2030 seems impossible to me) but not realistic barring some dramatic changes in the world.
Regarding why wouldn't Elon Musk be working on it... let's ignore that several other prominent billionaires have invested in fusion. But currently fusion is not an appealing private investment outside of philanthropy. There are a lot of up front costs and uncertainty for a payoff that is way down the road. Whether it's worth investing in is up to him, but "whether or not Elon Musk is doing it" is not a good measure of viability.
Regarding the comment that everybody in the know thinks breakeven is infeasible, that's certainly not the prevailing nor even a common view with the people I know working on fusion. Opinions are mixed on how far we are from breakeven and how far we are in terms of the technology required to achieve it, but as I noted previously the basic energy yield of fusion is there and the route to get there is mostly clear, if long. ITER has little cross-application with nuclear weapons, that would be facilities like NIF which aren't the main focus of research towards power production.
I'll add that I have no skin in this game, my research is unrelated to fusion I just happen to talk with those guys a lot and took some classes in grad school. I see none of those sweet gubbment fusion research bucks.
>you have to think about scale of investment
That's what I was doing...
>currently fusion is not an appealing private investment outside of philanthropy. There are a lot of up front costs and uncertainty for a payoff that is way down the road
As opposed to the Mars rocket business? As opposed to money-losing biotech? Bitcoin, now representing around $1 trillion in total? Is the disinterest in long term investments why the US government is thinking about issuing 50 and 100 year bonds, as well as the 30 year that already exist?
In 2021, saying that significant capital is only available to non-speculative investments with short term payoffs sounds like something from another dimension. One without the GameStop hearings.
Elon Musk isn't literally the sole litmus test of whether fusion is feasible; he just represents the general zeitgeist. If a few billion dollars would make it happen in the near future, how could it be that everyone is disinterested? Especially now that taking climate change seriously seems to be snowballing.
That's what I was doing...
>currently fusion is not an appealing private investment outside of philanthropy. There are a lot of up front costs and uncertainty for a payoff that is way down the road
As opposed to the Mars rocket business? As opposed to money-losing biotech? Bitcoin, now representing around $1 trillion in total? Is the disinterest in long term investments why the US government is thinking about issuing 50 and 100 year bonds, as well as the 30 year that already exist?
In 2021, saying that significant capital is only available to non-speculative investments with short term payoffs sounds like something from another dimension. One without the GameStop hearings.
Elon Musk isn't literally the sole litmus test of whether fusion is feasible; he just represents the general zeitgeist. If a few billion dollars would make it happen in the near future, how could it be that everyone is disinterested? Especially now that taking climate change seriously seems to be snowballing.
> As opposed to the Mars rocket business?
SpaceX talks a lot about Mars, but so far they've mostly stuck to Earth orbit, because that's where the money is. They are starting to do some Moon-related stuff – because both NASA and space tourists will pay to go there. Even Starship, which was designed as a vehicle to get to Mars, most of its actual use is going to be Earth orbit or lunar, it is going to be very many years before its Martian use cases outnumber its Earth/Moon ones.
SpaceX will probably fund a few unmanned trips to Mars out of their own pocket – land a couple of Starships containing supplies that might be useful to future colonists. But I'm sure straight after doing that they'll be knocking on NASA's door suggesting that NASA pay them for some Mars missions... imagine how many (and how big) rovers you could fit on a Starship.
Musk has said he wants SpaceX to develop the necessary transport technologies to support colonisation of Mars – and they'll try to use non-Mars-related revenue sources to pay for that development. But he's also said the role of actually setting up a Martian colony (as opposed to just providing transportation to get there) won't fall to SpaceX.
I have a theory – which could just be wild speculation on my part – at some point Musk is going to set up something like a "Mars Colonisation Foundation" as a non-profit tasked with colonising Mars. And when he dies he's going to leave it the vast bulk of his assets to it (I'm sure he'll leave his family enough to live comfortably, but they don't need billions to do that). And the "Foundation" will end up owning a big chunk of SpaceX, and will be a major customer of SpaceX, but will remain separate from it. It will actually try to pay for the colonisation of Mars, not SpaceX themselves. And it will stick at it as long as it takes (even if it takes a few lifetimes to pull it all off.)
SpaceX talks a lot about Mars, but so far they've mostly stuck to Earth orbit, because that's where the money is. They are starting to do some Moon-related stuff – because both NASA and space tourists will pay to go there. Even Starship, which was designed as a vehicle to get to Mars, most of its actual use is going to be Earth orbit or lunar, it is going to be very many years before its Martian use cases outnumber its Earth/Moon ones.
SpaceX will probably fund a few unmanned trips to Mars out of their own pocket – land a couple of Starships containing supplies that might be useful to future colonists. But I'm sure straight after doing that they'll be knocking on NASA's door suggesting that NASA pay them for some Mars missions... imagine how many (and how big) rovers you could fit on a Starship.
Musk has said he wants SpaceX to develop the necessary transport technologies to support colonisation of Mars – and they'll try to use non-Mars-related revenue sources to pay for that development. But he's also said the role of actually setting up a Martian colony (as opposed to just providing transportation to get there) won't fall to SpaceX.
I have a theory – which could just be wild speculation on my part – at some point Musk is going to set up something like a "Mars Colonisation Foundation" as a non-profit tasked with colonising Mars. And when he dies he's going to leave it the vast bulk of his assets to it (I'm sure he'll leave his family enough to live comfortably, but they don't need billions to do that). And the "Foundation" will end up owning a big chunk of SpaceX, and will be a major customer of SpaceX, but will remain separate from it. It will actually try to pay for the colonisation of Mars, not SpaceX themselves. And it will stick at it as long as it takes (even if it takes a few lifetimes to pull it all off.)
It's not a few billion dollars, it's hundreds, and probably decades before it pays off. Private investors have dabbled with alternative approaches to fusion that promise lower costs, but none of them have really panned out and it's pretty much all fallen to government sponsored research.
I expect private investment will pick up eventually, when the technology is a little closer to market. I'm not at all disagreeing that we should be investing more in it and that it's looking increasingly urgent, it's still a relatively small effort compared to other things.
I expect private investment will pick up eventually, when the technology is a little closer to market. I'm not at all disagreeing that we should be investing more in it and that it's looking increasingly urgent, it's still a relatively small effort compared to other things.
Well, ITER will cost 22-65bn. It's much more ambitious than the Manhattan Project IMHO.
[deleted]
> GameStop has lost over $30 billion from its peak valuation.
This isn't how market cap works.
This isn't how market cap works.
I know what market cap is, and that they didn't really have the opportunity to sell the company for that much, but it still provides a sense of scale.
A very misleading one.
The only way significant progress on commercial fusion is likely by 2030 is if it's approached by industry and government similarly to how COVID vaccine development was -- everyone drops everything and throws everything they've got at it. Another example of similar financial and institutional commitment would be the Apollo program.
This level of commitment will probably only happen if climate change (and the related ecological and economic collapses) are taken as seriously as COVID, which is unlikely since, once the effects become obvious as COVID, it will be too late. And even COVID has large numbers of people denying reality.
Even if a massive commitment to fusion started now, by 2030 we'd likely only have a promising proof-of-concept or two, with several more failed projects on the side. Wide-scale deployment would still be years away even with many companies tooling up to start building pilot commercial reactors while assuming high financial risk, since profitability would be far from guaranteed.
[edit] Another point of comparison would be semiconductor manufacturing advances over the past 10 years. Tens of billions were spent researching and building factories, and in the end only a few companies made it to 7nm. And that was a clearly profitable endeavor iterating on already proven techniques!
This level of commitment will probably only happen if climate change (and the related ecological and economic collapses) are taken as seriously as COVID, which is unlikely since, once the effects become obvious as COVID, it will be too late. And even COVID has large numbers of people denying reality.
Even if a massive commitment to fusion started now, by 2030 we'd likely only have a promising proof-of-concept or two, with several more failed projects on the side. Wide-scale deployment would still be years away even with many companies tooling up to start building pilot commercial reactors while assuming high financial risk, since profitability would be far from guaranteed.
[edit] Another point of comparison would be semiconductor manufacturing advances over the past 10 years. Tens of billions were spent researching and building factories, and in the end only a few companies made it to 7nm. And that was a clearly profitable endeavor iterating on already proven techniques!
That's interesting, do you think that SPARC and HTS advancements like for example VIPER cables point towards a faster path to market for fusion than ITER?
No, because the fusion reactors using HTS still have horribly lower power density. The ARC design has a power density 40x worse than a PWR primary reactor vessel, and involves far more difficult engineering. How is this going to be cheaper than fission, which itself is not competitive?
Fission is only not competitive because of regulation and safety measures, is it not?
Not. Nowhere has it done well. It's just too complex with too many interdependent parts. Construction has proved to be beyond the competency of those trying to build plants. And now, it's just too late. The iteration time for nuclear designs is measured in decades, going up against renewable and storage technologies iterating in periods of a few years.
Fusion would make fission look dead simple. If fission reactors cannot be constructed on schedule or budget, how bad would fusion reactors be?
If you think regulation is the problem, explain just which regulations you mean.
Fusion would make fission look dead simple. If fission reactors cannot be constructed on schedule or budget, how bad would fusion reactors be?
If you think regulation is the problem, explain just which regulations you mean.
It was an honest question. I don't know which specific regulations, I've never built one but I have heard those who did lament the cost and trouble in even obtaining a site.
From what I can see fission reactors are doing just fine in France and Belgium. I don't know the specific numbers but the French don't seem worse off economically, despite having the greenest grid on the planet.
Fission has a number of disadvantages over fusion that make it a reasonable possibility of it being economically more viable than fission.
Because there's no compounding risks it is way more attractive to mass produce smaller reactors.
Once the key hurdles are solved it will be a simple calculation to decide how much investment will yield how much return, that means it will be an interesting investment opportunity.
Contrast this with fission, where a project is usually just one or two reactors, with tens of billions invested, loads of risk, slow and steady reward with various threats.
It is not the complexity that makes power plants intractible, we build more complex things than fission reactors every day. Its the lack of supply chain because of the unsteady build rate.
The iteration time of fusion reactors is measured in years, not decades by the way. Tokamak Energy is building its third iteration in 12 years, and plans to start the 4th in 2025.
Obviously we aren't there yet, but if it's possible, and a relatively small company like Tokamak Energy can build a proof of concept, then I don't see why we wouldn't have thousands of reactors spread through cities all over the world within the next 20 years.
From what I can see fission reactors are doing just fine in France and Belgium. I don't know the specific numbers but the French don't seem worse off economically, despite having the greenest grid on the planet.
Fission has a number of disadvantages over fusion that make it a reasonable possibility of it being economically more viable than fission.
Because there's no compounding risks it is way more attractive to mass produce smaller reactors.
Once the key hurdles are solved it will be a simple calculation to decide how much investment will yield how much return, that means it will be an interesting investment opportunity.
Contrast this with fission, where a project is usually just one or two reactors, with tens of billions invested, loads of risk, slow and steady reward with various threats.
It is not the complexity that makes power plants intractible, we build more complex things than fission reactors every day. Its the lack of supply chain because of the unsteady build rate.
The iteration time of fusion reactors is measured in years, not decades by the way. Tokamak Energy is building its third iteration in 12 years, and plans to start the 4th in 2025.
Obviously we aren't there yet, but if it's possible, and a relatively small company like Tokamak Energy can build a proof of concept, then I don't see why we wouldn't have thousands of reactors spread through cities all over the world within the next 20 years.
> From what I can see fission reactors are doing just fine in France and Belgium.
They aren't, France has had nuclear for geopolitical reasons, not primarily economic ones. And now that these plants are old, they won't be replaced with new ones (save 1 big project that is already way over budget and won't be price competitive once it is live).
They aren't, France has had nuclear for geopolitical reasons, not primarily economic ones. And now that these plants are old, they won't be replaced with new ones (save 1 big project that is already way over budget and won't be price competitive once it is live).
It was a leading question, pretending to claim that regulation was the cause. Nice walkback, though.
Nuclear is in a bad state in France. Their recent attempts to build new reactors have gone massively over budget. Existing reactors are aging and it looks like they cannot replace them.
Fission has some disadvantages over fusion, but those disadvantages won't make fusion cheaper than fission (the costs of fuel and waste disposal for fission are minor compared to other costs.) Fusion is inherently much lower in power density than fission, which will make the nuclear island much more expensive to build. It will require a minor miracle for fusion to be competitive with fission, never mind the cheaper sources of energy that are beating fission.
> Tokamak Energy is building its third iteration in 12 years,
They haven't built a fusion reactor. They have built experiments that are smaller and less complex that what a fusion power plant would have to be. Small fission reactors iterated well too; they weren't commercial power plants.
The chance that we have thousands of fusion reactors all over the world in the next 20 years is indistinguishable from zero.
Nuclear is in a bad state in France. Their recent attempts to build new reactors have gone massively over budget. Existing reactors are aging and it looks like they cannot replace them.
Fission has some disadvantages over fusion, but those disadvantages won't make fusion cheaper than fission (the costs of fuel and waste disposal for fission are minor compared to other costs.) Fusion is inherently much lower in power density than fission, which will make the nuclear island much more expensive to build. It will require a minor miracle for fusion to be competitive with fission, never mind the cheaper sources of energy that are beating fission.
> Tokamak Energy is building its third iteration in 12 years,
They haven't built a fusion reactor. They have built experiments that are smaller and less complex that what a fusion power plant would have to be. Small fission reactors iterated well too; they weren't commercial power plants.
The chance that we have thousands of fusion reactors all over the world in the next 20 years is indistinguishable from zero.
> Nuclear is in a bad state in France. Their recent attempts to build new reactors have gone massively over budget. Existing reactors are aging and it looks like they cannot replace them.
This is a political problem which has nothing to do to with technology or costs themselves.
Most infrastructures are aging and in a bad state in France, and the skills and knowledge to build or replace it has long been lost.
Add on top of this politically strong ecologist-extremists who decided that nuclear is evil and must be gone, and who will do everything to sabotage any project.
To take a counter example, nuclear is doing fine and growing in many countries, including China.
This is a political problem which has nothing to do to with technology or costs themselves.
Most infrastructures are aging and in a bad state in France, and the skills and knowledge to build or replace it has long been lost.
Add on top of this politically strong ecologist-extremists who decided that nuclear is evil and must be gone, and who will do everything to sabotage any project.
To take a counter example, nuclear is doing fine and growing in many countries, including China.
> This is a political problem which has nothing to do to with technology or costs themselves.
No, nowhere in the world is nuclear power economically competitive. Construction costs are about 3x-4x the cost per kW compared to solar or wind. [0 page 11][1]
> nuclear is doing fine and growing in many countries, including China.
No, net nuclear plants in Asia are not increasing. [0 page 4]
[0] https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.69857...
[1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=45136
No, nowhere in the world is nuclear power economically competitive. Construction costs are about 3x-4x the cost per kW compared to solar or wind. [0 page 11][1]
> nuclear is doing fine and growing in many countries, including China.
No, net nuclear plants in Asia are not increasing. [0 page 4]
[0] https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.69857...
[1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=45136
> It was a leading question, pretending to claim that regulation was the cause.
I just stated the opposite, are you calling me a liar? And then you mock me for crediting your argument, does that make you feel good? Are we like fighting or something?
I just stated the opposite, are you calling me a liar? And then you mock me for crediting your argument, does that make you feel good? Are we like fighting or something?
> It was a leading question, pretending to claim that regulation was the cause. Nice walkback, though.
Not cool.
I mean, when I first read tinco's comment, I thought what you thought. But either reading is plausible.
If you're going to call someone a liar, maybe just don't reply.
Not cool.
I mean, when I first read tinco's comment, I thought what you thought. But either reading is plausible.
If you're going to call someone a liar, maybe just don't reply.
And we will soon find out that renewables are not reliable enough and require a higher degree of planning than we are typically good at.
Texas recently is a prime example, wind turbines froze and gas turbines had co2 regulations that made it difficult to ramp up. Other issues aside these were major contributing factors and indicative of the challenges many states will have.
We can't control the weather and many of these renewable are dependent on it. In comparison every fossil or nuclear based energy source has well developed supply chains, control and planning. Issues will be likely compounded because severe weather often times means increased energy needs as well.
Texas recently is a prime example, wind turbines froze and gas turbines had co2 regulations that made it difficult to ramp up. Other issues aside these were major contributing factors and indicative of the challenges many states will have.
We can't control the weather and many of these renewable are dependent on it. In comparison every fossil or nuclear based energy source has well developed supply chains, control and planning. Issues will be likely compounded because severe weather often times means increased energy needs as well.
Texas's problems have very little to do with renewables.
There were some wind turbines that froze, but wind power output overall is actually exceeding projections for this time of year. Not to mention that wind turbines can be winterized to withstand temperatures like in Texas right now. They just didn't because they didn't expect such low temps and it costs money.
It looks like renewables accounted for about 13% of the under-generation. Mostly it was issues with coal and nat gas as well as a nuclear plant going offline.
That's not to say that there won't need to be more storage technology or backups for renewables to become a large slice of the power pie.
There were some wind turbines that froze, but wind power output overall is actually exceeding projections for this time of year. Not to mention that wind turbines can be winterized to withstand temperatures like in Texas right now. They just didn't because they didn't expect such low temps and it costs money.
It looks like renewables accounted for about 13% of the under-generation. Mostly it was issues with coal and nat gas as well as a nuclear plant going offline.
That's not to say that there won't need to be more storage technology or backups for renewables to become a large slice of the power pie.
That's fair. I was basing on incomplete information and retract :)
Canada has winter every year. Thus doesn't happen there. Canada has wind turbines, too
Help me answer this:
If it's 'likely' to happen, then why are we not allocating 10's of billions towards it right now, to accelerate it so that it happens in 5 years?
Many, many things can be done in parrallel. Some effort would be wasted, bit it'd be worth it.
If fusion works, it's basically going to be priceless in terms of impact and value.
Even starting to account for climate change ... we could suck Co2 out of the air on demand.
If it's 'likely' to happen, then why are we not allocating 10's of billions towards it right now, to accelerate it so that it happens in 5 years?
Many, many things can be done in parrallel. Some effort would be wasted, bit it'd be worth it.
If fusion works, it's basically going to be priceless in terms of impact and value.
Even starting to account for climate change ... we could suck Co2 out of the air on demand.
It's not likely to work in the sense of being profitable to build the reactors. There are fundamental engineering constraints that make it unlikely to be competitive.
[deleted]
What makes you think fusion power will be cheaper than solar, wind, fossil fuels or fission?
Efficiency isn't really a good metric when the fuel is free. We see that in solar power where expensive high efficiency devices lose out to cheaper less efficient ones. It's more about capital cost and operating cost per unit of energy.
Efficiency isn't really a good metric when the fuel is free. We see that in solar power where expensive high efficiency devices lose out to cheaper less efficient ones. It's more about capital cost and operating cost per unit of energy.
To elaborate on the topic, there is ample evidence that nuclear energy is by far the most expensive source of energy, when you take into account the government (for example here in France) entirely subsidizing the construction and hypothetical demolition.
I say hypothetical because french attempts at "safely dismantling" nuclear power point are not going so well and are over-budget by an order of magnitude.
Then these people who can't even build/dismantle a plant (see the many Areva scandals) would like us to believe they can build an underground storage area for highly radioactive materials that's gonna be safe for at least 100 000 years? Despite growing evidence of the contrary
There's also growing evidence that nuclear and renewables tend to be incompatible, mostly because nuclear means a grid with huge centers of energy production, far away from energy consumption (the opposite is true with renewables).
https://www.sussex.ac.uk/news/research?id=53376
I say hypothetical because french attempts at "safely dismantling" nuclear power point are not going so well and are over-budget by an order of magnitude.
Then these people who can't even build/dismantle a plant (see the many Areva scandals) would like us to believe they can build an underground storage area for highly radioactive materials that's gonna be safe for at least 100 000 years? Despite growing evidence of the contrary
There's also growing evidence that nuclear and renewables tend to be incompatible, mostly because nuclear means a grid with huge centers of energy production, far away from energy consumption (the opposite is true with renewables).
https://www.sussex.ac.uk/news/research?id=53376
I'm always kind of curious as this "expensive" line of thinking. Yes, nuclear is expensive. Extremely expensive. But is it more expensive than a week's worth of catastrophic grid collapse due to global warming? We have the ability to build nuclear plants. We can reprocess the waste to make more energy with. We can get better at it to drive down the price. It's more reliable as a base load than any renewable.
My state gets over fifty percent of its energy from nuclear power plants. I pay a few pennies more per kWh than neighboring states. I'd pay a few more pennies than that to figure out the rest of this issue.
My state gets over fifty percent of its energy from nuclear power plants. I pay a few pennies more per kWh than neighboring states. I'd pay a few more pennies than that to figure out the rest of this issue.
> But is it more expensive than...
Like you, i don't believe price to be an argument of concern. I'm merely stating this because over and over, both in French media and on HN, i've seen stated that nuclear is the cheapest energy which is a blatant lie.
> We can reprocess the waste to make more energy with.
Source? From my limited understanding, all nuclear research that produced either less-dangerous waste or re-usable waste was shut down decades ago because there was no foreseeable way to turn that into weapons. The nuclear industry is deeply tied to the military industrial complex and (neo)colonial extractivism (see Françafrique networks for references).
> It's more reliable as a base load than any renewable.
Source? Here in France there's uncountable accidents/scandals in the nuclear industry and reactors are often stopped for weeks/months at a time. The same cannot be said about hydro power (dams) for instance.
> I'd pay a few more pennies than that to figure out the rest of this issue
Economic incentives is only part of the problem in my view. We in the industrialized world are aiming for ever-growing (ideally infinite) energy production and consumption, which necessarily leads to ecocide and other environmental damages. Don't you believe reducing our resources/energy footprint as a society is a more sustainable way to address the problem? There are many strategies we can put in place to reduce energy consumption, but these would contradict basic tenets of capitalism. For the most obvious example (from HN's perspective), see planned obsolescence or how/why we build more devices every few years than there are humans on earth (and yet we keep on having to buy new ones, which is severely damaging the environment).
Like you, i don't believe price to be an argument of concern. I'm merely stating this because over and over, both in French media and on HN, i've seen stated that nuclear is the cheapest energy which is a blatant lie.
> We can reprocess the waste to make more energy with.
Source? From my limited understanding, all nuclear research that produced either less-dangerous waste or re-usable waste was shut down decades ago because there was no foreseeable way to turn that into weapons. The nuclear industry is deeply tied to the military industrial complex and (neo)colonial extractivism (see Françafrique networks for references).
> It's more reliable as a base load than any renewable.
Source? Here in France there's uncountable accidents/scandals in the nuclear industry and reactors are often stopped for weeks/months at a time. The same cannot be said about hydro power (dams) for instance.
> I'd pay a few more pennies than that to figure out the rest of this issue
Economic incentives is only part of the problem in my view. We in the industrialized world are aiming for ever-growing (ideally infinite) energy production and consumption, which necessarily leads to ecocide and other environmental damages. Don't you believe reducing our resources/energy footprint as a society is a more sustainable way to address the problem? There are many strategies we can put in place to reduce energy consumption, but these would contradict basic tenets of capitalism. For the most obvious example (from HN's perspective), see planned obsolescence or how/why we build more devices every few years than there are humans on earth (and yet we keep on having to buy new ones, which is severely damaging the environment).
>Source? From my limited understanding, all nuclear research that produced either less-dangerous waste or re-usable waste was shut down decades ago because there was no foreseeable way to turn that into weapons. The nuclear industry is deeply tied to the military industrial complex and (neo)colonial extractivism (see Françafrique networks for references).
The existence of La Hague site in northwest France has been very successful at nuclear reprocessing.
>Source? Here in France there's uncountable accidents/scandals in the nuclear industry and reactors are often stopped for weeks/months at a time. The same cannot be said about hydro power (dams) for instance.
It's not uncountable. There have been like ten in the entire country over the past fifty years.
>Don't you believe reducing our resources/energy footprint as a society is a more sustainable way to address the problem?
No. The one actual resource we can make and use is energy. We need to use less consumables. Energy isn't a consumable in our timeline. So many things are predicated on significant increases in clean energy. We could literally suck carbon out of the air with enough energy.
The existence of La Hague site in northwest France has been very successful at nuclear reprocessing.
>Source? Here in France there's uncountable accidents/scandals in the nuclear industry and reactors are often stopped for weeks/months at a time. The same cannot be said about hydro power (dams) for instance.
It's not uncountable. There have been like ten in the entire country over the past fifty years.
>Don't you believe reducing our resources/energy footprint as a society is a more sustainable way to address the problem?
No. The one actual resource we can make and use is energy. We need to use less consumables. Energy isn't a consumable in our timeline. So many things are predicated on significant increases in clean energy. We could literally suck carbon out of the air with enough energy.
[deleted]
Reprocessing went out of fashion because it's economically pointless. Separated plutonium from spent fuel has negative value -- it costs more to fabricate fuel from it than it would to use freshly enriched uranium.
Efficiency is also a bad metric if the inputs are different.
Usually when I see "efficiency" used in a pro-nuclear argument it's not used in any rigorous way, though. It's just a vacuous cheer word.
Usually when I see "efficiency" used in a pro-nuclear argument it's not used in any rigorous way, though. It's just a vacuous cheer word.
Yes. Even fossil fuels contain far more nuclear energy than chemical energy so the engines we use are ~0% efficient if you actually count that as part of the input, even though we could, in principle, build an engine which does use it. How then do you compare two different nuclear fuels for efficiency?
You don't compare them for efficiency. That's a useless thing to do. You compare for other metrics that actually matter, like cost.
I know. It was just a rhetorical question to further show the unhelpfulness of efficiency.
If ITER proves its style to be a success (what may happen this decade, but I'm not holding my breath), we can expect a decade (about half the time of the original) to just complete the first generation of commercially viable reactors (what ITER will not be).
After that, lithium supplied T grows exponentially with the reactor usage, with a doubling time of a bit less than a decade. So, if it becomes the bottleneck (what means, if people to everything else right) you can expect some 3 or 4 decades before fusion even becomes a major power source.
After that, lithium supplied T grows exponentially with the reactor usage, with a doubling time of a bit less than a decade. So, if it becomes the bottleneck (what means, if people to everything else right) you can expect some 3 or 4 decades before fusion even becomes a major power source.
It would take far longer than a decade, and I think likely would never happen at all.
One problem with ITER is that it’s only point is to demonstrate ignition. It’s completely unfeasible as an actual power plant. I’m not saying it’s not useful, but rather it has a close to 0% chance of producing a scalable power plant, whereas some of the other smaller scale operations are less likely to reach ignition, but if they do so more likely to result in a viable design at scale.
It's purpose certainly is to demonstrate net positive energy production.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER
Thereby the machine aims to demonstrate, for the first time in a fusion reactor, the principle of producing more thermal power than is used to heat the plasma. The total electricity consumed by the reactor and facilities will range from 110 MW up to 620 MW peak for 30-second periods during plasma operation.[6] Being a research reactor,[3] thermal-to-electric conversion is not intended, and ITER will not produce sufficient power for net electrical production. Instead, the emitted heat will be vented.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER
Thereby the machine aims to demonstrate, for the first time in a fusion reactor, the principle of producing more thermal power than is used to heat the plasma. The total electricity consumed by the reactor and facilities will range from 110 MW up to 620 MW peak for 30-second periods during plasma operation.[6] Being a research reactor,[3] thermal-to-electric conversion is not intended, and ITER will not produce sufficient power for net electrical production. Instead, the emitted heat will be vented.
It could demonstrate net power production, at a power density 400 times worse than a fission reactor. It will not have, and not demonstrate, the tritium breeding blankets necessary for a commercial reactor. And the materials in the first wall (CuZr alloys) are not suitable for a reactor operating in near steady state.
The other thing to remember is that there is a lot of land that isn't suitable for farming for one reason or another that can be used for solar.
It's such an important point that's the core value proposition of vertical farming. Arable.land is unlikely to keep up with the combination of population growth and climate change. That's the whole point of the exercise! Solving that problem!
World popolation is around 7.8 billion, and is projected to peak around 11 billion. Given that of all agricultural land only 23% is used for non-feed crops (producing 82% of global calorie supply) that doesn't sound like an existential problem, even if you assume that climate change makes much more land unarable than it makes arable.
Not solving it unless you solve the other problems such as where the energy comes from how do you deal with waste where do you get the water from.
Farmland utilization is on the downtrend everywhere except Africa though.
doubtful, as little far back as a decade there was considered to be over 2.7 billion hectares of land available that would was considered usable, this is mostly in areas like South America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Central America.
Global Warming may actually open areas previously unsuited for certain crops; evidence pointed to much warmer climates in Europe with grapes further North in mans short existence, and the impact on existing uses is not fully understood.
The simple fact is, every time someone suggest were are running out of food or have too many people or water is not wet anymore we find out that it simply is because we don't look further than we are standing.
The biggest reason people starve today is repressive governments that respect neither the person or private property. that one percent, the ruling elite of the world, loses its grip in highly informed, rights driven parts of the world but they sure do fight to keep the pie to themselves even there.
Global Warming may actually open areas previously unsuited for certain crops; evidence pointed to much warmer climates in Europe with grapes further North in mans short existence, and the impact on existing uses is not fully understood.
The simple fact is, every time someone suggest were are running out of food or have too many people or water is not wet anymore we find out that it simply is because we don't look further than we are standing.
The biggest reason people starve today is repressive governments that respect neither the person or private property. that one percent, the ruling elite of the world, loses its grip in highly informed, rights driven parts of the world but they sure do fight to keep the pie to themselves even there.
but isn't aquafarming vastly superior to vertical farming for that problem statement?
This is a surprising concept missed by many, especially in energy. Since places solar is the best. Some wind. Some hydro. Some nuclear. The world isn't homogeneous. I see the same thing with farming. Indoor and vertical farming allows you to farm in the middle of the dessert. In Africa where hippos eat your crops. Closer to population centers where you reduce emissions from transportation and increase food security (longer roads mean more chance of food trucks getting stopped, due to accidents, climate, whatever).
You can't compare these things on singular metrics. You have to look at the whole picture. In some instances things will be better, other instances worse. You have to balance complex equations.
Very important point. Included in this land, which a lot of people seem to forget about, is the roofs of buildings! This is currently a huge amount of area that just absorbs sunlight and converts a good chunk in to heat.
There is also a lot of land used for something else that can also be used for solar, ie. house roofs, roads, parking lots.
> can be used for solar.
And there are many other renewal energy sources.
Like geothermal power in some areas or water (fall or tide) based power in other areas.
And you can put this power sources in a lot of places which are fully unusable for farming.
And there are many other renewal energy sources.
Like geothermal power in some areas or water (fall or tide) based power in other areas.
And you can put this power sources in a lot of places which are fully unusable for farming.
> lot of land that isn't suitable for farming
We're talking about powering a hydroponic greenhouse. The alternative to "Solar Powered LEDs" isn't "plant things in the ground". Its "make a glass window on your roof".
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"Plant things in the ground" is also cheaper, though it does suffer from potentially poor soil conditions. Still, it seems to me that spreading fertilizer across soil (and conditioning the soil into a growable state) would be cheaper and easier than making large-scale indoor hydroponics.
We're talking about powering a hydroponic greenhouse. The alternative to "Solar Powered LEDs" isn't "plant things in the ground". Its "make a glass window on your roof".
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"Plant things in the ground" is also cheaper, though it does suffer from potentially poor soil conditions. Still, it seems to me that spreading fertilizer across soil (and conditioning the soil into a growable state) would be cheaper and easier than making large-scale indoor hydroponics.
> lot of land that isn't suitable for farming
> We're talking about powering a hydroponic greenhouse. The alternative to "Solar Powered LEDs" isn't "plant things in the ground". Its "make a glass window on your roof".
I think what they were getting at is that you can take land wholly unsuitable for farming or greenhouses (e.g. severe slopes), apply solar panels, and then funnel that energy to a vertical farm. Since the vertical farm does save space in the abstract (just not necessarily once accounting for space needed for electricity generation), the scheme overall is still a more efficient use of land.
> We're talking about powering a hydroponic greenhouse. The alternative to "Solar Powered LEDs" isn't "plant things in the ground". Its "make a glass window on your roof".
I think what they were getting at is that you can take land wholly unsuitable for farming or greenhouses (e.g. severe slopes), apply solar panels, and then funnel that energy to a vertical farm. Since the vertical farm does save space in the abstract (just not necessarily once accounting for space needed for electricity generation), the scheme overall is still a more efficient use of land.
> Since the vertical farm does save space in the abstract (just not necessarily once accounting for space needed for electricity generation)
I severely doubt that.
Solar panels are maybe 30% efficient. So 10-acres of glass-roofs need to be replaced by 30-acres of solar panels just to account for this inefficiency (let alone other inefficiencies: such as wiring, inverter, batteries, and LEDs). Maybe 50-acres of solar panels to be anywhere close to comparable against 10-acres of glass roofs once we include other inefficiencies.
I severely doubt that.
Solar panels are maybe 30% efficient. So 10-acres of glass-roofs need to be replaced by 30-acres of solar panels just to account for this inefficiency (let alone other inefficiencies: such as wiring, inverter, batteries, and LEDs). Maybe 50-acres of solar panels to be anywhere close to comparable against 10-acres of glass roofs once we include other inefficiencies.
> Solar panels are maybe 30% efficient. So 10-acres of glass-roofs need to be replaced by 30-acres of solar panels
Not remotely. Plants are also extremely inefficient, converting only about 1% of the solar energy that falls for their use. [1]
Most of this inefficiency is from solar energy being in the form of frequencies that the plants can't use, but solar panels can. So the panels can capture this energy, then funnel into the red and orange lights that are most efficient for plant growth.
I've read a bunch on this, and haven't been able to find an authoritative source for what the efficiency conversion is -- how many acres of solar panels power how many acres of vegetables, and is it greater or less than 1:1? -- but it's certainly not as simplistic as "solar would need 3x more land because they are 30% efficient."
1. https://phys.org/news/2012-01-energy-conversion-solar-cells....
Not remotely. Plants are also extremely inefficient, converting only about 1% of the solar energy that falls for their use. [1]
Most of this inefficiency is from solar energy being in the form of frequencies that the plants can't use, but solar panels can. So the panels can capture this energy, then funnel into the red and orange lights that are most efficient for plant growth.
I've read a bunch on this, and haven't been able to find an authoritative source for what the efficiency conversion is -- how many acres of solar panels power how many acres of vegetables, and is it greater or less than 1:1? -- but it's certainly not as simplistic as "solar would need 3x more land because they are 30% efficient."
1. https://phys.org/news/2012-01-energy-conversion-solar-cells....
The article's numbers are that 1m^2 of wheat needed 20m^2 of solar panels.
That implies a 5% efficiency in the "total solar captured area" of the solar panel + LED lights compared to just sticking the plats out in the sun, which is totally independent of the plants own efficiency in photosynthesis.
(I guess coming from a site about Low Tech, their slant on the numbers might be questioned, but they certainly hold up to initial scrutiny from here...)
That implies a 5% efficiency in the "total solar captured area" of the solar panel + LED lights compared to just sticking the plats out in the sun, which is totally independent of the plants own efficiency in photosynthesis.
(I guess coming from a site about Low Tech, their slant on the numbers might be questioned, but they certainly hold up to initial scrutiny from here...)
> I've read a bunch on this, and haven't been able to find an authoritative source for what the efficiency conversion is -- how many acres of solar panels power how many acres of vegetables, and is it greater or less than 1:1? -- but it's certainly not as simplistic as "solar would need 3x more land because they are 30% efficient."
I own a townhome, so my only real ability to grow plants is through a grow-light connected to electricity.
As such, I've spent some time calculating the PAR values of a decent grow-light, as well as the amount of PAR that natural sunlight gives. Plants need a ludicrous amount of PAR (basically blue + red lights, green not needed cause green just bounces off of plants).
Sunlight is mostly broad spectrum: broader than plants need and therefore a source of inefficiency (green light is wasted) that LEDs can somewhat replace.
Grow-lights have a benefit that they can be placed very close to the plant (maybe just 1-foot away) to "focus" the energy a bit better. Nonetheless, the amount of PAR / PPFD from a typical day sun (or even a cloudy day) far exceeds what you'd get from 500W or even 2000W grow lights.
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Its just a hobby of mine, and I'm not growing anything especially hard (just Basil, which is really easy to grow... but Basil is a summer plant that really wants sunlight).
Still, once you start calculating PAR and actually mapping out how much electricity your "emulated sunlight" needs, you'll realize how grossly inefficient that "solar panel -> electricity -> LED" plan really is.
EDIT: Natural sun is like 2000 PPFD or something FAR in excess of what most plants need. Still, a good growlight solution might hit ~1000 PPFD constantly. Lets take this 650W LED and think about it: https://allgreenhydroponics.com/collections/american-made-le...
You'll get ~500 to ~1000 PPFD across a 4'x4' or 16-square foot area from that 650W LED (and most of that light is focused on the center: you'll want to overlap your lights a bit for more consistency).
Then think about how much solar panels you need to power a 650W LED for the 16-hours / day your typical plant would want (to account for the lesser PPFD indoor plants get, you run the lights for a bit longer than sunrise-sunset).
Just some napkin math. Nothing serious here: just guestimating the area in my head.
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EDIT: Now it should be noted: I've heard of good hydroponic greenhouses that have the "do both" approach: glass roofs to let the sun in most of the time, and LEDs to augment the natural sun (cloudy / rainy days, as well as winter-settings when you have fewer hours of sun). The sun isn't nearly as consistent as we'd like, but... that means that you need something aside from solar power powering those LEDs.
But the concept of building a all-LED underground (or "inside a building") without any natural light just... seems grossly inefficient to me. Such a setup only seems useful to those growing contraband IMO.
I own a townhome, so my only real ability to grow plants is through a grow-light connected to electricity.
As such, I've spent some time calculating the PAR values of a decent grow-light, as well as the amount of PAR that natural sunlight gives. Plants need a ludicrous amount of PAR (basically blue + red lights, green not needed cause green just bounces off of plants).
Sunlight is mostly broad spectrum: broader than plants need and therefore a source of inefficiency (green light is wasted) that LEDs can somewhat replace.
Grow-lights have a benefit that they can be placed very close to the plant (maybe just 1-foot away) to "focus" the energy a bit better. Nonetheless, the amount of PAR / PPFD from a typical day sun (or even a cloudy day) far exceeds what you'd get from 500W or even 2000W grow lights.
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Its just a hobby of mine, and I'm not growing anything especially hard (just Basil, which is really easy to grow... but Basil is a summer plant that really wants sunlight).
Still, once you start calculating PAR and actually mapping out how much electricity your "emulated sunlight" needs, you'll realize how grossly inefficient that "solar panel -> electricity -> LED" plan really is.
EDIT: Natural sun is like 2000 PPFD or something FAR in excess of what most plants need. Still, a good growlight solution might hit ~1000 PPFD constantly. Lets take this 650W LED and think about it: https://allgreenhydroponics.com/collections/american-made-le...
You'll get ~500 to ~1000 PPFD across a 4'x4' or 16-square foot area from that 650W LED (and most of that light is focused on the center: you'll want to overlap your lights a bit for more consistency).
Then think about how much solar panels you need to power a 650W LED for the 16-hours / day your typical plant would want (to account for the lesser PPFD indoor plants get, you run the lights for a bit longer than sunrise-sunset).
Just some napkin math. Nothing serious here: just guestimating the area in my head.
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EDIT: Now it should be noted: I've heard of good hydroponic greenhouses that have the "do both" approach: glass roofs to let the sun in most of the time, and LEDs to augment the natural sun (cloudy / rainy days, as well as winter-settings when you have fewer hours of sun). The sun isn't nearly as consistent as we'd like, but... that means that you need something aside from solar power powering those LEDs.
But the concept of building a all-LED underground (or "inside a building") without any natural light just... seems grossly inefficient to me. Such a setup only seems useful to those growing contraband IMO.
We can also increase yield and desirable traits by providing the right wave lengths at the right point of the plants lifecycle, we can make the basil more intense, the lettuce bushier and more red. And we can control the environment to easier prevent vermin without pesticides, bad weather, etc. We also do large scale installations in the desert under ground where we previously couldn’t farm at all.
I was an engineer at a company called Heliospectra, we specialized in this and I personally built systems that on an industrial scale enabled above light/environment control down to umol of individual wavelengths every minute based on variables such as sensor feedback, algorithms for specific types of plants and traits as well as learning to adapt based on the environmental daily patterns from sensor feedback over time. It was actually quite fun to work on, I do still keep in contact with the company.
I was an engineer at a company called Heliospectra, we specialized in this and I personally built systems that on an industrial scale enabled above light/environment control down to umol of individual wavelengths every minute based on variables such as sensor feedback, algorithms for specific types of plants and traits as well as learning to adapt based on the environmental daily patterns from sensor feedback over time. It was actually quite fun to work on, I do still keep in contact with the company.
I'm not sure if you noticed, but your argument is that I'm not doing a good enough job accounting for the space needed for solar, and the thing you're trying to counter is that if you _ignore_ the space needed for [solar] then vertical farming makes sense. Those are two completely logically independent ideas which can't be used to refute each other regardless of their respective veracities.
> "Plant things in the ground" is also cheaper, though it does suffer from potentially poor soil conditions.
"Poor soil conditions" to include "soil" that is alkali dust, sand, dry for eleven months out of the year, frozen solid and under multiple feet of snow for more than half the year, and so far from either a river or reliable groundwater that any and all water used must be trucked in. In tanks. On trucks.
Plus, you only get to dump more fertilizer in the water if you filter it back out again.
"Poor soil conditions" to include "soil" that is alkali dust, sand, dry for eleven months out of the year, frozen solid and under multiple feet of snow for more than half the year, and so far from either a river or reliable groundwater that any and all water used must be trucked in. In tanks. On trucks.
Plus, you only get to dump more fertilizer in the water if you filter it back out again.
> "make a glass window on your roof".
Doesn't work as you can't stack plants with it nor can you grow them underground.
Doesn't work as you can't stack plants with it nor can you grow them underground.
Where are you placing these solar panels? Why can't those locations be rooftop hydroponic farms instead?
Because rooftop hydroponic farms have to be tended to almost daily, or at least for planting/harvesting. Solar panels don't need nearly as much maintenance and allow you to concentrate the actual growing operations for the economies of scale.
Do you mind if I ask why you're so against the idea?
Do you mind if I ask why you're so against the idea?
> Do you mind if I ask why you're so against the idea?
Because it is clearly inefficient to convert sunlight -> electricity -> simulated sunlight.
Because it is clearly inefficient to convert sunlight -> electricity -> simulated sunlight.
But you're ignoring the inefficiency of building separate hydroponic operations on individual rooftops and driving around to all of them, etc. Also as SamBam mention above, you don't have to make a simulated sun. Instead it can work as sun -> electricity -> narrow-spectrum-light-that-plants-convert-at-higher-efficiency. You might even genetically modify plants to be more productive with the smallest spectrum possible.
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Or maybe something like what's being investigated for greenhouses on Mars (which gets less than half the sunlight that Earth receives) using mirrors and optical fiber cables to redirect light.
Yes! I wonder if there is a way to make a light battery? :)
Light has a tendency to zoom off at, well, the speed of light, and colliding with objects causes it to lose energy. There have been some experiments in slowing down or "stopping" light although they involve some elaborate setups that almost certainly use more energy to trap the light than you'd get from storing it.
You could also store it in or orbiting in a black hole, but good luck getting it back in its original form! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon_sphere
You could also store it in or orbiting in a black hole, but good luck getting it back in its original form! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon_sphere
Right, which is why it doesn't make sense yet for countries like the US, where there is enough open land and connective infrastructure to grow plants with free sun energy.
If you were to use solar, then you'd need a country that has a lot of land that would be better used on solar panels rather than farmland, so maybe one that is mostly tundras or deserts.
If you were to use solar, then you'd need a country that has a lot of land that would be better used on solar panels rather than farmland, so maybe one that is mostly tundras or deserts.
I was really only addressing the notion that vertical farming took up more land. If we have as much extra land as you say, the point is irrelevant anyway.
But you need to remember that there are real costs to industrial farming on land. The use of pesticides, fertilizers and topsoil loss. There are a lot of benefits to vertical farming if it can be made to work economically.
But you need to remember that there are real costs to industrial farming on land. The use of pesticides, fertilizers and topsoil loss. There are a lot of benefits to vertical farming if it can be made to work economically.
Well, the primary costs today are water and labor. Fertilizers and such don't really cost much, which is why we always just overfertilize and now are causing runoff problems.
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Considering the pressure on the environment and biodiversity, and the disappearance of wilderness, I think we don't necessarily want to exploit more land.
IMHO a key point of the article is that solar is not really a suitable source of electricity for vertical farming. There are other sources of clean electricity that more suitable in order to reap the benefits of vertical farming (less transport and less use of land, and also less water and pesticides).
IMHO a key point of the article is that solar is not really a suitable source of electricity for vertical farming. There are other sources of clean electricity that more suitable in order to reap the benefits of vertical farming (less transport and less use of land, and also less water and pesticides).
Surely it is easier and cheaper to make the land arable or a greenhouse or whatever than equivalent vertical farm + solar. KISS
How exactly do you do that in say the desert? Solar is KISS in many situations.
It's being done in North Africa e.g. Tunisia — https://www.hortidaily.com/article/9128081/newest-semi-close...
A while back I saw a plan for a greenhouse that used solar desalination to provide water for plants but don't know if was ever built
edit: Looks like they exist https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-seawater-greenhouse-...
A while back I saw a plan for a greenhouse that used solar desalination to provide water for plants but don't know if was ever built
edit: Looks like they exist https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-seawater-greenhouse-...
Are greenhouses in deserts harder to build or maintain than PV farms and power lines in the same desert?
Not a rhetorical question, I genuinely don’t know. I assume it varies by desert, but farming and power are both way out of my domain.
Not a rhetorical question, I genuinely don’t know. I assume it varies by desert, but farming and power are both way out of my domain.
My understanding was that you put the solar in the desert, so that you can put the vertical farm somewhere else where soil, water, transport logistics is easier.
So the question is whether a greenhouse/farm in the desert is easier than solar in the desert connected through grid to vertical farm somewhere else.
I have no data. My guess is the ongoing logistics of piping electricity out of the desert is easier than fertiliser into the desert and produce out to where people live.
So the question is whether a greenhouse/farm in the desert is easier than solar in the desert connected through grid to vertical farm somewhere else.
I have no data. My guess is the ongoing logistics of piping electricity out of the desert is easier than fertiliser into the desert and produce out to where people live.
It is, I’ve worked on large scale projects to enable farming in deserts using underground vertical farms.
Where can I learn more about these underground vertical farms in the deserts?
Hmmm, that’s a good question, I couldn’t find much information publicly available and I can of course not disclose internal. But there’s a little in this annual report from 2015. There’s an rudimentary illustration on the second page. Unfortunately it doesn’t include many of the details which I found most impressive, we had just started the project in 2015, so that might be why.
https://assets-global.website-files.com/5ef8b3d80f5e290ff335...
https://assets-global.website-files.com/5ef8b3d80f5e290ff335...
I'm also just an armchair intellectual speculating here...
Not "per se" a knock against greenhouses, but definitely one of the things you're looking for is a closed system rather than the sort of greenhouse you'd get in many places in America, where it's just a robust plastic tent-on-a-concrete-slab, and they don't care much if the water runs off. In a desert you'd be really concerned about making sure the whole works has very, very low water-losses.
The key thing to make this useful is to conceptualize it not as the sort of area, like the Nile, where they've already got an ample water supply. To make this useful, it's best to think of something where there's basically no water supply at all, and we're trying to crack the problem of "okay, how could we grow crops here?" Something that right now, is just bone-dry barren desert. Most of the solutions we rely on in the wetter world just don't really care much about water loss.
Something that could fit the definition of a greenhouse, with windowed ceilings, might well be a viable solution. But I do suspect there's some correlation between making a grow site more bunker-like and lowering water loss (especially if it's recessed into the earth).
The other huge upside of a truly sealed system is it's another approach to pest control. Sealing the system could potentially completely eliminate the need for pesticides and herbicides. Right now those have huge negative externalities.
Not "per se" a knock against greenhouses, but definitely one of the things you're looking for is a closed system rather than the sort of greenhouse you'd get in many places in America, where it's just a robust plastic tent-on-a-concrete-slab, and they don't care much if the water runs off. In a desert you'd be really concerned about making sure the whole works has very, very low water-losses.
The key thing to make this useful is to conceptualize it not as the sort of area, like the Nile, where they've already got an ample water supply. To make this useful, it's best to think of something where there's basically no water supply at all, and we're trying to crack the problem of "okay, how could we grow crops here?" Something that right now, is just bone-dry barren desert. Most of the solutions we rely on in the wetter world just don't really care much about water loss.
Something that could fit the definition of a greenhouse, with windowed ceilings, might well be a viable solution. But I do suspect there's some correlation between making a grow site more bunker-like and lowering water loss (especially if it's recessed into the earth).
The other huge upside of a truly sealed system is it's another approach to pest control. Sealing the system could potentially completely eliminate the need for pesticides and herbicides. Right now those have huge negative externalities.
Some type of semi-reflective coating to keep heat low and closed loop systems? I wonder how expensive and actually complex would it be to find nano-scale substance that would reflect most of wasted light spectrum while allowing the one needed...
Or a solar panel that is transparent to red and blue, and only captures green light?
Commercial nuclear takes up a lot of space, to the point where replacing it with solar is surprisingly close.
For example the the Brunswick nuclear power plant in North Carolina, covers 1,200 acres or 4,860,000 square meters for 1,858 MW = 382 w/m2. It’s stated lifetime capacity factor is 75% which is much higher than solar, but that’s ignoring the long construction and decommissioning process afterwards.
You can find both higher and lower energy density examples, but I personally was surprised how close they where.
For example the the Brunswick nuclear power plant in North Carolina, covers 1,200 acres or 4,860,000 square meters for 1,858 MW = 382 w/m2. It’s stated lifetime capacity factor is 75% which is much higher than solar, but that’s ignoring the long construction and decommissioning process afterwards.
You can find both higher and lower energy density examples, but I personally was surprised how close they where.
That's the whole land belonging to the site, most of which is nature, not the plant itself, which looks like less than 200 acres, including the car parks.
In any case, it's not close at all either for that specific example or in general, not least considering that a nuclear plant can produce 24/7 and that solar often does not reach peak production because of the weather.
"A solar PV facility must have an installed capacity of 3,300 MW and 5,400 MW to match a 1,000-MW nuclear facility’s output, requiring between 45 and 75 square miles. For comparison, the District of Columbia’s total land area is 68 square miles." [1]
[1] Nuclear Energy Institute @ https://www.nei.org/news/2015/land-needs-for-wind-solar-dwar...
In any case, it's not close at all either for that specific example or in general, not least considering that a nuclear plant can produce 24/7 and that solar often does not reach peak production because of the weather.
"A solar PV facility must have an installed capacity of 3,300 MW and 5,400 MW to match a 1,000-MW nuclear facility’s output, requiring between 45 and 75 square miles. For comparison, the District of Columbia’s total land area is 68 square miles." [1]
[1] Nuclear Energy Institute @ https://www.nei.org/news/2015/land-needs-for-wind-solar-dwar...
Look through several nuclear locations and ~1000 acres is fairly typical. In theory they could be more compact, but security concerns etc means nobody puts 2GW of nuclear on a 200 acre site.
1,000 acres, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver_Valley_Nuclear_Power_St...
1,782-acre, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Nuclear_Generating_Stati...
2,767 acres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callaway_Nuclear_Generating_St... for just 1,190 MW.
Some are significantly more compact for example 391-acre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catawba_Nuclear_Station, but that’s surrounded by water.
1,000 acres, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver_Valley_Nuclear_Power_St...
1,782-acre, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Nuclear_Generating_Stati...
2,767 acres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callaway_Nuclear_Generating_St... for just 1,190 MW.
Some are significantly more compact for example 391-acre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catawba_Nuclear_Station, but that’s surrounded by water.
To put this in comparison, a solar farm would need 50,000 to 100,000 acres to match the net output of those nuclear plants. Plus the land used for energy storage, which would typically involve damming rivers which has its own set of ecological effects.
And it's possible to build much denser plants. The Shin-Kori facility in Korea is massive energy relative to the land it uses. Nuclear power is far more energy dense than solar or wind. This is just thermodynamic fact.
And it's possible to build much denser plants. The Shin-Kori facility in Korea is massive energy relative to the land it uses. Nuclear power is far more energy dense than solar or wind. This is just thermodynamic fact.
Try running the numbers for actual lifespan.
Callaway is 1,190 MW on 2,767 acres at 87.70% over it’s useful lifespan, but that’s ignoring permits + construction = 10 years and decommissioning which takes ~30 year. Even a generous 55 year operating lifespan is still reduced to 87.7 * (60 / (60 * 10 + 30)) = 48% capacity factor. Using a 20% capacity factor for solar (aka non tracking in a good but not great area).
That’s 1,190 MW * 48/20 = 2856 MW. A very good modern panel is hitting 220w/m2 add spacing, equipment etc, and 110w/m2 is a safe bet. That’s 2856 * 1000 * 1000 / 110 = 26,000,000m2 or 26 km2 or ~6,424 acres solar vs 2,767 acres nuclear. Lower efficiency panels bump that by 25% or so.
Clearly a win for nuclear, but not a 100,000 acre win.
PS: That said, this is largely a moot point as even with reprocessing we would quickly run out of fuel with large scale indoor farming.
Callaway is 1,190 MW on 2,767 acres at 87.70% over it’s useful lifespan, but that’s ignoring permits + construction = 10 years and decommissioning which takes ~30 year. Even a generous 55 year operating lifespan is still reduced to 87.7 * (60 / (60 * 10 + 30)) = 48% capacity factor. Using a 20% capacity factor for solar (aka non tracking in a good but not great area).
That’s 1,190 MW * 48/20 = 2856 MW. A very good modern panel is hitting 220w/m2 add spacing, equipment etc, and 110w/m2 is a safe bet. That’s 2856 * 1000 * 1000 / 110 = 26,000,000m2 or 26 km2 or ~6,424 acres solar vs 2,767 acres nuclear. Lower efficiency panels bump that by 25% or so.
Clearly a win for nuclear, but not a 100,000 acre win.
PS: That said, this is largely a moot point as even with reprocessing we would quickly run out of fuel with large scale indoor farming.
30 year decommissioning is a very pessimistic assumption. Also most new nuclear plants have operating lifetimes closer to 80 years than 55.
You also have to adjust for the overproduction necessary to make intermittent sources a reliable primary provider of electricity. In far north or southern latitudes, angle of inclination is such that solar panels collect ~70-50% less energy than near the equator. This gets worse with seasonal fluctuations, which are more extreme the closer to the poles you get. Add weather on top of this and it can drop even further.
This might not seem like too big an issue, but keep in mind that most of the world's electricity consumption is in North America and Europe. These places don't have as good weather for solar.
100,000 acres is roughly the ratio that the article came up with, a factor of 75.
> PS: That said, this is largely a moot point as even with reprocessing we would quickly run out of fuel with large scale indoor farming.
No, we wouldn't: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-s...
You also have to adjust for the overproduction necessary to make intermittent sources a reliable primary provider of electricity. In far north or southern latitudes, angle of inclination is such that solar panels collect ~70-50% less energy than near the equator. This gets worse with seasonal fluctuations, which are more extreme the closer to the poles you get. Add weather on top of this and it can drop even further.
This might not seem like too big an issue, but keep in mind that most of the world's electricity consumption is in North America and Europe. These places don't have as good weather for solar.
100,000 acres is roughly the ratio that the article came up with, a factor of 75.
> PS: That said, this is largely a moot point as even with reprocessing we would quickly run out of fuel with large scale indoor farming.
No, we wouldn't: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-s...
30 year decommissioning is somewhat optimistic average based on current plans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAFSTOR “For nuclear power plants governed by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, SAFSTOR (SAFe STORage) is one of the options for nuclear decommissioning of a shut down plant. During SAFSTOR the de-fuelled plant is monitored for up to sixty years before complete decontamination and dismantling of the site, to a condition where nuclear licensing is no longer required. During the storage interval, some of the radioactive contaminants of the reactor and power plant will decay, which will reduce the quantity of radioactive material to be removed during the final decontamination phase.”
For example, Crystal River 3 (Florida) “Duke Energy announced in Feb-2013 that the Crystal River NPP would be permanently shut down.” “Systems Removal & Building Remediation(2070–2072)“ and that’s if things go well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_decommissioning
As to indoor farming.
“It’s not just that the 4 billion tons of uranium in seawater now would fuel a thousand 1,000-MW nuclear power plants for a 100,000.”
That sounds like a lot, but of you want ~100w of power per m2 that’s 0.1GW of power per km2. So your 1,000 GW power plants are only replacing 10,000km2 of farm land. Meanwhile agriculture takes 51,000,000km2 worth of land. In other words replace 20% of global farmland and you got ~100 years worth of uranium from all the worlds oceans, it’s replaced by rocks.
But, “And those rocks contain 100 trillion tons of uranium.” gives you 2,500 years which is not bad, but that’s not going to be replaced.
PS: You might be able to beat 100w/m2 indoors, but remember this is also for 20% of farmland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAFSTOR “For nuclear power plants governed by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, SAFSTOR (SAFe STORage) is one of the options for nuclear decommissioning of a shut down plant. During SAFSTOR the de-fuelled plant is monitored for up to sixty years before complete decontamination and dismantling of the site, to a condition where nuclear licensing is no longer required. During the storage interval, some of the radioactive contaminants of the reactor and power plant will decay, which will reduce the quantity of radioactive material to be removed during the final decontamination phase.”
For example, Crystal River 3 (Florida) “Duke Energy announced in Feb-2013 that the Crystal River NPP would be permanently shut down.” “Systems Removal & Building Remediation(2070–2072)“ and that’s if things go well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_decommissioning
As to indoor farming.
“It’s not just that the 4 billion tons of uranium in seawater now would fuel a thousand 1,000-MW nuclear power plants for a 100,000.”
That sounds like a lot, but of you want ~100w of power per m2 that’s 0.1GW of power per km2. So your 1,000 GW power plants are only replacing 10,000km2 of farm land. Meanwhile agriculture takes 51,000,000km2 worth of land. In other words replace 20% of global farmland and you got ~100 years worth of uranium from all the worlds oceans, it’s replaced by rocks.
But, “And those rocks contain 100 trillion tons of uranium.” gives you 2,500 years which is not bad, but that’s not going to be replaced.
PS: You might be able to beat 100w/m2 indoors, but remember this is also for 20% of farmland.
> But, “And those rocks contain 100 trillion tons of uranium.” gives you 2,500 years which is not bad, but that’s not going to be replaced.
How did you arrive at these figures? I think you missed a conversion from pounds to tons.
Current global uranium consumption is in the hundreds of millions of pounds annually - hundreds of thousands of tons. And this is without reprocessing. Nuclear power already generates 10% electricity globally. Even if we assume a 200x increase in consumption from 200 million pounds to 20 billion pounds that still only 10 million tons of consumption annual. 100 trillion divided by 10 million is a lot more than 2,500.
How did you arrive at these figures? I think you missed a conversion from pounds to tons.
Current global uranium consumption is in the hundreds of millions of pounds annually - hundreds of thousands of tons. And this is without reprocessing. Nuclear power already generates 10% electricity globally. Even if we assume a 200x increase in consumption from 200 million pounds to 20 billion pounds that still only 10 million tons of consumption annual. 100 trillion divided by 10 million is a lot more than 2,500.
But surely they don’t just own the “nature” land for the fun of it. I assume it could not be used for other things, like housing, or another nuclear power plant!
The difference with solar/wind space requirements is so big that it does not matter.
If the land is reserved and left to nature that is still a positive thing because that helps the environment and biodiversity. But I'm sure that they could put solar panels on it if they wanted.
The point is that this land is not required for production and in any case solar require much, much more land, so, no, it's not even close.
If the land is reserved and left to nature that is still a positive thing because that helps the environment and biodiversity. But I'm sure that they could put solar panels on it if they wanted.
The point is that this land is not required for production and in any case solar require much, much more land, so, no, it's not even close.
Winds density is off the charts as you can use the ground around it for crops or even solar panels. https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/wind-turbines-corn-fields-ae...
Wind still requires a huge area covered with wind turbines to match a single nuclear plant. Each of which takes space, needs to be accessible, and needs to be connected to the grid through some facility. I would not call that a density off the charts... (see link in my previous comment as well)
It doesn't really make sense to talk about land usage that just so happens to be owned by a nuclear plant, or even certain fixed land requirements for a nuclear plant. It only makes sense to talk about the limiting behavior of land usage for various types of power plants.
Solar has hugely larger requirements than nuclear however you look at it, contrary to what was suggested above.
How much land does rooftop solar require?
You're saying that a couple of 50 year old reactors when including a safety zone and adjusting for lifetime capacity outputs about twice the maximum power of commercial solar panels before adjusting for capacity factor.
When you adjust PV for capacity factor the difference ends up at over an order of magnitude.
When you adjust PV for capacity factor the difference ends up at over an order of magnitude.
Thought: Put PV inside the "safety zone" to increase output and use "unusable" space.
You’re skipping permits +construction ~10 years and decommissioning which seems to take 30+ years on average though few have actually finished the process. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_decommissioning
75% capacity factor * 50y / (50y + 10y construction + ~30y decommissioning) = 42% capacity factor which is higher than solar but not by that much.
But let’s assume you’re at a 1.5x capacity factor advantage. So 1.5 GW of solar = 1.0 GW of nuclear. 1.5GW / 220w/m2 = 2.9 square miles of panels plus panel spacing and whatever infrastructure is needed. Double it to be really pessimistic and your under 6 square miles.
75% capacity factor * 50y / (50y + 10y construction + ~30y decommissioning) = 42% capacity factor which is higher than solar but not by that much.
But let’s assume you’re at a 1.5x capacity factor advantage. So 1.5 GW of solar = 1.0 GW of nuclear. 1.5GW / 220w/m2 = 2.9 square miles of panels plus panel spacing and whatever infrastructure is needed. Double it to be really pessimistic and your under 6 square miles.
>"So 1.5 GW of solar = 1.0 GW of nuclear."
That's not how it works. PV capacity factor is 11-12% to the 90-95% of nuclear meaning you need to install about an order of magnitude more PV effect not 1.5x.
That's not how it works. PV capacity factor is 11-12% to the 90-95% of nuclear meaning you need to install about an order of magnitude more PV effect not 1.5x.
Also one batch of PV panels equivalent to a reactor cost 6x as much and with a lifetime of 20 years to the 60 for a nuclear reactor so you will need to replace these at least twice. All 32.5 Million of them.
The inability to replace nuclear plants is actually the driving factor behind it's poor public perception. If you keep running untested 50 year old power plants on the brink of failure why would anyone be surprised that some of them do end up failing? If you could just turn the old plants off and replace them all accidents would have been prevented.
Replacing panels is just a cost question which dramatically favors solar. 2c/kWh is massively better than any nuclear reactor ever built or operated.
As we are talking land use, construction and decommissioning is a major hit to nuclear. But with solar you can operate continuously by just swapping panels and replacing wires etc as needed.
Basically, in steady state a 50 year nuclear power plant spends the first 30 years with the previous reactor being decommissioned, and it’s last 10 years with it’s replacement being built. Effectively you need 1.8 locations for a single power plant.
Also, I used a specific 75% capacity factor over it’s operating lifespan in that calculation. Some are higher, but the trend is down over time so you want to use an old reactor as your baseline. Here is 72.5% Decommission date 29 June 2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fessenheim_Nuclear_Power_Plant
As we are talking land use, construction and decommissioning is a major hit to nuclear. But with solar you can operate continuously by just swapping panels and replacing wires etc as needed.
Basically, in steady state a 50 year nuclear power plant spends the first 30 years with the previous reactor being decommissioned, and it’s last 10 years with it’s replacement being built. Effectively you need 1.8 locations for a single power plant.
Also, I used a specific 75% capacity factor over it’s operating lifespan in that calculation. Some are higher, but the trend is down over time so you want to use an old reactor as your baseline. Here is 72.5% Decommission date 29 June 2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fessenheim_Nuclear_Power_Plant
Just no. Reactor buildings take up a small fraction of the total site area. Constructing additional reactors on existing sites has been done for about as long as nuclear power has existed and multiple reactors coexist simultaneously at the same site.
>"Replacing panels is just a cost question"
Sure, I bet you won't need more than 2 guys and a pickup truck to install, maintain and replace the 120 million panels it would take to create the equivalent to a site with 4 modern reactors. After all, that's only 35 000 panels to install every day if you want to build the site in 10 years. Everything is magical with solar.
>"2c/kWh"
That's a hypothetical figure for 2050.
>"Replacing panels is just a cost question"
Sure, I bet you won't need more than 2 guys and a pickup truck to install, maintain and replace the 120 million panels it would take to create the equivalent to a site with 4 modern reactors. After all, that's only 35 000 panels to install every day if you want to build the site in 10 years. Everything is magical with solar.
>"2c/kWh"
That's a hypothetical figure for 2050.
There are actual current contracts that agree to sell solar at under 2c/kWh. Construction of multiple reactors on the same location is very common, constructing a new reactor next to a reactor being decommissioned isn’t.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_River_Nuclear_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rancho_Seco_Nuclear_Generating... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shippingport_Atomic_Power_Stat... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Onofre_Nuclear_Generating_...
Etc
I mean in theory sure it seems like it should happen, but in practice not so much.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_River_Nuclear_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rancho_Seco_Nuclear_Generating... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shippingport_Atomic_Power_Stat... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Onofre_Nuclear_Generating_...
Etc
I mean in theory sure it seems like it should happen, but in practice not so much.
Please link. I've read about some far future contracts relying heavily on public subsidies but even those were at a higher price.
At that price, earnings would (depending largely on geography) be something like 160-400 USD / 1.8m² panel over a 20 year period. This needs to cover panel cost, inverters and electrical infrastructure, installation&decommission, land rent, loss due to some prematurely dead panels, administration etc.
I would presume it's a matter of very few new nuclear reactors being built. Some smaller sites will be decommissioned regardless though.
I would presume it's a matter of very few new nuclear reactors being built. Some smaller sites will be decommissioned regardless though.
Subsides are common for all forms of electricity generation, but LA’s 2019 1.997c/kWh power purchase agreement is hardly the far future. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/06/28/los-angeles-seeks-rec...
Anyway to use a specific example Capacity factor 26.6% (average 2015–2018) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topaz_Solar_Farm.
Bulk panels are $0.29 per W or 290$ per kW. PS-P72-330W https://sunelec.com/
If 1kw is worth 0.01997 $/h * 24 * 0.266 * 365 * 20 = 930$. Of course they don’t instantly break exactly in year 20. They lose efficiency over time so averaging ~90% over 25 years which is ~100% over 22 years. https://sunelec.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/P72_outlin...
I can’t find an exact breakdown of costs spent on panels vs interest, instillation, inverters etc. But, at most we are talking about fractions of a cent worth of subsides to hit 2c/kWh.
Anyway to use a specific example Capacity factor 26.6% (average 2015–2018) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topaz_Solar_Farm.
Bulk panels are $0.29 per W or 290$ per kW. PS-P72-330W https://sunelec.com/
If 1kw is worth 0.01997 $/h * 24 * 0.266 * 365 * 20 = 930$. Of course they don’t instantly break exactly in year 20. They lose efficiency over time so averaging ~90% over 25 years which is ~100% over 22 years. https://sunelec.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/P72_outlin...
I can’t find an exact breakdown of costs spent on panels vs interest, instillation, inverters etc. But, at most we are talking about fractions of a cent worth of subsides to hit 2c/kWh.
>"0.01997 $/h * 24 * 0.266 * 365 * 20 = 930$"
That's a calculation based on 1kW of installed capacity, which is about 3 of those 345W panels so the earning per panel over its lifetime (in sunny southern California btw) is about $310.
Also the $ sign goes in front of the number.
That's a calculation based on 1kW of installed capacity, which is about 3 of those 345W panels so the earning per panel over its lifetime (in sunny southern California btw) is about $310.
Also the $ sign goes in front of the number.
One more thing it saves:
Transportation (!) from miles away, as a skyscraper could feed a city or a part of it.
Transportation (!) from miles away, as a skyscraper could feed a city or a part of it.
Yes, please include the cost of nuclear power in the considerations.
(The joke here is that the true cost is undefined because we here in the US have no method to store the long-term hazardous waste it produces. Current cleanup costs for just the military reactor waste are estimated at $500B, for civilian reactors the costs are said to be higher.)
(The joke here is that the true cost is undefined because we here in the US have no method to store the long-term hazardous waste it produces. Current cleanup costs for just the military reactor waste are estimated at $500B, for civilian reactors the costs are said to be higher.)
1. We have nuclear waste already
2. We will continue to have nuclear waste if we want to have nuclear weapons
3. You can store all the waste you need to store in a football field (https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-...)
Nuclear waste management is messy, but it's something we need to solve no matter what. It is now a sunk cost we have to deal with because of what we have already done and what we plan to keep.
So if we already have to pay the fixed cost, we should reap as much benefit as possible.
2. We will continue to have nuclear waste if we want to have nuclear weapons
3. You can store all the waste you need to store in a football field (https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-...)
Nuclear waste management is messy, but it's something we need to solve no matter what. It is now a sunk cost we have to deal with because of what we have already done and what we plan to keep.
So if we already have to pay the fixed cost, we should reap as much benefit as possible.
Rarely does one hear the sunk cost fallacy advocated so enthusiastically.
The sunk cost fallacy is about continuing to incur additional sunk costs. The parent is arguing that we're going to have to pay $X/year to manage the nuclear waste we've already incurred and that the cost is fixed--adding more nuclear waste isn't going to increase the cost. Whether those claims are true may be up for debate, but it's certainly not a sunk cost fallacy.
He's arguing (to paraphrase) "Because we've already incurred such costs we should continue or even expand the policy which caused them."
Claiming that hazardous nuclear waste represents a fixed cost no matter how much you generate is simply absurd.
Claiming that hazardous nuclear waste represents a fixed cost no matter how much you generate is simply absurd.
wffurr(3)
In the short term nuclear energy is expensive, but in the long term nuclear energy is one the cheapest sources of energy available. Source - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbeJIwF1pVY
(this is even more true when you consider the cost of externalities)
(this is even more true when you consider the cost of externalities)
I don't see how nuclear can win over the long term.
Solar and wind are simple and very amenable to mass production. Many parts of them are usable for other purposes -- we need generators for things other than windmills, inverters for things other than solar powerplants, etc. This means we're not making things as a one off, but doing mass manufacturing, and the different users all reap benefits.
They're easy to produce, which means there's lots and lots of competition, which pushes down price.
They're easy to install, scale and maintain.
They're easy to iterate, because it doesn't take billions to test a new design on a small scale.
They don't need most of the parts nuclear has -- if you think of it a windmill contains parts a nuclear plant needs too, but unlike nuclear doesn't have all the nuclear stuff along with it, which isn't cheap.
The way I see it, nuclear could have been successful but is going the way of the mainframe -- today mass computing is done on huge amounts of commodity hardware, and in the same way large, purpose built plants are already being overtaken by mass production of panel after panel being churned out of a factory, and that's not going to get any better for nuclear.
Solar and wind are simple and very amenable to mass production. Many parts of them are usable for other purposes -- we need generators for things other than windmills, inverters for things other than solar powerplants, etc. This means we're not making things as a one off, but doing mass manufacturing, and the different users all reap benefits.
They're easy to produce, which means there's lots and lots of competition, which pushes down price.
They're easy to install, scale and maintain.
They're easy to iterate, because it doesn't take billions to test a new design on a small scale.
They don't need most of the parts nuclear has -- if you think of it a windmill contains parts a nuclear plant needs too, but unlike nuclear doesn't have all the nuclear stuff along with it, which isn't cheap.
The way I see it, nuclear could have been successful but is going the way of the mainframe -- today mass computing is done on huge amounts of commodity hardware, and in the same way large, purpose built plants are already being overtaken by mass production of panel after panel being churned out of a factory, and that's not going to get any better for nuclear.
To make nuclear energy successful you need to stop fear mongering, and invest in improving technology. With scale, it will make far cheaper and reliable energy source than anything on earth. But it will hardly happen when politicians tirelessly promote solar & wind, while increasing the regulation of nuclear energy. And politicians act this way because of said fear mongering, which affects the public deeply.
Why bother?
What reason is there to believe a generator with blades attached to it is going to lose to a generator with a containment building and reactor attached to it?
What reason is there to believe a generator with blades attached to it is going to lose to a generator with a containment building and reactor attached to it?
Isn’t the issue that the windmill also needs a large battery to meet demand?
That is solar - wind can work through geographic distribution alone without so much as a potato battery. A local area may be becalmed by wind but since temperature differentials produce wind and the earth rotates into and out of the sun the only things which would lead to no wind render the power generation question a moot point.
Grid scale batteries make wind cheaper by allowing less overproduction but they do that for everything by assisting grid balance and acting as a form of high frequency trading which is productive in ways other than increased market liquidity.
Grid scale batteries make wind cheaper by allowing less overproduction but they do that for everything by assisting grid balance and acting as a form of high frequency trading which is productive in ways other than increased market liquidity.
Storage is needed, but storage has finite cost, and the cost is falling rapidly. Nuclear's window of opportunity is now closed.
Far from it. After years of promotion, investment and development, wind and solar energy prices dropped 10-20x in the last decades. Same cost reduction can very well happen with nuclear power, and it'll take far less space than solar and wind, will disrupt the nature less, and will be much more reliable and predictable, capable of producing energy on demand and not requiring any storage.
Nuclear had many decades in which its cost could drop. That failed to happen. Unlike with renewables, nuclear never had relentless cost decline. Its learning curve has even shown negative learning, with costs rising with time rather than falling. There's something about nuclear that just keeps it from getting cheaper. The scale and complexity of nuclear plants probably has something to do with it, and also the maturity of the non-nuclear side.
For the past 40+ years there was an non-stop ongoing attack on nuclear energy. See "china syndrome" for more info.
Fear-mongering is _the reason_ for the absence of progress and rising prices, not some technical obstacles.
Fear-mongering is _the reason_ for the absence of progress and rising prices, not some technical obstacles.
Fear mongering must be incredibly powerful, if it has universally stopped nuclear from getting much (or at all) cheaper, everywhere in the world, in multiple cultures.
Much more plausibly, the technology itself is to blame.
Much more plausibly, the technology itself is to blame.
All of that is irrelevant to the argument that wind wins because it’s simpler, which is what I was trying to engage with.
Yes-ish.
Although there are other options like pumped hydro (pump the water back up the hill) though clearly that has logistical limits.
Although there are other options like pumped hydro (pump the water back up the hill) though clearly that has logistical limits.
Because it is cheaper to build many blades and posts. Plus economies of scale - wind is more factory scale in efficency as it is mostly assembly. The containment building alone is construction scale and is inherently pretty one off in requiring geology and planning as opposed to "look at weather patterns and slap it down".
I am personally of the point of view that if we went on a nuclear power plant building spree back in the day to replace coal plants/provide for growing needs and used breeder reactors to deal with waste we would be far better off. Renewables are cheaper per kWhr now however. For the future, who knows if fusion or renewable will work better for terrestrial grid applications once fusion reaches the point of a positive energy balance?
I am personally of the point of view that if we went on a nuclear power plant building spree back in the day to replace coal plants/provide for growing needs and used breeder reactors to deal with waste we would be far better off. Renewables are cheaper per kWhr now however. For the future, who knows if fusion or renewable will work better for terrestrial grid applications once fusion reaches the point of a positive energy balance?
Nuclear's non-intermittency is why it wind in the long run. Once intermittent sources fulfill demand during peak production hours, the actual cost of adding each usable watt goes up dramatically. If your goal is to run a primarily fossil fuel grid, supplemented by renewables that's fine. That's what Germany is doing.
But if your goal is to actually eliminate carbon emissions, you need to factor in the cost of storage. And there really no feasible plan of storing the amount of energy required at the moment.
If your goal is to actually eliminate carbon emissions, nuclear presents a much more realistic option. We keep celebrating Germany, but in reality their carbon emissions per KWh of electricity is not actually very good. It is worse than Britain. And it's ~7x worse than it's neighborhood to the west, which we tend to ignore for some reason.
But if your goal is to actually eliminate carbon emissions, you need to factor in the cost of storage. And there really no feasible plan of storing the amount of energy required at the moment.
If your goal is to actually eliminate carbon emissions, nuclear presents a much more realistic option. We keep celebrating Germany, but in reality their carbon emissions per KWh of electricity is not actually very good. It is worse than Britain. And it's ~7x worse than it's neighborhood to the west, which we tend to ignore for some reason.
Nuclear's cost is almost entirely in the infrastructure, and it's paid over a very long time period. The business plan for nuclear is to spend a decade or two paying back your loans, after which you make big $$$ because the plant costs relatively little to run.
The ideal plan for nuclear is to pump out power at 100% 24/7. You save nothing by being idle, and you want to pay off your loan as soon as possible.
All that goes to hell once cheap renewables show up, because the moment wind or solar can sell power cheaper, a rational person would buy it from renewables. Which means that if the sun is shining, you're either not selling at all, or selling much less or cheaper than you'd like to. And so your loans now get repaid much later.
At some point a bank looks at that and figures that the proposition of maybe making a profit 30 years in the future isn't that great of a deal. That's a long time, for all the bank knows, solar might be dirt cheap by then and kill nuclear for good before it gets to making a profit. Probably better to put billions to some safer use.
Politically it's not a lot better -- nuclear costs $$$, and takes a long time to build, which means that if you're the one who got the country into nuclear on a large scale you can't really expect to see a benefit within your term. Worst case it goes wrong and is an expensive boondoggle, which doesn't bode well for reelection.
Nuclear may make sense if you think "emissions are paramount, screw money". But there's not a lot of people who'd be willing or even able to risk billions in such a manner.
The ideal plan for nuclear is to pump out power at 100% 24/7. You save nothing by being idle, and you want to pay off your loan as soon as possible.
All that goes to hell once cheap renewables show up, because the moment wind or solar can sell power cheaper, a rational person would buy it from renewables. Which means that if the sun is shining, you're either not selling at all, or selling much less or cheaper than you'd like to. And so your loans now get repaid much later.
At some point a bank looks at that and figures that the proposition of maybe making a profit 30 years in the future isn't that great of a deal. That's a long time, for all the bank knows, solar might be dirt cheap by then and kill nuclear for good before it gets to making a profit. Probably better to put billions to some safer use.
Politically it's not a lot better -- nuclear costs $$$, and takes a long time to build, which means that if you're the one who got the country into nuclear on a large scale you can't really expect to see a benefit within your term. Worst case it goes wrong and is an expensive boondoggle, which doesn't bode well for reelection.
Nuclear may make sense if you think "emissions are paramount, screw money". But there's not a lot of people who'd be willing or even able to risk billions in such a manner.
Yes, nuclear hardly costs any more to run at 100% capacity than it does at 50% capacity. That's why decarbonization with renewables as a primary source doesn't make much sense.
Solar and wind are both intermittent. Wind is dependent on the weather and experiences situations with near zero production for long stretches of time. Solar is also weather dependent, and has day-night cycles on top of it.
This is fine if you're not actually looking to decarbonize a grid, just trying to opportunistically shave off carbon emissions here and there in a primarily fossil fuel grid. But if you're actually trying to eliminate fossil fuel use this is not a good approach. Theoretically we could store excess energy, but no scalable storage solution exists at the moment. That leaves nuclear power plants to serve as a dispatchable source. But as you pointed out, nuclear plants are just as cheap to run 24/7 as it does to run intermittently. So why not just build the nuclear plants and skip the renewables?
Solar and wind are both intermittent. Wind is dependent on the weather and experiences situations with near zero production for long stretches of time. Solar is also weather dependent, and has day-night cycles on top of it.
This is fine if you're not actually looking to decarbonize a grid, just trying to opportunistically shave off carbon emissions here and there in a primarily fossil fuel grid. But if you're actually trying to eliminate fossil fuel use this is not a good approach. Theoretically we could store excess energy, but no scalable storage solution exists at the moment. That leaves nuclear power plants to serve as a dispatchable source. But as you pointed out, nuclear plants are just as cheap to run 24/7 as it does to run intermittently. So why not just build the nuclear plants and skip the renewables?
The issue as I see it is that pretty much nobody is looking at decarbonizing a grid, money be damned.
Unless your power production is run by the government, generation is done by companies looking to make a profit. Solar and wind companies don't mind in the slightest that they're screwing up the business model of nuclear. The fact that their production is intermittent isn't important to them -- it's already accounted into their business model, and nuclear's lack of ability to deal with that and grid stability is somebody else's problem.
If you think nuclear is the solution here you must be prepared to pour many billions of tax money on supporting its existence even though it's currently unprofitable. China can do that, because China's government has the long term control and lack of concern about public opinion to get such things done.
Politicians in democratic nations in general lack such a luxury. They know that they can get kicked out of power before their first plants get built, and then the successor either pulls the plug on the project entirely, or keeps whatever got built, but almost definitely nowhere near close to the full capacity needed.
You'd have a hard time skipping the renewables, because you'd essentially have to forbid them. You'd have to go there and make a law that you can't build solar even though it would produce power that's twice as cheap, or take craploads of tax money and subsidize nuclear. I suspect neither is going to look very good in the news.
Unless your power production is run by the government, generation is done by companies looking to make a profit. Solar and wind companies don't mind in the slightest that they're screwing up the business model of nuclear. The fact that their production is intermittent isn't important to them -- it's already accounted into their business model, and nuclear's lack of ability to deal with that and grid stability is somebody else's problem.
If you think nuclear is the solution here you must be prepared to pour many billions of tax money on supporting its existence even though it's currently unprofitable. China can do that, because China's government has the long term control and lack of concern about public opinion to get such things done.
Politicians in democratic nations in general lack such a luxury. They know that they can get kicked out of power before their first plants get built, and then the successor either pulls the plug on the project entirely, or keeps whatever got built, but almost definitely nowhere near close to the full capacity needed.
You'd have a hard time skipping the renewables, because you'd essentially have to forbid them. You'd have to go there and make a law that you can't build solar even though it would produce power that's twice as cheap, or take craploads of tax money and subsidize nuclear. I suspect neither is going to look very good in the news.
Introduce carbon taxes and all of a sudden nuclear becomes a lot more viable. Existing plans for renewables are for them to exist in a primarily fossil fuel grid, supplementing them when the conditions are right. Make it so that using fossil fuels for even 20% or 10% of electricity generation is prohibitively expensive, and people will switch to nuclear power.
Last time I checked France was a democratic nation. So was Belgium. Both of those have achieve majority nuclear power generation, and France over 70%.
The cynical reality, though, is that you're right. People would rather make a token effort on intermittent sources, while continuing to burn fossil fuels for most of their energy. The damage to the environment caused by the continued use of fossil fuels in this approach, though, will eventually take a toll. But that toll will mostly be borne by poor people in the global south, not in the countries that had the capability to build nuclear but chose to primarily use fossil fuels supplement it with intermittent sources.
Last time I checked France was a democratic nation. So was Belgium. Both of those have achieve majority nuclear power generation, and France over 70%.
The cynical reality, though, is that you're right. People would rather make a token effort on intermittent sources, while continuing to burn fossil fuels for most of their energy. The damage to the environment caused by the continued use of fossil fuels in this approach, though, will eventually take a toll. But that toll will mostly be borne by poor people in the global south, not in the countries that had the capability to build nuclear but chose to primarily use fossil fuels supplement it with intermittent sources.
"Last time I checked France was a democratic nation. So was Belgium. Both of those have achieve majority nuclear power generation, and France over 70%."
That was the past. The dynamics have changed, and renewables are much more competitive now. Nobody is building more nuclear right now. True, there's paranoia, but there's also economics.
And I'm not talking about fossil fuels either.
Here's what I expect to happen today with a carbon tax: it'll kill fossil fuels, and give a huge boost to renewables. Nuclear won't benefit nearly as much, because renewables can sell each GW/h cheaper and are much faster and easier to build. We'll get a grid full of solar panels and wind, and probably serious instability. This is because the people that build powerplants don't care about the system as a whole, but about making profit within it.
At that point you can subsidize nuclear, heavily tax renewables, or subsidize storage. My view is that the last one is the long term solution because nuclear won't outcompete renewables long term.
That was the past. The dynamics have changed, and renewables are much more competitive now. Nobody is building more nuclear right now. True, there's paranoia, but there's also economics.
And I'm not talking about fossil fuels either.
Here's what I expect to happen today with a carbon tax: it'll kill fossil fuels, and give a huge boost to renewables. Nuclear won't benefit nearly as much, because renewables can sell each GW/h cheaper and are much faster and easier to build. We'll get a grid full of solar panels and wind, and probably serious instability. This is because the people that build powerplants don't care about the system as a whole, but about making profit within it.
At that point you can subsidize nuclear, heavily tax renewables, or subsidize storage. My view is that the last one is the long term solution because nuclear won't outcompete renewables long term.
> That was the past. The dynamics have changed, and renewables are much more competitive now. Nobody is building more nuclear right now.
Uh... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power#/media/File:Nucl...
> Here's what I expect to happen today with a carbon tax: it'll kill fossil fuels, and give a huge boost to renewables. Nuclear won't benefit nearly as much, because renewables can sell each GW/h cheaper and are much faster and easier to build.
This is overly simplistic. Eliminating carbon emissions is not just about generating more clean energy. It's about replacing the energy that fossil fuels currently provide. It's hard to do that with intermittent sources.
> At that point you can subsidize nuclear, heavily tax renewables, or subsidize storage. My view is that the last one is the long term solution because nuclear won't outcompete renewables long term.
Perhaps, if we have a miraculous breakthrough in energy storage. But unless that happens, we'll end up building nuclear power to fulfill off-peak demand. And since nuclear power is just as cheap to run 100% of the time as it does to run part of the time it'll just make the bulk of renewables redundant.
If you have 100 GW of solar solar panels plus nuclear plants generating 100 GW for nighttime use, it's just as cheap to run the nuclear plants 24/7 and ditch the solar panels.
Uh... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power#/media/File:Nucl...
> Here's what I expect to happen today with a carbon tax: it'll kill fossil fuels, and give a huge boost to renewables. Nuclear won't benefit nearly as much, because renewables can sell each GW/h cheaper and are much faster and easier to build.
This is overly simplistic. Eliminating carbon emissions is not just about generating more clean energy. It's about replacing the energy that fossil fuels currently provide. It's hard to do that with intermittent sources.
> At that point you can subsidize nuclear, heavily tax renewables, or subsidize storage. My view is that the last one is the long term solution because nuclear won't outcompete renewables long term.
Perhaps, if we have a miraculous breakthrough in energy storage. But unless that happens, we'll end up building nuclear power to fulfill off-peak demand. And since nuclear power is just as cheap to run 100% of the time as it does to run part of the time it'll just make the bulk of renewables redundant.
If you have 100 GW of solar solar panels plus nuclear plants generating 100 GW for nighttime use, it's just as cheap to run the nuclear plants 24/7 and ditch the solar panels.
That map isn't particularly meaningful. Sure, stuff is being built technically. But as far as I know, the main places where it's being done for real are China and India.
The UK for instance has one powerplant actually in construction and it already got a bad rap because it's a bad deal economically.
Besides that, I think you're missing my point. My point is that you have to deal with reality, and reality doesn't really align with the way you want things to work. For instance, you said:
"So why not just build the nuclear plants and skip the renewables?"
My question is: "Who 'we'"? In a lot of countries, there's no "we" that applies. There's a government that sets the rules, and private enterprise that builds the plants. If "we" is the government, then they don't build powerplants themselves. They may allow them to be built, but a company still has to want to.
And if "we" is the commmercial enterprise, then nuclear is far too big for anybody to build it out of sheer altruism or good PR. That's big money territory and it must make a profit.
If you simply impose a carbon tax, private enterprise will just go and build solar. We have no storage? Those companies won't care. It's not their problem to solve. They'll build whatever makes the most money, which is almost definitely not nuclear.
If you want nuclear to happen you'll have to force it somehow, and I'm not seeing any particularly attractive ways of doing so. You want to be the politician who runs on a campaign of forbidding or heavily taxing solar and wind at the same time as dumping billions of $ into nuclear construction? Yeah, that'll go great, I'm sure.
The UK for instance has one powerplant actually in construction and it already got a bad rap because it's a bad deal economically.
Besides that, I think you're missing my point. My point is that you have to deal with reality, and reality doesn't really align with the way you want things to work. For instance, you said:
"So why not just build the nuclear plants and skip the renewables?"
My question is: "Who 'we'"? In a lot of countries, there's no "we" that applies. There's a government that sets the rules, and private enterprise that builds the plants. If "we" is the government, then they don't build powerplants themselves. They may allow them to be built, but a company still has to want to.
And if "we" is the commmercial enterprise, then nuclear is far too big for anybody to build it out of sheer altruism or good PR. That's big money territory and it must make a profit.
If you simply impose a carbon tax, private enterprise will just go and build solar. We have no storage? Those companies won't care. It's not their problem to solve. They'll build whatever makes the most money, which is almost definitely not nuclear.
If you want nuclear to happen you'll have to force it somehow, and I'm not seeing any particularly attractive ways of doing so. You want to be the politician who runs on a campaign of forbidding or heavily taxing solar and wind at the same time as dumping billions of $ into nuclear construction? Yeah, that'll go great, I'm sure.
One can look at Sweden and the green parties strategy for dealing with grid instability. Government are interested in a stable grid so they pay fossil fueled power plants to operate in backup mode. That way the power plant get paid twice, once by the government and then for any power that they manage to sell.
The second part to the plan is to spend a lot of tax money expanding the power lines to nearby country in order to increase the capacity for importing energy from nearby countries coal based power plants.
As a conclusion I agree that the people that build power plants don't care about the system as a whole. The government however do care about stability and mine is perfectly fine with spending tax money on that. Politically, voters are not going to be upset that money is spent on grid stability, even if then ends up in the hands of owners of fossil fueled power plants.
The second part to the plan is to spend a lot of tax money expanding the power lines to nearby country in order to increase the capacity for importing energy from nearby countries coal based power plants.
As a conclusion I agree that the people that build power plants don't care about the system as a whole. The government however do care about stability and mine is perfectly fine with spending tax money on that. Politically, voters are not going to be upset that money is spent on grid stability, even if then ends up in the hands of owners of fossil fueled power plants.
Storage solutions are advancing fast enough that your argument cannot succeed. What you are saying used to be sort of plausible, but the sell by date on it passed long ago.
Right, as evidenced by the extensive storage infrastructure being deployed /s.
The US has 25 GWh of storage, as compared to an hourly electricity consumption of 500 GWh. Literally less than ten minutes of storage. Almost all of it hydroelectric, which is a big infrastructure project on par with building nuclear power plants
I'm sure you're eager to talk about how thermal storage, or concret weights with pulleys, or compressed air is going to be 100x better than current solutions. But until those things move out to prototypes and I to mass production, they represent potential solutions not actual solutions. Like fusion. If the next attempt at fusion works, great! But building out infrastructure assuming it's going to work is extremely unwise.
The US has 25 GWh of storage, as compared to an hourly electricity consumption of 500 GWh. Literally less than ten minutes of storage. Almost all of it hydroelectric, which is a big infrastructure project on par with building nuclear power plants
I'm sure you're eager to talk about how thermal storage, or concret weights with pulleys, or compressed air is going to be 100x better than current solutions. But until those things move out to prototypes and I to mass production, they represent potential solutions not actual solutions. Like fusion. If the next attempt at fusion works, great! But building out infrastructure assuming it's going to work is extremely unwise.
> Right, as evidenced by the extensive storage infrastructure being deployed /s.
Invalid argument.
> The US has 25 GWh of storage, as compared to an hourly electricity consumption of 500 GWh. Literally less than ten minutes of storage. Almost all of it hydroelectric, which is a big infrastructure project on par with building nuclear power plants
Irrelevant point.
Storage was marginal in the past because there wasn't much of a business case for it. With renewables crashing in price and fossil fuels being phased out, that is changing. There are now strong market forces pushing development of storage technologies. Your insistence of carrying over the market conditions of the past into the future leads you astray.
Invalid argument.
> The US has 25 GWh of storage, as compared to an hourly electricity consumption of 500 GWh. Literally less than ten minutes of storage. Almost all of it hydroelectric, which is a big infrastructure project on par with building nuclear power plants
Irrelevant point.
Storage was marginal in the past because there wasn't much of a business case for it. With renewables crashing in price and fossil fuels being phased out, that is changing. There are now strong market forces pushing development of storage technologies. Your insistence of carrying over the market conditions of the past into the future leads you astray.
California has already saturated the daytime energy demand on sunny days. So does Hawaii. The market forces already exist. But people aren't building storage. Because it's not feasible, short of a decisive breakthrough in storage technology.
Maybe one of the proposed storage solutions will pan out. But building out trillions of dollars of infrastructure projects on the hope that a future breakthrough will make storage feasible is very risky. Fusion has been 10-20 years away for the past 50 years. General artificial intelligence has been 10-20 years away for the past 50 years. Between:
1. Going with a known solution, that already generates more electricity than solar and wind combined and one we have 70 years of experience working with.
2. Going with a solution contingent on a massive technological breakthrough to actually work.
When the stakes are as high as climate change, I cannot even remotely justify going with #2 over #1 even if the costs are potentially lower on paper.
Maybe one of the proposed storage solutions will pan out. But building out trillions of dollars of infrastructure projects on the hope that a future breakthrough will make storage feasible is very risky. Fusion has been 10-20 years away for the past 50 years. General artificial intelligence has been 10-20 years away for the past 50 years. Between:
1. Going with a known solution, that already generates more electricity than solar and wind combined and one we have 70 years of experience working with.
2. Going with a solution contingent on a massive technological breakthrough to actually work.
When the stakes are as high as climate change, I cannot even remotely justify going with #2 over #1 even if the costs are potentially lower on paper.
> The market forces already exist.
And that is a recent thing there. The global market is still developing, and technologies don't materialize instantly. CO2 taxes are still low (or zero) just about everywhere.
But hey, I hope you are also not going to claim nuclear will be cheaper in the future, because I could reflect that argument right back at you. And I could observe that, unlike with renewables and storage, nuclear has a horribly bad historical experience curve.
> Maybe one of the proposed storage solutions will pan out. But building out trillions of dollars of infrastructure projects on the hope that a future breakthrough will make storage feasible is very risky.
It's only a $$$ risk. We absolutely know the storage is possible, we just haven't confirmed how cheap it will be. Worst case is we spend a bit more. This is fine. Investments are not guarantees; one is always gambling.
And that is a recent thing there. The global market is still developing, and technologies don't materialize instantly. CO2 taxes are still low (or zero) just about everywhere.
But hey, I hope you are also not going to claim nuclear will be cheaper in the future, because I could reflect that argument right back at you. And I could observe that, unlike with renewables and storage, nuclear has a horribly bad historical experience curve.
> Maybe one of the proposed storage solutions will pan out. But building out trillions of dollars of infrastructure projects on the hope that a future breakthrough will make storage feasible is very risky.
It's only a $$$ risk. We absolutely know the storage is possible, we just haven't confirmed how cheap it will be. Worst case is we spend a bit more. This is fine. Investments are not guarantees; one is always gambling.
No, it's not "worst case we spent a bit more". Total global lithium ion battery production amounts to less than one hour of storage for the United States alone. Things like pulleys and synthetic methane remain in the prototyping stage.
By this logic why not just use fusion? It's possible. We don't know which exact approach we'll use (lasers, magnets, etc.). We don't know how cheap it'll be, but hey it'll happen eventually right? No.
It's not "worst case we spend more money". It's "worse case we never solve climate change". And that's a pretty bad worst case.
We're already at the point where markets are starting to see saturation with renewables. But this unfounded aversion to nuclear power is hampering actual progress to decarbonization. The cost of waiting around and hoping for storage to become viable is not just the cost of building those storage systems, but also the continued release of fossil fuels as we wait for that to happen - and who knows when that will happen, if ever.
By this logic why not just use fusion? It's possible. We don't know which exact approach we'll use (lasers, magnets, etc.). We don't know how cheap it'll be, but hey it'll happen eventually right? No.
It's not "worst case we spend more money". It's "worse case we never solve climate change". And that's a pretty bad worst case.
We're already at the point where markets are starting to see saturation with renewables. But this unfounded aversion to nuclear power is hampering actual progress to decarbonization. The cost of waiting around and hoping for storage to become viable is not just the cost of building those storage systems, but also the continued release of fossil fuels as we wait for that to happen - and who knows when that will happen, if ever.
No, it is "worst case we spend a bit more". We absolutely know that storage is possible. Pumped thermal electricity storage, for example, uses only well understood technologies.
We solve climate change by raising CO2 costs high enough. Again, this is not a go-no go thing, it is just haggling over the price.
> We're already at the point where markets are starting to see saturation with renewables.
This just means CO2 taxes aren't high enough. BTW, they'd have to be $300-400/ton for new nuclear to compete with gas in the US.
We solve climate change by raising CO2 costs high enough. Again, this is not a go-no go thing, it is just haggling over the price.
> We're already at the point where markets are starting to see saturation with renewables.
This just means CO2 taxes aren't high enough. BTW, they'd have to be $300-400/ton for new nuclear to compete with gas in the US.
You or I could go out today and buy off the counter parts, build a scale model of a pulley system, and use it to store power. We could have done that a century ago.
To the best of my knowledge, fusion only demonstrated net-positive energy production this decade, and hasn't yet reached ignition in a man-made device.
They're not the same.
To the best of my knowledge, fusion only demonstrated net-positive energy production this decade, and hasn't yet reached ignition in a man-made device.
They're not the same.
We're a century into nuclear reactor technology.
Today is the long term, and the costs are still uncontrolled.
Today is the long term, and the costs are still uncontrolled.
the US has 80000 tonnes of spent nuclear reactor waste. SpaceX launch cost in 2017 was $2700/kg. presumably lower now.
by my math, that's $215bn to launch all our nuclear waste into space. Is there a reason that's not a viable option?
by my math, that's $215bn to launch all our nuclear waste into space. Is there a reason that's not a viable option?
It's not the safety. One could conceivably put a glas she'll around the burnt fuel and it would survive reentry.
But first of all, the cost is still massive, even with SpaceX. And furthermore, you'd just put it into (decaying) low earth orbit that way. Further away would be even more expensive.
Finally, spent fuel still contains a lot of energy and should be recycled. This in turn is a very nasty and expensive procedure.
But first of all, the cost is still massive, even with SpaceX. And furthermore, you'd just put it into (decaying) low earth orbit that way. Further away would be even more expensive.
Finally, spent fuel still contains a lot of energy and should be recycled. This in turn is a very nasty and expensive procedure.
I still think that declaring that waste is a waste.
That is potential future fuel.
That is potential future fuel.
The danger of launch failure making the planet uninhabitable.
lol, good point. that's the sort of thing that's easy to forget about when your involvement on a topic is limited to typing out comments on HN.
How do you imagine that would happen? Even if a rocket fails catastrophically, pulverizing the nuclear waste, distributing it evenly across earth, how do you imagine that would make the planet inhabitable? Is the planet inhabitable now, after all the atomic bombs that exploded and all the nuclear waste that went into the ocean?
And what do you think drives the latest Mars rover, Perseverance?
And what do you think drives the latest Mars rover, Perseverance?
It also doesn't take water into account. You can build solar panels in a desert and send the power over high-voltage DC lines with minimal losses. Trying to pump water into the desert and grow food outdoors, with constant losses due to evaporation, is far less efficient. You also need to bring in fertilizer, fuel to operate equipment, workers, and fuel to ship the harvest back out of the desert to bring it to market.
Way overshooting the confidence on fusion here.
It's placing something that quite literally simply does not exist on the balance sheet.
A physicist who died 55 years ago said it'd be commercially deployed by 1975. 1954 was the "too cheap to meter" claim by an investment banker who worked for the Truman administration. That's still quoted today, said 2 years before Elvis debuted on Ed Sullivan.
We're all supposed to treat it like it's a valid opinion. While instead, 46 years after the predicted free energy for all bonanza, rate payers are getting hit with taxes to keep nuclear going. It's in practice, in actual reality, a more expensive option.
Continue to research. March on with science, sure. But as a matter of public policy and planning, relying on it is pure fantasy.
I don't know why hn is so koolaid-drunk on this stuff. It's a cult with 70 years of failed predictions. It's apparently like any other cult where wrong predictions make the true believers even more fanatical.
We're amidst planet altering climate change, this is really not the time to fuck around.
A physicist who died 55 years ago said it'd be commercially deployed by 1975. 1954 was the "too cheap to meter" claim by an investment banker who worked for the Truman administration. That's still quoted today, said 2 years before Elvis debuted on Ed Sullivan.
We're all supposed to treat it like it's a valid opinion. While instead, 46 years after the predicted free energy for all bonanza, rate payers are getting hit with taxes to keep nuclear going. It's in practice, in actual reality, a more expensive option.
Continue to research. March on with science, sure. But as a matter of public policy and planning, relying on it is pure fantasy.
I don't know why hn is so koolaid-drunk on this stuff. It's a cult with 70 years of failed predictions. It's apparently like any other cult where wrong predictions make the true believers even more fanatical.
We're amidst planet altering climate change, this is really not the time to fuck around.
Yeah, last time I checked everyone was still on the "viable fusion is constantly 20 years away" meme.
Fusion is still 20 years away.
It’s like 20 years away!!
>This entire piece is based on the assumption that the only sources of energy are solar panels and fossil fuels. This is false.
Right, and more than that, it appears to be relying on the old fallacy that a solar panel takes up "land" the same way a field of corn does, to the exclusion of other uses.
That is not necessarily the case, especially when we're imaging strategic uses of space that might become more prevalent in the future. Solar panels can go on top of things, including other solar panels in the form of vertical solar farms.
If we talked about pages of books the same way we talk about solar panels, you could claim that War & Peace takes up an acre of space.
Right, and more than that, it appears to be relying on the old fallacy that a solar panel takes up "land" the same way a field of corn does, to the exclusion of other uses.
That is not necessarily the case, especially when we're imaging strategic uses of space that might become more prevalent in the future. Solar panels can go on top of things, including other solar panels in the form of vertical solar farms.
If we talked about pages of books the same way we talk about solar panels, you could claim that War & Peace takes up an acre of space.
Nuclear energy is the Amiga of energy sources.
Ahead of its time, it was unjustly rejected and persecuted by the ignorant masses. Its advocates are bonded by the quiet pride that at least they weren't unthinkingly siding with those masses. (And they're right!) Meanwhile, as the Amiga stagnated for terribly unfair reasons, other, scrappier technologies like the i386 and UMG-Si grew from being worthless boondoggles (except in special circumstances, like spaceflight) to being actually far better and cheaper. But the Amiga advocates keep the faith, sharing their suffering and resentment. They inevitably try the alternatives a little and perhaps even start to like them. Gradually their denial recedes, decade by decade.
But they know that however much fab costs go down and leave their beloved Amiga behind in the dust, you'll never be able to run nuclear submarines and Antarctic research stations on solar panels.
Ahead of its time, it was unjustly rejected and persecuted by the ignorant masses. Its advocates are bonded by the quiet pride that at least they weren't unthinkingly siding with those masses. (And they're right!) Meanwhile, as the Amiga stagnated for terribly unfair reasons, other, scrappier technologies like the i386 and UMG-Si grew from being worthless boondoggles (except in special circumstances, like spaceflight) to being actually far better and cheaper. But the Amiga advocates keep the faith, sharing their suffering and resentment. They inevitably try the alternatives a little and perhaps even start to like them. Gradually their denial recedes, decade by decade.
But they know that however much fab costs go down and leave their beloved Amiga behind in the dust, you'll never be able to run nuclear submarines and Antarctic research stations on solar panels.
Yeah, don’t bother with reading articles that exclude the largest source of clean energy in US.
Such articles have an ideological bias.
Such articles have an ideological bias.
Yeah, ideologically biased like the President of Exelon (quoted from December 2018):
“The cost of new nuclear is prohibitive for us to be investing in,” says Crane. Exelon considered building two new reactors in Texas in 2005, he says, when gas prices were $8/MMBtu and were projected to rise to $13/MMBtu. At that price, the project would have been viable with a CO2 tax of $25 per ton. “We’re sitting here trading 2019 gas at $2.90 per MMBtu,” he says; for new nuclear power to be competitive at that price, a CO2 tax “would be $300–$400.” Exelon currently is placing its bets instead on advances in energy storage and carbon sequestration technologies.
“The cost of new nuclear is prohibitive for us to be investing in,” says Crane. Exelon considered building two new reactors in Texas in 2005, he says, when gas prices were $8/MMBtu and were projected to rise to $13/MMBtu. At that price, the project would have been viable with a CO2 tax of $25 per ton. “We’re sitting here trading 2019 gas at $2.90 per MMBtu,” he says; for new nuclear power to be competitive at that price, a CO2 tax “would be $300–$400.” Exelon currently is placing its bets instead on advances in energy storage and carbon sequestration technologies.
They might have an ideological bias, but if the prevailing ideology is anti-nuclear then ignoring that bias isn't going to get you very far. Biden has committed us to moving the energy sector off of carbon in the next 15 years, which means we're going to build a lot of $CleanEnergy really soon, and if the ideological landscape doesn't change it very likely will be a whole lot of solar and wind (what is 15 years minus the amount of time it takes to build out a nuclear power plant?).
> what is 15 years minus the amount of time it takes to build out a nuclear power plant?
If the last European projects are to be taken as models, it's a negative number (Olkiluoto 3 started in 2005 and not online before next year at best...). Not better for Flamanville 3, maybe Hinkley Point C will be achieved a bit faster...
If the last European projects are to be taken as models, it's a negative number (Olkiluoto 3 started in 2005 and not online before next year at best...). Not better for Flamanville 3, maybe Hinkley Point C will be achieved a bit faster...
No problem with nuclear until you have a problem, then it's a catastrophe
Fusion sounds great in theory, but even if they manage to make it viable, it'll cost billions to create even one plant, and how much power does it produce theoretically?
I mean if I put on my idealist sci fi glasses, I can see a future where we have infinite energy for free, in which case we will see a lot more energy-wasteful endeavours like vertical farms, air conditioning and cryptocurrencies. But we're not there yet, and we won't be there yet for a long time.
Energy production, also with renewables, increases year over year, but keeping right on it is energy consumption.
Examples from my own country. We're building big wind farms in the North Sea. But at the same time, Google and co are building data centers that use up a lot of their capacity already. And another thing happening at the same time is a push to reduce our dependency on natural gas for heating and cooking (because emissions and international politics / dependency on Russia). And the other push is towards electric vehicles. So thirst for electricity only goes up, probably faster than new energy sources can be built (renewable or otherwise).
This trend will continue, wouldn't be surprised if electricity consumption will double in the next decade.
I mean if I put on my idealist sci fi glasses, I can see a future where we have infinite energy for free, in which case we will see a lot more energy-wasteful endeavours like vertical farms, air conditioning and cryptocurrencies. But we're not there yet, and we won't be there yet for a long time.
Energy production, also with renewables, increases year over year, but keeping right on it is energy consumption.
Examples from my own country. We're building big wind farms in the North Sea. But at the same time, Google and co are building data centers that use up a lot of their capacity already. And another thing happening at the same time is a push to reduce our dependency on natural gas for heating and cooking (because emissions and international politics / dependency on Russia). And the other push is towards electric vehicles. So thirst for electricity only goes up, probably faster than new energy sources can be built (renewable or otherwise).
This trend will continue, wouldn't be surprised if electricity consumption will double in the next decade.
A YouTube video is not the ne plus ultra of scientific presentations, you know.
I remember the first time that someone was telling that fusion would be producing a lot of power by the end of the decade, but I can't remember whether this was the 70s or the 80s.
Considering that humans have yet to produce one joule of net energy from fusion, and the longest anyone has ever run a fusion reactor was 20 seconds, I think you're wildly optimistic.
Indeed, I would say that if America today had working plans for a commercial fusion power plant handed to it by benevolent aliens, between a deliberately broken bureaucracy and the awesome power of the fossil fuel industry, I would be quite surprised if the first plant opened by January 1, 2030. (And I'd suspect that literally billions of kickbacks and graft would have to be paid for the gatekeepers to allow it in.)
(Other more rational, less kleptocratic countries might do better - I'm looking at you, Germany - and paradoxically, fully authoritarian states might also do better.)
I remember the first time that someone was telling that fusion would be producing a lot of power by the end of the decade, but I can't remember whether this was the 70s or the 80s.
Considering that humans have yet to produce one joule of net energy from fusion, and the longest anyone has ever run a fusion reactor was 20 seconds, I think you're wildly optimistic.
Indeed, I would say that if America today had working plans for a commercial fusion power plant handed to it by benevolent aliens, between a deliberately broken bureaucracy and the awesome power of the fossil fuel industry, I would be quite surprised if the first plant opened by January 1, 2030. (And I'd suspect that literally billions of kickbacks and graft would have to be paid for the gatekeepers to allow it in.)
(Other more rational, less kleptocratic countries might do better - I'm looking at you, Germany - and paradoxically, fully authoritarian states might also do better.)
>fusion energy is going to account for a rapidly increasing share of energy production by the end of this decade
Like it did "by the end" of 4-5 previous decades...
It's the perennial "soon" technology...
Like it did "by the end" of 4-5 previous decades...
It's the perennial "soon" technology...
Author also makes mistake because he assumes all land to be equal. Then second assumption is that power source has to be in the same place as the farm.
Vertical farm can be set up in a place where normal farm would not be possible. One can also imagine that solar panels can be placed on a piece of land that would not be suitable for growing crops.
There is loads of empty land on the world. Land that is worth a lot is close to where all people are and in places where it is fertile and ideally flat.
Vertical farm can be set up in a place where normal farm would not be possible. One can also imagine that solar panels can be placed on a piece of land that would not be suitable for growing crops.
There is loads of empty land on the world. Land that is worth a lot is close to where all people are and in places where it is fertile and ideally flat.
I came here to point out nuclear and fusion also. Lets say you can get the energy cost to near zero, the the 200+ euros left per meter sq could be cut down by looking for construction or scaling efficiencies and even the fact that if energy is near zero from nuclear or fusion power, it might end up lowering construction costs if it can be diverted into use in heavy machinery. I'd love to see this same experiment powered by a small Thorium prototype reactor.
Even so, how does free sunlight with longer transport compare to the cost of electricity with short transport.
I imagine electricity, regardless of source, is still the most expensive factor.
I imagine electricity, regardless of source, is still the most expensive factor.
to add:
- 95%+ reduction in water usage
- no need for any pesticides because... boom no pests
- no need for any other treatments to reduce disease
- can be powered in any way
- does not need to have complex freight
Sure it doesn't "save space" if you make a ton of win/solar farms. Sure. But its not about saving space as much as solving a huge logistics problem, water problem, pesticide problem, and even the taste problem (food harvested recently will taste better than frozen food transported for weeks/months)
- 95%+ reduction in water usage
- no need for any pesticides because... boom no pests
- no need for any other treatments to reduce disease
- can be powered in any way
- does not need to have complex freight
Sure it doesn't "save space" if you make a ton of win/solar farms. Sure. But its not about saving space as much as solving a huge logistics problem, water problem, pesticide problem, and even the taste problem (food harvested recently will taste better than frozen food transported for weeks/months)
Nevermind that land used for energy often isn’t suitable for farming, so … even with the hypothesis, limited as it is, it’s flawed.
Less suitable than empty air 10 feet above the ground?
How is vertical farming powered by solar panels better than building the same artificial growing environment at ground-level and powering it with sunlight?
How is vertical farming powered by solar panels better than building the same artificial growing environment at ground-level and powering it with sunlight?
Because you can put the solar panels above a parking lot. You can't directly compare land area for growing with land area for solar panels, qualitatively, they are two very different lands. We have more of the latter.
Yes this could save a lot of arable or environmentally significant land, even if it didn't save a net m^2
I don't know about the US, but in Canada, you have at least three provinces that produce way more hydroelectric power than they can consume. Vertical farming would theoretically make sense in places like this where power is cheap, low carbon and plentiful.
Not only that, but, even if we were just talking straight solar, solar panels don't have to be built on arable land. There's a lot more land available for building solar panels than there is available arable farmland.
It's also ignoring that there are places that are suitable for solar but not suitable for farming. Take the Sahara desert for example, lots of sun, a solar farm would thrive!
Now try planting something there....
Now try planting something there....
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Fusion is 30 years away, not 10. Always has been.
Why can't you just open the windows. I'm imagining some victorian-like device which reflects sunlight around indoors
A lot people miss this point, so thank you for bringing it up. It drives me nuts that it's so prevalent out there!
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Woah great video. Thanks for sharing!
This article is more about indoor farming than vertical farming (is it even vertical if there's only one row?). I grow lettuce indoors. It serves as a nice houseplant and fresh source of salad greens for lunch. It's fairly new, so the cost isn't that much different than just buying lettuce. Once I start building my own "pods" instead of buying the brand-name pods, though, I expect it'll be a bit cheaper than buying 4 bags of lettuce every week (although it doesn't produce enough to fully replace buying greens).
Mine produced ~4 bags over 6 weeks for an energy cost of ~$5 and a negligible amount of water. I think I can get the per-plant cost down to ~$0.50 once I start using my own seeds, so around $10 over 6 weeks to replace 4 bags of salad at around $3 each... a grand savings of $2. We're moving around 4 bags of greens a week between 2 adults, so I'd need to 6x that to replace all the greens we're eating, which gets the savings up to ~$2/week.
The cost savings is negligible -- I do it because it's neat and I like having a houseplant I can eat. It's also MUCH easier for a residential system to offset its energy usage than a commercial setup (I have way more square footage on my roof than I would ever "grow" inside my house).
The calorie argument is more compelling, but how many thousands of years did it take for people to get wheat so calorically dense? I think it's going to take time to develop nutrient-rich crops specifically tailored for indoor farming.
Mine produced ~4 bags over 6 weeks for an energy cost of ~$5 and a negligible amount of water. I think I can get the per-plant cost down to ~$0.50 once I start using my own seeds, so around $10 over 6 weeks to replace 4 bags of salad at around $3 each... a grand savings of $2. We're moving around 4 bags of greens a week between 2 adults, so I'd need to 6x that to replace all the greens we're eating, which gets the savings up to ~$2/week.
The cost savings is negligible -- I do it because it's neat and I like having a houseplant I can eat. It's also MUCH easier for a residential system to offset its energy usage than a commercial setup (I have way more square footage on my roof than I would ever "grow" inside my house).
The calorie argument is more compelling, but how many thousands of years did it take for people to get wheat so calorically dense? I think it's going to take time to develop nutrient-rich crops specifically tailored for indoor farming.
I understood the point to be more about the energy inputs. The gist of it is: plants are more efficient at capturing energy from the sun directly than indirectly via solar panels -> light bulbs -> plants (which seems obvious, when you state it that way).
The only thing that makes vertical farming make any financial sense, today, is the access to cheap (subsidized) fossil fuels.
The only thing that makes vertical farming make any financial sense, today, is the access to cheap (subsidized) fossil fuels.
> plants are more efficient at capturing energy from the sun than solar panels -> light bulbs -> plants are
This is a counterintuitive misconception that I mention elsewhere in this thread. Plants aren't optimized for raw sunlight utilization, because that's not the bottleneck for growth or survival. Plants deliberately reflect away 90% of the sun's energy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency) because other factors are more important: https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-are-plants-green-to-reduc...
This is a counterintuitive misconception that I mention elsewhere in this thread. Plants aren't optimized for raw sunlight utilization, because that's not the bottleneck for growth or survival. Plants deliberately reflect away 90% of the sun's energy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency) because other factors are more important: https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-are-plants-green-to-reduc...
> deliberately reflect away 90% of the sun's energy
They'll have that same efficiency with artificial lighting too… At least until our grow lights stop emitting light in the green spectrum (not something I expect to see anytime soon).
They'll have that same efficiency with artificial lighting too… At least until our grow lights stop emitting light in the green spectrum (not something I expect to see anytime soon).
Grow lights are quite good at only emitting light in certain parts of the spectrum, and have been for some time now.
Just looking at some spectrum charts for grow lights... They certainly vary, but not in any uniform fashion.
There is an exception to this: there is a standard LED graph which shows up quite frequently, identified by it's peeks in the deep reds, yellow, and dark blue, with a marked trough at cyan.
There is an exception to this: there is a standard LED graph which shows up quite frequently, identified by it's peeks in the deep reds, yellow, and dark blue, with a marked trough at cyan.
The cost of transporting the conventionally grown plants would have to be accounted for as well, but I'd be pretty surprised if that got anywhere near tipping the scale over to vertical farming.
I wonder if that could be solved more easily. Build sufficient rail network and hydrogen/electric/other zero-carbon trucks to move produce from production to there and then train it in. And this is really a sector we could fully automated almost already.
Switch hydrogen for methane and produce that methane in a bioreactor from the food scraps. These technologies are already here, no need to wait for a future hydrogen car.
Also, building a zero-carbon transport system would be generally useful for transporting things other lettuce. And that's probably like 80% of the way toward a zero-carbon transit system. I think you have a good point.
Have you written comprehensively about the system you've set up and how it works? I've thought about a Zipgrow system or similar: https://shop.zipgrow.com/products/small?variant=316809164227..., but, as you can see, it's fairly costly to set up. I don't think it'll be cheaper than the grocery store, but it also seems fun and like the final product may taste better.
I'm just using a 9-plant Aerogarden Bounty right now (think it was ~$175 on Black Friday). My wife says I can upgrade to an indoor Tower Garden or Lettucegrow if I do 3-4 cycles on this thing without getting bored.
I also built six 4ftx4ft raised (dirt) beds in our back yard a few years back. I plant fairly densely (usually using 1x1 squares for most things, 2x2 for tomatoes) and I'm thinking about trying one of the tower gardens as a replacement for a single 4x4 bed this growing season. It's been a minute since I ran the numbers, but I think you can plant 20-25 plants on one tower vs maybe 4-16 in a single bed and theoretically not have to weed/water as much (but then you get pump maintenance/ph balance/feeding/cleaning instead).
I also built six 4ftx4ft raised (dirt) beds in our back yard a few years back. I plant fairly densely (usually using 1x1 squares for most things, 2x2 for tomatoes) and I'm thinking about trying one of the tower gardens as a replacement for a single 4x4 bed this growing season. It's been a minute since I ran the numbers, but I think you can plant 20-25 plants on one tower vs maybe 4-16 in a single bed and theoretically not have to weed/water as much (but then you get pump maintenance/ph balance/feeding/cleaning instead).
Look at BA Kratky. My variant consists of 10Gal mixing tubs (Lowes $6) a bit of blue dow foam board, toothpicks, and rapid rooter growplugs Barina grow lights. Masterblend, CaCO3, and Epsom salt. Six trays (one per week. Pest pressure and growing season makes leafy greens not practical.
I think I'm following your build. It seems like Kratky requires a lot more space up-front than an aeroponic system that you refill over time, but it's good to know that I can get even lazier if I clean out some space in the garage.
I haven't written about mine, but I built one using an aquarium pump, a couple of food grade bus tubs (the kind wait staff use to clear restaurant tables), a couple LED panels, and some basic plastic cups. I grow basil, lettuce, bok choy, cilantro, and it doubles as a good setup for getting vegetable starts going in early spring. It was probably a couple hundred bucks to get going, but it's low maintenance and I get produce and herbs on demand.
If you're looking for something more cost effective, you might want to consider building your own with some LED strips and a driver. You can get higher quality components and a lot more power than kits typically sold by companies.
I'm building a 2ftx2ft indoor herb garden for my apartment right now. I found the LEDgardener to be a good resource and forum for getting started.
https://ledgardener.com
I'm building a 2ftx2ft indoor herb garden for my apartment right now. I found the LEDgardener to be a good resource and forum for getting started.
https://ledgardener.com
Is that including amortizing the space it uses in the house? That's not really free.
https://twitter.com/SimianLogic/status/1361768051276992514
Kind of free? There was nothing in that space before.
Kind of free? There was nothing in that space before.
> Artificial lighting saves land because plants can be grown above each other, but if the electricity for the lighting comes from solar panels, then the savings are canceled out by the land required to install the solar panels.
This doesn't have to be the case. Plants don't use all the sunlight that hits them, because available light isn't generally the bottleneck in plant growth. Note how most plants are green, which is to say they're content with reflecting the most energy-dense range of the visible spectrum. Solar panels can in theory (and possibly in practice, I'm unsure of the current state of the art) yield more efficient utilization of solar energy than plants do. (Of course we also need to consider efficiency losses from reconverting the energy back into light, but I recall the reading that the overall system efficiency can still beat direct sunlight in theory (consider that the grow lights can be precisely tuned to only emit energy in the frequencies that plants crave).)
This doesn't have to be the case. Plants don't use all the sunlight that hits them, because available light isn't generally the bottleneck in plant growth. Note how most plants are green, which is to say they're content with reflecting the most energy-dense range of the visible spectrum. Solar panels can in theory (and possibly in practice, I'm unsure of the current state of the art) yield more efficient utilization of solar energy than plants do. (Of course we also need to consider efficiency losses from reconverting the energy back into light, but I recall the reading that the overall system efficiency can still beat direct sunlight in theory (consider that the grow lights can be precisely tuned to only emit energy in the frequencies that plants crave).)
Solar panels can be more efficient, but if your comparison is between “sunlight -> plants” and “sunlight -> solar panels -> electric lights -> plants”, you have to include the actual efficiency of e.g. photovoltaics and LEDs in your calculations.
Photovoltaics these days have something around 15-20% efficiency and LEDs have conversion efficiency around 50-60%. The magenta grow lamps are colored for more efficient use by plants, and you can pack more plants in a smaller space, but at that point you’re trying to offset energy losses on the order of 90%.
Photovoltaics these days have something around 15-20% efficiency and LEDs have conversion efficiency around 50-60%. The magenta grow lamps are colored for more efficient use by plants, and you can pack more plants in a smaller space, but at that point you’re trying to offset energy losses on the order of 90%.
Blurple and magenta LEDs seem to be on their way out last time I looked into growing lights. It is white (or white appearing) LEDs now, which are getting 190+ lumens per watt. The light spectrum is still tuned for plant growth efficiency, but it is a broader spectrum per LED rather than more specific spectrums from specific diodes.
It is worth noting too that these newer white LEDs are spectrum efficient enough that people growing with them have had to turn up the overall room temperatures to compensate for the drop in leaf temperatures created by "waste" wavelengths that the sun and old sodium bulbs use to provide.
It is worth noting too that these newer white LEDs are spectrum efficient enough that people growing with them have had to turn up the overall room temperatures to compensate for the drop in leaf temperatures created by "waste" wavelengths that the sun and old sodium bulbs use to provide.
190+ lm/W is still less than 50% efficiency. I don't understand how a white lamp can be tuned for plant growth efficiency, could you elaborate?
50% efficiency is pretty massive for a light or most anything really. And you can get higher if you underdrive them.
Just because a light appears white doesn't mean the spectrum is evenly distributed though, generally if you graph the color spectrum of these lights green is in a huge dip. If you go to page 13 of this data sheet they show show spectrum graphs. https://cdn.samsung.com/led/file/resource/2020/09/Data_Sheet... All of which appear white in real life. They may be more cool blue white or warmer reddish white, but white nonetheless. Especially with the intensity that they shine.
Just because a light appears white doesn't mean the spectrum is evenly distributed though, generally if you graph the color spectrum of these lights green is in a huge dip. If you go to page 13 of this data sheet they show show spectrum graphs. https://cdn.samsung.com/led/file/resource/2020/09/Data_Sheet... All of which appear white in real life. They may be more cool blue white or warmer reddish white, but white nonetheless. Especially with the intensity that they shine.
Yes, and I updated my comment just as you were posting this to mention losses due to reconversion. However, also keep in mind that even large efficiency losses can still lean in favor of photovoltaics/LEDs, because plants only use about 10% of the sun's energy in the first place.
The problem with talking about photosynthetic efficiency is that there are different endpoints you can talk about. The more efficient plants (C4 plants like sugarcane and maize) have something like 4% efficiency converting sunlight to biomass, but they actually absorb a 53% of the incoming light based on spectrum, and lose about 24% of the energy because photons with shorter wavelengths have excess energy which the plants cannot use. We’re not interested in the 4% figure, we’re interested in the 53% and 24% figure because they represent the part of the process that we can change.
Doing the math, that’s around 59% loss which you could mitigate by using LEDs that produce the correct spectrum—but solar panels and LEDs have 90% losses, so you’re noticeably worse off.
It’s worth remembering that the reason why plants only absorb certain parts of the spectrum is the same reason why photovoltaic panels only absorb certain parts of the spectrum—in both cases, you are using light to move electrons, and these processes only capture energy that corresponds to the underlying band gap. Light with shorter wavelengths has additional energy which is wasted, both for photovoltaics and for plants.
You can increase the efficiency by creating multijunction solar panels, which results in multiple band gaps. For most applications, these aren’t cost-effective. If I remember correctly, plants are also “multi-junction”, which explains why they are so efficient.
Doing the math, that’s around 59% loss which you could mitigate by using LEDs that produce the correct spectrum—but solar panels and LEDs have 90% losses, so you’re noticeably worse off.
It’s worth remembering that the reason why plants only absorb certain parts of the spectrum is the same reason why photovoltaic panels only absorb certain parts of the spectrum—in both cases, you are using light to move electrons, and these processes only capture energy that corresponds to the underlying band gap. Light with shorter wavelengths has additional energy which is wasted, both for photovoltaics and for plants.
You can increase the efficiency by creating multijunction solar panels, which results in multiple band gaps. For most applications, these aren’t cost-effective. If I remember correctly, plants are also “multi-junction”, which explains why they are so efficient.
> It’s worth remembering that the reason why plants only absorb certain parts of the spectrum is the same reason why photovoltaic panels only absorb certain parts of the spectrum
Plants are green because they value light consistency instead of total energy. Green light has too many peaks and valleys and can overload the photosynthesis systems so they reflect a lot of it.
It's the "renewables without batteries" problem only in biology.
Plants are green because they value light consistency instead of total energy. Green light has too many peaks and valleys and can overload the photosynthesis systems so they reflect a lot of it.
It's the "renewables without batteries" problem only in biology.
> Green light has too many peaks and valleys and can overload the photosynthesis systems so they reflect a lot of it.
This doesn’t make any sense to me. Why would peaks and valleys overload something? Why would green light have more peaks and valleys?
I was a bit sloppy with the way I phrased that—what I really meant was “the reason why plants use specific quanta of light is the same reason why photovoltaics absorb specific quanta of light” but I didn’t put much thought into how worded it.
Plants absorb light near two different spectral peaks. This is not entirely dissimilar to the idea of a multijunction photovoltaic cell. The color of light between the two peaks is green.
This doesn’t make any sense to me. Why would peaks and valleys overload something? Why would green light have more peaks and valleys?
I was a bit sloppy with the way I phrased that—what I really meant was “the reason why plants use specific quanta of light is the same reason why photovoltaics absorb specific quanta of light” but I didn’t put much thought into how worded it.
Plants absorb light near two different spectral peaks. This is not entirely dissimilar to the idea of a multijunction photovoltaic cell. The color of light between the two peaks is green.
I don’t know if this is what the previous poster was getting at, some there is some theoretical evidence that the absorption wavelengths used in photosynthesis are not tuned for maximum power input but for stable power input: https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.12281
If this is the case it would be a motivation that is fundamentally very different than that of a multijunction solar cell.
If this is the case it would be a motivation that is fundamentally very different than that of a multijunction solar cell.
I've read that paper, I didn't realize the comment was referring to that.
> If this is the case it would be a motivation that is fundamentally very different than that of a multijunction solar cell.
Solar cells are designed by humans with human motivations, and plants are "designed" by evolutionary processes which lack motivation entirely. Yet, in spite of this, there are astonishing similarities between the limitations of solar cells and the limitations of plants. Isn't that fascinating, that processes with such disparate origins have such similarities?
> If this is the case it would be a motivation that is fundamentally very different than that of a multijunction solar cell.
Solar cells are designed by humans with human motivations, and plants are "designed" by evolutionary processes which lack motivation entirely. Yet, in spite of this, there are astonishing similarities between the limitations of solar cells and the limitations of plants. Isn't that fascinating, that processes with such disparate origins have such similarities?
I don’t see any meaningful similarities beyond ‘they absorb light at more than one frequency’. It doesn’t seem particularly fascinating to me; it’s patently obvious that if you absorb at two frequencies you should absorb at two different frequencies.
> I don’t see any meaningful similarities beyond ‘they absorb light at more than one frequency’.
Ah, that's definitely not what I'm talking about. Look at the relationship between efficiency and wavelength for plants and photovoltaics... the similarity is clear.
Both photovoltaics and plants are capable of absorbing specific amounts of energy from incoming photons but not other amounts. Any excess energy becomes waste heat. The reason is because in both systems, the incoming light is used to move electrons from one state to another; the energy required to do this must usually come from one photon.
Not all solar power systems work this way.
Ah, that's definitely not what I'm talking about. Look at the relationship between efficiency and wavelength for plants and photovoltaics... the similarity is clear.
Both photovoltaics and plants are capable of absorbing specific amounts of energy from incoming photons but not other amounts. Any excess energy becomes waste heat. The reason is because in both systems, the incoming light is used to move electrons from one state to another; the energy required to do this must usually come from one photon.
Not all solar power systems work this way.
Just for comparison's sake, aren't plants/photosynthesis something like 5% efficient?
I think that's correct, but that difference seems to be within the error margins for this calculation, and some other loss (e.g., transmission, storage, etc) could eat any hypothetical advantage that the vertical farming position might've enjoyed.
> Note how most plants are green, which is to say they're content with reflecting the most energy-dense range of the visible spectrum.
Photosynthesis is very complex, and there are reasons why plants shed about 10% of green light: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6498/1490 . It's not that evolution was too dumb to discover the simple fact of green light being more energy dense, it's that there's other more important constraints happening at the molecular level in photosynthesis.
Photosynthesis is very complex, and there are reasons why plants shed about 10% of green light: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6498/1490 . It's not that evolution was too dumb to discover the simple fact of green light being more energy dense, it's that there's other more important constraints happening at the molecular level in photosynthesis.
Plants desire more stability in energy output from photosynthesis (e.g., clouds moving overhead) at a lower level, rather than attaining maximum output. Trying to always maximize output means you'll have high fluctuations in energy output.
There is this recent-ish paper (DOI: 10.1126/science.aba6630) on why it might be, that plants forego the peak of the solar spectrum. Essentially it boils down to being able to regulate the photochemistry of photosynthesis. If it were centered on the peak of the spectrum there's not a lot of regulation possible by means of shifting the reaction energy levels around.
By placing the light absorbing parts of photosynthesis on the slopes of the spectrum, by mere adjustment of the energy levels the reaction undergoes it can shift its activity to parts of the spectrum with more or less light intensity.
By placing the light absorbing parts of photosynthesis on the slopes of the spectrum, by mere adjustment of the energy levels the reaction undergoes it can shift its activity to parts of the spectrum with more or less light intensity.
Even more to the point- solar panels live quite easily on roofs, deserts, highway medians. Quite a bit tougher to put functioning agriculture in these places!
Green roofs are a thing, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_roof
A green roof is pretty. It has plenty of upside. It isnt a productive farm which is the appropriate comparison here
>It isnt a productive farm which is the appropriate comparison here
Why would 'vertical farming' be more productive then?
Why would 'vertical farming' be more productive then?
Because productive farms require lots of expensive maintenance/equipment. A vertical farm lets you optimize for that use case since its the only use of the infrastructure and you can align everything towards maximum use of those scarce resources.
Random roofs don't optimize for that usage pattern, and so you need to use them in an application where the primary cost is the install cost rather than an upkeep cost. Solar panels are a perfect fit. Farms are a terrible fit.
Random roofs don't optimize for that usage pattern, and so you need to use them in an application where the primary cost is the install cost rather than an upkeep cost. Solar panels are a perfect fit. Farms are a terrible fit.
Depending on the geography and building design, you can carry light to the plants via optic fiber. They act as a light pipe/optical waveguide. No need for any photovoltaic solar panels. However this design necessitates a skyscraper in the middle of the desert with nothing else blocking line of sight. Great if you are in the Middle East. Not so great for New York or Seattle. For the latter cities, a permanent barge on the Hudson/Puget with a fiber optic connection could be a solution (the losses would be great and it may not be much cheaper than using electricity, geography and land costs will have to be carefully accounted for).
Here are some simplified designs for home use: https://www.lowes.com/pl/Tubular-skylights-Skylights-accesso...
Some commercial suppliers: http://www.huvco.com/
The technology is very cut and dry. If you are a well funded startup, it may be more economical to acquire an optic fiber skylight manufacturer instead of ordering OEM.
Here are some simplified designs for home use: https://www.lowes.com/pl/Tubular-skylights-Skylights-accesso...
Some commercial suppliers: http://www.huvco.com/
The technology is very cut and dry. If you are a well funded startup, it may be more economical to acquire an optic fiber skylight manufacturer instead of ordering OEM.
Are there any systems that can actually capture close to 100% of sunlight falling on the roof and carry it somewhere else? All the systems you link are only for replacing illumination for humans. They don't provide anywhere near light flux sufficient for plants.
Say a plant needs 1/10th of actual full sun during the day, could you theoretically remove the electricity step entirely but "just" (putting "just" in quotes because I'm sure it wouldn't be easy) having some sort of fancy mirror setup on a 10 storey building to send 1/10th of the sunlight hitting the roof to each floor?
Mirrors take up space too.
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Might be significantly higher efficiency overall though vs. putting solar panels on the same roof?
I guess the devil is in the details but I can't see how mirrors will be positioned to support vertical farming. It's be interesting to see some viable ideas (if those exist).
Thinking aloud here; perhaps we could somehow use optical fibers to bend the light from rooftop to vertical farm?
It's beyond my pay grade. I have no idea if 'optical fibers' are an option here. I suspect 'not' only because it hasn't been done already and feels like it if worked for vertical farming, it would also work to supplement office lighting so there is some monetary incentive to get such a system implemented in some way.
The other problem is that you still have the same issue. That is, for every square cm of sunlight you collect the best you could do is direct that light to a square cm of a plant. That is, you can't just increase surface area of collected light so to provide sunlight for vertically stacked plants, you need the equivalent horizontal surface area to support those.
But I have no idea.
The other problem is that you still have the same issue. That is, for every square cm of sunlight you collect the best you could do is direct that light to a square cm of a plant. That is, you can't just increase surface area of collected light so to provide sunlight for vertically stacked plants, you need the equivalent horizontal surface area to support those.
But I have no idea.
Close, it's 1/10th of the spectrum not 1/10th of the intensity.
The 'fancy mirrors' required would simply be a prism. You'd separate out the red and blue light and aim it at the plants, and send the green and infrared light to solar cells, to be used for running red and blue LEDs. (Or you could use flourescence if you had something that glowed red or blue when exposed to green or IR light).
Check out this spectral plot for chlorophyll-a and -b:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Biology/ligabs.ht...
and compare it to this plot of the solar irradiance at Earth's surface:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/vision/solirrad.h...
There are peaks in the clorophyl absorption spectrum at 400-500 and 600-700 nm (blue to UV and red), but the sunlight provides energy in an atmosphere-attenuated blackbody curve everywhere from 300-1000nm.
In theory, by providing illumination with just 10% the energy of the sunlight's full spectrum in a narrow band from 420-430nm where photosynthesis is most efficient, you could have plants receive the same amount of energy.
Unfortunately, solar cells have the exact same problem: Just as the proteins in chlorophyll only use certain spectral energies, so too the semiconductors only make efficient use of certain energies. Multi-bandgap solar cells can help:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-junction_solar_cell#/med...
but in both chemical and electrical solar energy extraction, you're working with a particular photon energy and there's going to be waste.
The 'fancy mirrors' required would simply be a prism. You'd separate out the red and blue light and aim it at the plants, and send the green and infrared light to solar cells, to be used for running red and blue LEDs. (Or you could use flourescence if you had something that glowed red or blue when exposed to green or IR light).
Check out this spectral plot for chlorophyll-a and -b:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Biology/ligabs.ht...
and compare it to this plot of the solar irradiance at Earth's surface:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/vision/solirrad.h...
There are peaks in the clorophyl absorption spectrum at 400-500 and 600-700 nm (blue to UV and red), but the sunlight provides energy in an atmosphere-attenuated blackbody curve everywhere from 300-1000nm.
In theory, by providing illumination with just 10% the energy of the sunlight's full spectrum in a narrow band from 420-430nm where photosynthesis is most efficient, you could have plants receive the same amount of energy.
Unfortunately, solar cells have the exact same problem: Just as the proteins in chlorophyll only use certain spectral energies, so too the semiconductors only make efficient use of certain energies. Multi-bandgap solar cells can help:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-junction_solar_cell#/med...
but in both chemical and electrical solar energy extraction, you're working with a particular photon energy and there's going to be waste.
Are there materials that fluoresce at a shorter wavelength than what they absorb? I was under the impression that it was a one-way thing (absorb short wavelength and emit longer wavelength).
Yes. Some materials absorb multiple photons for each one they emit and thus have enough energy to emit at shorter wavelengths. Cesium vapor is one (though probably not a good choice for this application!).
Do the plants actually need the full strength of that red and blue light for optimal growth though? I thought the comment above mine was implying that they don't.
So my proposition was that if we started with, say, midday sun, maybe we could divide that up (in brightness, not just by spectrum) to cover a larger area (multiple floors in this case).
So my proposition was that if we started with, say, midday sun, maybe we could divide that up (in brightness, not just by spectrum) to cover a larger area (multiple floors in this case).
maybe if the plants are fixed on a very tall pole, and spaced some meters from each other, because of the sunrays inclination, all the plants on the pole can get sunlight. this will not save space in a big farmland setup, because then the poles need to be spaced from each other in proportion to their height, or they will cover the sun from the neighbour pole, bit this can make small isolated empty spaces useful for growing a lot of plants.
Plants use green light: https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/green_light_is_it_important_fo...
In fact the idea of light frequency restriction is dying a death in LED grow lights, sun-like full spectrum with deep red and UV ranges have proven to be superior to specific ranges (blurple).
Light being a bottleneck isn't very meaningful as plant growth is adjusted by a bunch of levers, e.g. increase respiration and nutrients and more light energy can be utilized - obviously there's limiting factors in plant biology.
In fact the idea of light frequency restriction is dying a death in LED grow lights, sun-like full spectrum with deep red and UV ranges have proven to be superior to specific ranges (blurple).
Light being a bottleneck isn't very meaningful as plant growth is adjusted by a bunch of levers, e.g. increase respiration and nutrients and more light energy can be utilized - obviously there's limiting factors in plant biology.
"Light, its what plants crave!"
Vertical farming mostly feels like a solution in search of a problem. It uses relatively expensive technology to produce low-value products. Putting seeds in the ground, tilling, and waiting is absurdly cheap compared to building growhouses. For some perspective, what farms actually do extend growing seasons is put "greenhouses" around cold-sensitive crops like tomatoes, but a "greenhouse" in this case is a wire hoop with clear plastic around it.
It's interesting if you want to support 50B people on Earth, but the resources required to build it out mean it isn't really even a viable solution for restoring farmland to wildland without massive amounts of mining.
It's interesting if you want to support 50B people on Earth, but the resources required to build it out mean it isn't really even a viable solution for restoring farmland to wildland without massive amounts of mining.
The greater problem to solve is maximizing nutrition for communities while minimizing the carbon costs of providing it. Vertical farms fit into that equation by moving production closer to the people that eat the produce, and making it more available to food/nutrition deserts in urban areas.
Extending growing seasons or returning farmlands to wildlands miss that point. The bigger problem in the latter is livestock anyway.
Extending growing seasons or returning farmlands to wildlands miss that point. The bigger problem in the latter is livestock anyway.
What you have to watch out for is displacing housing to build vertical farms. It’s absurdly cheaper and easier to move food for a person into a city than to move that person in and out of the city on a daily basis.
Most of the carbon costs of providing food comes from the process of growing it, not transporting it. Most of the carbon costs in transportation also come from consumers driving to and from grocery stores. See: https://www.salon.com/2012/06/16/eating_local_hurts_the_plan...
In the US, we use more energy cooking food than we do growing it. Agriculture is only about 1% of total energy demand.
Food has to be prepared in any event. On the other hand, a move to locally produced food to save energy from transportation can be more than cancelled out if the production requires more energy input.
It's a solution for taking trucks off the road and avoiding waste from spoiled produce.
It's not a solution for saving land.
It's not a solution for saving land.
If a vertical farm scales up and sells their produce to a super market, dont they still have to package up all the food and ship it on trucks before it gets to the end user?
Yes but the idea is you are now shipping it 5 miles instead of 500 miles.
Isn't using an electric truck powered on solar or nuclear a far easier and more cost effective solution than vertical farming?
My local supermarket has hydroponics on site and sells them there.
Aside from what the other commenters are saying around trucking the produce. Another benefit of growing indoors that you no longer need pesticides to keep bugs from destroying your crops.
Edit: also it's supposed to use a lot less water
Edit: also it's supposed to use a lot less water
Regarding water at least, it's a lot easier, cheaper, and less energy-intensive to pump water from a waterways/well and spray it on crops than it is to use water processed and delivered through a municipal system. Plants don't need that's been fluoridated or otherwise heavily treated. Especially since fresh water in most dense urban areas is not very plentiful (with some exceptions), I would find it hard to believe that the decrease in water needs outweighs the lack of availability and cost.
> It's interesting if you want to support 50B people on Earth, but the resources required to build it out mean it isn't really even a viable solution for restoring farmland to wildland without massive amounts of mining.
Also it seems to be mainly about producing calorie-poor produce like lettuce. If you actually want to feed people, you need to produce calories, and I don't see how that's helped by putting several extra conversion inefficiencies between the energy source and the plants.
Also it seems to be mainly about producing calorie-poor produce like lettuce. If you actually want to feed people, you need to produce calories, and I don't see how that's helped by putting several extra conversion inefficiencies between the energy source and the plants.
It's certainly not cheap in carbon, which is the main problem in farming.
Vertical farming optimizes water and transport.
I admit that I'm not entirely convinced about vertical farming, but I'm confident it has a future. I'm still curious about using leds and yield.
Vertical farming optimizes water and transport.
I admit that I'm not entirely convinced about vertical farming, but I'm confident it has a future. I'm still curious about using leds and yield.
And when we start talking about skyscrapers I start to really wonder the sunke co2 on those. Plus all the equipment used to run the stuff... How will it compare at scale?
Judging vertical farming based on the performance of wheat is not valid. When I saw the test crop was wheat, I scrolled to see if there were any other crops, saw that there weren't, and abandoned the article because wheat has among the worst yields per area (in terms of kg of edible product per sq meters).
Since the pandemic started, I started experimenting with hydroponics and I've been growing basil, kale, mint, chard, carrots, tomatoes, radishes, and a bunch of herbs, all in about a 60cm x 60cm x 120cm grow tent. It's much less efficient than it could be (if I had much more space), but it's still extremely productive. My setup draws about 80 watts for 18 hours a day (vegetative growth phase) or 12 hours of day (flowering stage) and I've been able to prolong the gap between grocery store trips because this produces enough to eliminate the need to buy vegetables.
This article is just ridiculous.
Since the pandemic started, I started experimenting with hydroponics and I've been growing basil, kale, mint, chard, carrots, tomatoes, radishes, and a bunch of herbs, all in about a 60cm x 60cm x 120cm grow tent. It's much less efficient than it could be (if I had much more space), but it's still extremely productive. My setup draws about 80 watts for 18 hours a day (vegetative growth phase) or 12 hours of day (flowering stage) and I've been able to prolong the gap between grocery store trips because this produces enough to eliminate the need to buy vegetables.
This article is just ridiculous.
> Judging vertical farming based on the performance of wheat is not valid. When I saw the test crop was wheat, I scrolled to see if there were any other crops, saw that there weren't, and abandoned the article because wheat has among the worst yields per area (in terms of kg of edible product per sq meters).
I want to stress this point. Crops like wheat, rice, and corn are not suitable for vertical farming. No vertical farms today are growing these.
And claiming “vertical farming does not save land” based on a single 1msq art installation makes a tenuous argument at best.
And even worse, from the article:
> When wheat is planted in the ground next to each other, instead of above, the sun provides free energy and the clouds free water.
No, no, no, no. Water from precipitation is a fraction of the water needed in areas like the American central plains where the Ogallala Aquifer has been pumped out for decades. Irrigation is a must for growing staple crops almost anywhere. And water is increasingly in short supply.
I want to stress this point. Crops like wheat, rice, and corn are not suitable for vertical farming. No vertical farms today are growing these.
And claiming “vertical farming does not save land” based on a single 1msq art installation makes a tenuous argument at best.
And even worse, from the article:
> When wheat is planted in the ground next to each other, instead of above, the sun provides free energy and the clouds free water.
No, no, no, no. Water from precipitation is a fraction of the water needed in areas like the American central plains where the Ogallala Aquifer has been pumped out for decades. Irrigation is a must for growing staple crops almost anywhere. And water is increasingly in short supply.
> Water from precipitation is a fraction of the water needed in areas like the American central plains where the Ogallala Aquifer has been pumped out for decades
This isn't true. Much (at least a couple of years ago, most) corn in the midwest is not irrigated. Rainfall is common enough over the summer that it almost always works out OK, and if it doesn't, you write it off to crop insurance.
Edit: double checked, still confident. Check out the page 4 map of the midwest and % of irrigated corn fields https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2...
This isn't true. Much (at least a couple of years ago, most) corn in the midwest is not irrigated. Rainfall is common enough over the summer that it almost always works out OK, and if it doesn't, you write it off to crop insurance.
Edit: double checked, still confident. Check out the page 4 map of the midwest and % of irrigated corn fields https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2...
Indeed, I stand corrected! While the Ogallala is still in trouble from over pumping, you’ve shown corn is mostly rain fed.
Why not corn? My understanding is that it’s one of the most efficient crops in calories/acre terms (which is presumably what you actually care about, not kg/acre).
My guess is that counterintuitively but unsurprisingly, you actually want to use crops that were previously inefficient to grow. Low yields per acre crops are more suitable to indoor vertical farming because of the benefit climate control, and lack of pests provides.
I don’t understand why those would preferentially help low yield crops more than high yield crops.
That would be very surprising to me.
That would be very surprising to me.
My thoughts:
If a crop is easy to grow, that means it’s able to handle: 1. Variable sunlight conditions; 2. Variable water conditions; 3. Handle bugs, viruses; and 4. Variable climate conditions.
Low yield crops are problematic because they cannot handle variability. Using an indoor facility is equally expensive if you program the conditions to be variable or to be relatively strict. Additionally, a low yield crop is typically more expensive than a high yield crop.
As such, you would rather program the indoor facility’s conditions to be relatively strict and grow a typically low yield crop, get significantly better yield and compete on price.
If a crop is easy to grow, that means it’s able to handle: 1. Variable sunlight conditions; 2. Variable water conditions; 3. Handle bugs, viruses; and 4. Variable climate conditions.
Low yield crops are problematic because they cannot handle variability. Using an indoor facility is equally expensive if you program the conditions to be variable or to be relatively strict. Additionally, a low yield crop is typically more expensive than a high yield crop.
As such, you would rather program the indoor facility’s conditions to be relatively strict and grow a typically low yield crop, get significantly better yield and compete on price.
> Low yield crops are problematic because they cannot handle variability.
Is this generally the cause for their lower yields? I would assume they just aren’t genetically programmed to grow as much (useful stuff, at least).
Is this generally the cause for their lower yields? I would assume they just aren’t genetically programmed to grow as much (useful stuff, at least).
Oh, yeah, I'm sure that is also a problem. I don't think vertical farming can really help enough with that problem.
Vertical farming can definitely help problems like: https://extension.umd.edu/hgic/topics/low-yields-undersized-...
And most specifically, for crops that are just plain picky: https://www.rliland.com/difficult-crops-grow/
Vertical farming can definitely help problems like: https://extension.umd.edu/hgic/topics/low-yields-undersized-...
And most specifically, for crops that are just plain picky: https://www.rliland.com/difficult-crops-grow/
As a new homeowner who has never gardened before, I'm curious how to get started doing something like your hydroponics setup.
For someone looking to get started, with the knowledge I've gained over the past year, I'd recommend starting with a Kratky grow [0]. It's extremely simple and extremely inexpensive (you basically just start some seedlings in rockwool [1], then when seedlings are an inch or two tall, transplant them into a container with nutrient solution in it. A lot of videos and online articles are very finicky, but from trial and error, the only things I've discovered that really matter are A) the pH of your water (pH impacts plants ability to absorb nutrients [2], anywhere in the range of 5.0 to 6.5 has been fine for me), and B) the amount of light your plants get (suspend your light(s) so you can always keep it a few inches above your plants).
To do any kind of hydroponics grow, you'll need (and you can pick up most of this locally (for far less than on Amazon) at a garden center or hydroponics store if available):
To do any kind of hydroponics grow, you'll need (and you can pick up most of this locally (for far less than on Amazon) at a garden center or hydroponics store if available):
- a way to measure pH (you can get strips for next to nothing, or an electric meter (~$15 for a cheapo one, maybe $40 for a reliable one))
- a way to adjust the pH [3]
- nutrients (I have just used FloraDuo 5-0-6 [4] without issue, 2ml per liter of water has been perfect)
- a way to start your seedlings (I've used rockwool [5] in a clear rubbermaid bin)
- lights (doesn't have to be fancy [6])
- containers for nutrient solution (could be a bucket from home depot with a hole drilled in the top for net cups [7])
- seeds (any home improvement store with a garden center will have a stand with all kinds of seeds to pick from)
- Timers for your lights [8]
- Basically everything in this kit [9] except for the netting, grow bags, and "odor control filters" (unless you want to grow that specific plant with the very particular and easily identifiable odor, and you don't want the odor).
[0] https://youtu.be/5z0NaYpVHMs?t=7
[1] https://youtu.be/AMlCdm_yVvc
[2] http://rodsgardening.com/pH.htm
[3] https://www.amazon.com/General-Hydroponics-pH-Control-Kit/dp/B017XTFKE6/
[4] https://www.amazon.com/General-Hydroponics-FloraDuo-Mineral-Nutrient/dp/B004PPY750
[5] https://www.amazon.com/Rockwool-Starter-Twin-Canaries-Chart/dp/B07KJVQ6T5
[6] https://youtu.be/lT8acb5WTT0
[7] https://www.amazon.com/xGarden-Lightweight-Economy-Hydroponics-Aquaponics/dp/B07W9H8ZRH
[8] https://www.amazon.com/Century-Indoor-24-Hour-Mechanical-Outlet/dp/B01LPSGBZS
[9] https://www.amazon.com/Spider-Farmer-Complete-Spectrum-Compatible/dp/B088R3JHHD
[10] https://www.amazon.com/CK64050-Germination-Station-Listed-72-Cell/dp/B000HHO1RO/
[11] https://www.amazon.com/Century-Thermostat-Controller-Germination-40-108°F/dp/B01I15S6OM
[12] https://youtu.be/edtYDsMthC4?t=67
[13] https://youtu.be/nyqykZK2Ev4Hey, I was hoping you could share some resources about this subject! I always have a hard time finding any useful information about hydroponics and would love to learn more.
> When I saw the test crop was wheat, I scrolled to see if there were any other crops, saw that there weren't, and abandoned the article because wheat has among the worst yields per area (in terms of kg of edible product per sq meters).
Yes, but corn, soybeans, and wheat represent an overwhelming majority of agriculture (at least in the US). If the goal is to reduce energy use, it makes sense to focus on the things that we're making the most of. In 2013 we produced 354M tonnes of corn and 58M tonnes of wheat, and only 13M tonnes of tomatoes and and 3.6M tonnes of lettuce. The fact of the matter is that wheat—despite being low-yield—accounts for an enormously huge percentage of agriculture.
Yes, but corn, soybeans, and wheat represent an overwhelming majority of agriculture (at least in the US). If the goal is to reduce energy use, it makes sense to focus on the things that we're making the most of. In 2013 we produced 354M tonnes of corn and 58M tonnes of wheat, and only 13M tonnes of tomatoes and and 3.6M tonnes of lettuce. The fact of the matter is that wheat—despite being low-yield—accounts for an enormously huge percentage of agriculture.
Vertical farm companies attract a lot of attention from tech people who love the idea of hermetically sealed crop growing, but it's not where the action is.
That's because climate controlled hydroponic greenhouses get you most of the way there - no need for arable land, faster crop turns, ability to plant in more climates - but use free energy, at vastly lower capital and operating costs.
The vertical farm premise is that we really need to do climate-controlled growing very close to city centers, using warehouses or something. But the math just doesn't pencil out.
Climate controlled is a benefit. But there's very few tradeoffs to putting it 200 miles outside of a city center where real estate is cheap anyway. And that's where the smart money is going - right now, millions of square feet of climate controlled greenhouse space is being built across North America to service regional population hubs, at a cost of billions of dollars. Vastly more produce will be made in these greenhouses than vertical farms.
That's because climate controlled hydroponic greenhouses get you most of the way there - no need for arable land, faster crop turns, ability to plant in more climates - but use free energy, at vastly lower capital and operating costs.
The vertical farm premise is that we really need to do climate-controlled growing very close to city centers, using warehouses or something. But the math just doesn't pencil out.
Climate controlled is a benefit. But there's very few tradeoffs to putting it 200 miles outside of a city center where real estate is cheap anyway. And that's where the smart money is going - right now, millions of square feet of climate controlled greenhouse space is being built across North America to service regional population hubs, at a cost of billions of dollars. Vastly more produce will be made in these greenhouses than vertical farms.
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This ignores nuclear power. It also ignores the fact that you can put solar panels in places that you can't put farms such as the desert.
You can put farms in the desert. Some of the most productive farmland is in deserts. Arizona and California are both noted for producing large quantities of high-quality cotton.
and those productive farms also use copious amounts of water that isn't available otherwise. (IE: piped in from rivers far away causing no shortage of ancillary problems: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/magazine/the-water-wars-o... )
It comes with its own set of problems, but deserts are not dealbreakers for agriculture as the GP suggests.
Which also brings up a question if indoor farms recycle their water? At the very least, I might expect the transpiration rate to be lower, lowering water use.
Incredible amount of lettuce is grown in Arizona as well!
nuclear, geothermal, loads of other power sources yeah.
I think vertical farming is fairly ridiculous in practice, but this article is fighting against a very obvious strawman.
I think vertical farming is fairly ridiculous in practice, but this article is fighting against a very obvious strawman.
The idea of growing something from grow lights powered by only nuclear power is intriguing to me as it is food that never got its energy from our sun. Instead, that power came from cast of atoms from merging neutron stars billions of years ago.
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exactly... you can have a farm in the middle of the city and a solar farm in the middle of the desert...
You can also have an airport in the middle of a city and an apartment complex in the middle of the desert - there's nothing that stops them technologically. The problem is that they don't make economical sense.
Vertical farm in a city fits in economical sense, as their market is there, while farmers have to haul their product to consumers.
I wonder does it actually do make economic sense? Like will the net from selling produce be larger than just renting the same floorspace for some other use? Be it residential, office, shops or manufacturing...
There are many empty spaces created because of factories moved to China or because people are ordering from amazon(and supermarkets have closed down) and even in covid times people need to eat, while rest of the business in city has been shut down.
It does not make much sense to grow wheat, but it makes sense to grow spices or other products that are transported from afar and which can be grown local indoors instead. Also, those vertical(and indoor) farms use LEDs, that consume much less energy - not to mention, that plants do not need that much light, than what is needed for humans to feel comfortable.
It does not make much sense to grow wheat, but it makes sense to grow spices or other products that are transported from afar and which can be grown local indoors instead. Also, those vertical(and indoor) farms use LEDs, that consume much less energy - not to mention, that plants do not need that much light, than what is needed for humans to feel comfortable.
This is one of those headlines that are missing the word "yet" at the end. All of the problems brought up are solvable, given enough time and resources.
Also given some f-ing ingenuity. This quote is just disingenuous: "the savings are canceled out by the land required to install the solar panels". Can't you just install solar panels vertically as well? A single web search for "vertical solar panels" brings up alternatives and even this article from 2017: https://offgridworld.com/3d-solar-panel-towers-increase-ener... . I'm sure a thorough search will solve that problem right away.
I just think the author has a beef against this type of farming and is playing dumb to validate his opinion.
Also given some f-ing ingenuity. This quote is just disingenuous: "the savings are canceled out by the land required to install the solar panels". Can't you just install solar panels vertically as well? A single web search for "vertical solar panels" brings up alternatives and even this article from 2017: https://offgridworld.com/3d-solar-panel-towers-increase-ener... . I'm sure a thorough search will solve that problem right away.
I just think the author has a beef against this type of farming and is playing dumb to validate his opinion.
> This quote is just disingenuous: "the savings are canceled out by the land required to install the solar panels". Can't you just install solar panels vertically as well?
More to the point, solar panels don't need to be installed on arable land. Solar panels can be installed in low-fertility areas like deserts; offshore wind turbines are absolutely not displacing farmland.
More to the point, solar panels don't need to be installed on arable land. Solar panels can be installed in low-fertility areas like deserts; offshore wind turbines are absolutely not displacing farmland.
On the homes, offices, and industrial parks surrounding the vertical farms as well.
One suggestion I like a lot is making walls with solar panels along highways. They'd reduce sound pollution, hinders wild animals to run into the road while at the same time producing electricity in a space not used for anything else.
It wouldn't be particularly efficient, given that most of the day less than half the panels would be receiving direct sunlight.
I think a more practical option would be to put the solar panels above the road, such as https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jun/06/tunnel-s... or https://renewsable.net/2017/06/28/south-korean-bike-highway-...
I think a more practical option would be to put the solar panels above the road, such as https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jun/06/tunnel-s... or https://renewsable.net/2017/06/28/south-korean-bike-highway-...
Why do you think that less than half the panels will receive sunlight? Also, panels are very cheap today, so their placement doesn’t mean to be optimal. I believe the cost per kWh will be cheaper with panels mounted vertically off the ground than building a roof to place them on.
"Vertical Farming Does Not Save Space [when exclusively considering solar power]"
(And wheat) - do the same calculation with rice or potatoes and I’m sure he’d have different results.
You can place solar panels in urban areas, even sidewalks and streets are being tested, besides solar roofs.
You can use nuclear, fission or fusion. You can use tidal, geothermal, wind energy.
You can concentrate-then-diffuse sunlight with parabolic mirrors and optical fibers.
You can place solar panels in deserts and transmit energy to vertical farms.
You can distribute multiple crops in multiple floors depending on their water, light and soil needs.
You can farm fish and chicken on the ground level of the same vertical farms and use their waste as fertilizer.
You can do all that, or you can keep chopping down the Amazon rainforest to plant soybeans.
You can use nuclear, fission or fusion. You can use tidal, geothermal, wind energy.
You can concentrate-then-diffuse sunlight with parabolic mirrors and optical fibers.
You can place solar panels in deserts and transmit energy to vertical farms.
You can distribute multiple crops in multiple floors depending on their water, light and soil needs.
You can farm fish and chicken on the ground level of the same vertical farms and use their waste as fertilizer.
You can do all that, or you can keep chopping down the Amazon rainforest to plant soybeans.
> All this criticism also applies to vertical farms where lettuce and tomatoes are grown. In this case, there is a significant reduction in water use. These companies are profitable, but only because the process relies on a supply of cheap fossil fuels. If solar panels supplied the energy, the extra costs and space for the energy supply would again cancel out the savings in terms of space and costs. The only advantage of a vertical farm would then be the shorter transport distances. Still, we could just as well make transport between town and countryside more sustainable.
This may be true, but I'm having trouble reconciling it with the notion I've read elsewhere that solar farms are producing some of the cheapest energy prices per KW/h. (Though maybe once you factor in energy storage it comes out more expensive than natural gas or coal?) Anyways, if these companies are currently profitable at current energy prices, that seems to imply that being profitable on 100% renewable energy isn't that much of a stretch.
(Though the criticism that lettuce and tomatoes aren't a good source of calories/fat/protein and aren't enough to feed a population, if that was your goal, remains valid.)
This may be true, but I'm having trouble reconciling it with the notion I've read elsewhere that solar farms are producing some of the cheapest energy prices per KW/h. (Though maybe once you factor in energy storage it comes out more expensive than natural gas or coal?) Anyways, if these companies are currently profitable at current energy prices, that seems to imply that being profitable on 100% renewable energy isn't that much of a stretch.
(Though the criticism that lettuce and tomatoes aren't a good source of calories/fat/protein and aren't enough to feed a population, if that was your goal, remains valid.)
For anyone who wants to get into the technical details on efficiency of growing crops under lighting, here's an informative talk from Bruce Bugsbee of Apogee Instruments:
https://youtu.be/wsaufB5F8dk
He shows that wheat, which was the example used in the article, would cost 100x more growing under lighting, but for greens and microgreens the lighting costs are only a few percent of the market value of the crop so those are very viable as indoor crops.
He shows that wheat, which was the example used in the article, would cost 100x more growing under lighting, but for greens and microgreens the lighting costs are only a few percent of the market value of the crop so those are very viable as indoor crops.
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> the sun provides free energy and the clouds free water
This is somewhat tangential to the author's point, however considering the resources from the Earth as free (not the sun) has been a disaster - environmentally, socially and economically. It's like double entry accounting but only entering on one side.
This is somewhat tangential to the author's point, however considering the resources from the Earth as free (not the sun) has been a disaster - environmentally, socially and economically. It's like double entry accounting but only entering on one side.
That being said, exactly 0 of the listed examples are actually bad to consider free. If you don't collect rain coming down, it'll just come down anyway.
Farming depleting water tables has been an issue. It's not that it won't come down anyways, but that it won't go wherever it was going next anyways.
Interfering with the hydrologic cycle can impact soil quality and may result in bunch of biome effects. It can also have good effects instead of bad effects, though. It really depends on the local dynamics.
>Interfering with the hydrologic cycle can impact soil quality and may result in bunch of biome effects.
Sure but people also need to eat.
Sure but people also need to eat.
If you collect the rain coming down, someone downstream ends up with no water.
Water is not free.
Water is not free.
Not really, since other than the small amount of water that gets shipped out in the plant, the rest is just released right back out. Besides, as long as you're only collecting the water that falls directly on you as rain, you're not taking any more than your lot; someone 'downstream' can also collect water that falls directly on them.
That's great if the entire river system is continually receiving decent amounts of rain. In most real world scenarios there's a rain-rich area in the top of the watershed, then a less rain-rich but flood-prone area, then a bit more rain closer to the seashore, then the river delta.
In Australia for example there's a practise of "flood water harvesting" where you build large earth walls along your property boundary, and collect all the water that falls on your land. Combined with irrigation downstream this means the river dries up in the space of a hundred kilometres.
There's very little water released back into the river, since that's basically wasting water as far as the agriculture industry is concerned.
In Australia for example there's a practise of "flood water harvesting" where you build large earth walls along your property boundary, and collect all the water that falls on your land. Combined with irrigation downstream this means the river dries up in the space of a hundred kilometres.
There's very little water released back into the river, since that's basically wasting water as far as the agriculture industry is concerned.
If you’re talking rain barrels, sure. But some states in America make it illegal for you to collect rainwater on your own property because it legally belongs to someone else.
Most agricultural water costs are from growing crops in areas where there is not enough rainfall: California's Imperial Valley is a desert (3 inches of rain per year) and produces $1 billion of food and cotton each year. Then all the waste runs into the Salton Sea -- another unpaid-for externality.
So, maybe someone here knows the number -- but what would the cost of a loaf of bread be (or what would the multiplicative factor on food costs be) if we restrained ourselves to growing without irrigation?
There are other reasons to farm indoors (or in vertical farms) than electricity and water too.
Pests are one such reason. They are extremely difficult to control outdoors, but far simpler to do so inside. Both fertilizer and pesticide treatments (if necessary) can be far more specific - e.g. less wasteful and environmentally damaging) when done indoors. Similarly, inclement weather generally does not affect indoor farms.
There's also my favorite argument: if we're ever going to try to colonize space or other planets, we better be damned good at growing plants artificially. IMO every dollar spent improving this space gets us one step closer to unlinking our future from Earth's.
Pests are one such reason. They are extremely difficult to control outdoors, but far simpler to do so inside. Both fertilizer and pesticide treatments (if necessary) can be far more specific - e.g. less wasteful and environmentally damaging) when done indoors. Similarly, inclement weather generally does not affect indoor farms.
There's also my favorite argument: if we're ever going to try to colonize space or other planets, we better be damned good at growing plants artificially. IMO every dollar spent improving this space gets us one step closer to unlinking our future from Earth's.
>Vertical Farming Does Not Save Space
Vertical farming in its current form doesn't save space. I use regular recycled containers, milk jugs, cans etc. with a DIY mount on one of the walls of my house. Last season's harvest was about 80-90 pounds of tomatoes, multiple harvests of beets, lettuce, spinach and herbs. The wall is almost 20 ft x 20 ft. Even if my spacing is double that of regular farming, that's still a lot of space saved. Sure, not all crops can be vertically farmed, but plenty of them can be and thereby saving precious land.
Vertical farming in its current form doesn't save space. I use regular recycled containers, milk jugs, cans etc. with a DIY mount on one of the walls of my house. Last season's harvest was about 80-90 pounds of tomatoes, multiple harvests of beets, lettuce, spinach and herbs. The wall is almost 20 ft x 20 ft. Even if my spacing is double that of regular farming, that's still a lot of space saved. Sure, not all crops can be vertically farmed, but plenty of them can be and thereby saving precious land.
Ugh. This is really shallow analysis.
* Solar is the only form of renewable energy where this is a potential problem and there are already solutions that actually exist. Solar farms can also be vertical (look up 3D solar farms) or even on water (look up floating solar farms), which avoids this supposed land problem altogether.
* Even if we use traditional "2D" solar farms on land, space is not all equal and most of it isn't arable. With vertical farming, all that previously non-arable land is now usable for farming indirectly via solar panels. We still get desired effect of increasing our capacity to grow food in the face of shrinking available arable land, which is the whole point.
While I think this is an early technology that will be pretty niche for a long time, i'm glad it's being developed and has potential applications today. It's my view that vertical closed system farming and fusion power (for desalinization in particular) becoming practical on an industrial scale is vital for our survival as a species in the coming centuries. If the predictions on topsoil erosion and climate change are even partially correct we're going to need this technology figured out.
* Solar is the only form of renewable energy where this is a potential problem and there are already solutions that actually exist. Solar farms can also be vertical (look up 3D solar farms) or even on water (look up floating solar farms), which avoids this supposed land problem altogether.
* Even if we use traditional "2D" solar farms on land, space is not all equal and most of it isn't arable. With vertical farming, all that previously non-arable land is now usable for farming indirectly via solar panels. We still get desired effect of increasing our capacity to grow food in the face of shrinking available arable land, which is the whole point.
While I think this is an early technology that will be pretty niche for a long time, i'm glad it's being developed and has potential applications today. It's my view that vertical closed system farming and fusion power (for desalinization in particular) becoming practical on an industrial scale is vital for our survival as a species in the coming centuries. If the predictions on topsoil erosion and climate change are even partially correct we're going to need this technology figured out.
It doesn't grow many crops, either. I can see it being useful for restricted spaces like balconies or roof top gardens in cities, also because unlike soil gardening the weight is much less even accounting for the hydroponic growing solution. And of course, the gem of the new "industry," the place in Jackson which is a special case, tucked away up in the mountains where it can be hard to get in and out without delays, but wealthy enough to have practically every luxury brand in the world operating a store or two.
To me though the issue with hydroponically grown produce, vertical OR horizontal, is they taste insipid. I'm not sure if anybody's done a study on, say, lycopene in tomatoes grown hydroponically vs. conventionally but I'd guess there's less of everything in the hydros. This is a known problem in the normal supermarkets and people have been complaining about bland veggies for many years.
I will admit it's useful and can make money in certain situations. And it's funny as a gag, too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En3TYdWfwaw
To me though the issue with hydroponically grown produce, vertical OR horizontal, is they taste insipid. I'm not sure if anybody's done a study on, say, lycopene in tomatoes grown hydroponically vs. conventionally but I'd guess there's less of everything in the hydros. This is a known problem in the normal supermarkets and people have been complaining about bland veggies for many years.
I will admit it's useful and can make money in certain situations. And it's funny as a gag, too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En3TYdWfwaw
My understanding was part of the reason we get bland veggies in the supermarket is that selection has been for being able to stay good for a longer period and not be damaged during shipping. If vertical farms have less time between harvesting and actual eating, maybe we can pick tastier varietals?
That may be the reason for bland veggies in the supermarkets, but my personal experience with hydroponics is that they’re noticeable blander than what you get at the supermarket.
If your goal is better veggies, it is often possible to source them just by trying different grocery stores. Some grocery stores rely heavily on larger (national) distributors, and other stores reliably provide a decent selection of locally sourced foods.
If your goal is better veggies, it is often possible to source them just by trying different grocery stores. Some grocery stores rely heavily on larger (national) distributors, and other stores reliably provide a decent selection of locally sourced foods.
What if the taste of the particular strain isn't what causes blandness, but growing it in water with plant food mix instead of soil is? It might be possible to develop choose tastier breeds for hydroponic use but it's likely that even they would taste even better if grown in real soil on a farm, with all the added nutrient intake that sustains.
So far the most success has been with fast-growing salad mixes and such, and to me it resembles an offshoot of the fresh sprout industry more than a heavy lifting type of agriculture meant to sustain the billions.
So far the most success has been with fast-growing salad mixes and such, and to me it resembles an offshoot of the fresh sprout industry more than a heavy lifting type of agriculture meant to sustain the billions.
> The vertical farms that have been commercially active for several years all focus on the same crops. These are agricultural products with a high water content, such as lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and herbs. However, these are not crops that can feed a city. They contain hardly any carbohydrates, proteins, or fats. To feed a city, it takes grains, legumes, root crops, and oil crops.
They may not "feed a city" in a raw caloric/survival sense, but they're certainly consumed in cities and if that continues to be true, they'll be grown somewhere.
The question shouldn't be "can we grow subsistence crops vertically?"
Rather, the question is whether vertical farming can provide any crop more efficiently along any of several axes (and at sufficient scale for us to bother talking about). If something can be usefully grown vertically, netting us realizable gains in terms of cost, land use, freshness, price, carbon, or some other metric, then by all means, why not?
They may not "feed a city" in a raw caloric/survival sense, but they're certainly consumed in cities and if that continues to be true, they'll be grown somewhere.
The question shouldn't be "can we grow subsistence crops vertically?"
Rather, the question is whether vertical farming can provide any crop more efficiently along any of several axes (and at sufficient scale for us to bother talking about). If something can be usefully grown vertically, netting us realizable gains in terms of cost, land use, freshness, price, carbon, or some other metric, then by all means, why not?
An inefficient art installation uses a lot of electricity and water to grow wheat in a single layer (where's the "vertical" part?), but I'm not seeing what that has to do with any actual efforts at vertical farming.
A lot of people seem to be misunderstanding the goals of vertical farming. It’s not to save space, we have more than enough of that. It’s to stop produce from being shipped hundreds of miles on trucks which greatly increases greenhouse emissions and results in less fresh produce.
Transportation is the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in our food’s supply chain. When you hear about beef having such a big carbon footprint it’s also accounting for the massive footprint of transporting all that beef as well as it’s food. If you can cut that down you would be greatly reducing the carbon footprint of your food.
Transportation is the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in our food’s supply chain. When you hear about beef having such a big carbon footprint it’s also accounting for the massive footprint of transporting all that beef as well as it’s food. If you can cut that down you would be greatly reducing the carbon footprint of your food.
That's an uphill battle. Been mostly solved - truck and train transport is pretty cheap per item. They're refrigerated and probably spend less time in the truck, than in the store and your fridge.
Bit Ag is ... BIG. We're not gonna beat it at scale with a few pods on the balcony. Better find a different reason.
Bit Ag is ... BIG. We're not gonna beat it at scale with a few pods on the balcony. Better find a different reason.
So wouldn't urban agriculture be a "wiser" more "open access" way forward?https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_agriculture
I enjoy the idea of mixed companion planting combined with a pick and pay system ....we could even do it labyrinth style :-)
Vertical faming has very little appeal to anyone, other than a small percentage technophiles. I don't think it's the future, and it's fine. It's good to have vertical farms, but there's nothing wrong if traditional agriculture supplies most food. Vertical farming is successful for a handful of items. There are products, like tomatoes or strawberries, where hydroponically grown vegetables don't taste as well. So, this shouldn't be either or discussion. All methods of agriculture have the right to exist.
A more long term viewpoint would be interesting.
All the affirmations in the article are done with the current state of the art.
Extensive farming has improved for thousands of years.
Vertical farming is very new and room for improvement in a controlled environnement could be huge.
Moreover, the main critic compare solar to fossil energy costs (in dollar and space). What about going nuclear ?
Moreover we always learn a lot when we go sideways. What about useful discoveries for space exploration ?
Moreover we always learn a lot when we go sideways. What about useful discoveries for space exploration ?
Vertical farming will almost certainly not generate the mass of calories to feed the world. But that doesn't mean it cannot be useful. Many vegetables are already grown under very controlled conditions and it doesn't take much fantasy to consider, e.g., tomatoes from a nearby vertical farm more environmentally friendly than their counterparts grown in some remote sunny place.
But of course, logistics might get cheaper as well with clean energy, so it's not guaranteed, either.
But of course, logistics might get cheaper as well with clean energy, so it's not guaranteed, either.
Why can't large grocery stores be built taller to grow vegetables horiz/vertical airoponically on an upper level? No need to raise disgusting "pretty" vegetables that are picked green, artificially-ripened, and driven thousands of miles.
Oh they certainly can. But they have to compete against huge greenhouse complexes. So basically you are trading logistics vs. economics of scale. I don't know who would win in every case.
One form of vertical farming that does save space is Agroforestry, in which traditional crops are grown in a system with trees. Plants have various solar requirements — some are shade tolerant. This means you can have crops, shrubs, trees, all occupying an area of land. This was first explored in the book Tree Crops: A permanent Agriculture, in the 1930s. If you lookup closely at that subtitle, you’ll see the roots of the word Permaculture.
I think there are several misconceptions in this article, the first of which is the assumption that a prototype will be as efficient as the final product. Sure, the prototype does seem to use a lot of energy, but will that be the case for later iterations? Surely it would be the first things engineers would try to minimize, since it's a direct cost associated with production.
More importantly, it does not really matter much if the area used for the production does not save on space. That's not really the point, although it would be nice. The point is to bring agricultural production closer to urban environments, in order to save on the energy cost related to the shipping of said product, and possibly to bring far fresher products to customers. The article seems to portray that as a pipe dream. Again, these are things that can surely be minimized in order to compete with shipping between rural and urban areas.
With that out of the way, yes, currently urban farms do seem pretty ineffective and useless. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't explore and develop these ideas. Once upon a time cars were pretty inefficient toys of the ultra rich too.
More importantly, it does not really matter much if the area used for the production does not save on space. That's not really the point, although it would be nice. The point is to bring agricultural production closer to urban environments, in order to save on the energy cost related to the shipping of said product, and possibly to bring far fresher products to customers. The article seems to portray that as a pipe dream. Again, these are things that can surely be minimized in order to compete with shipping between rural and urban areas.
With that out of the way, yes, currently urban farms do seem pretty ineffective and useless. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't explore and develop these ideas. Once upon a time cars were pretty inefficient toys of the ultra rich too.
> but if the electricity for the lighting comes from solar panels, then the savings are canceled out by the land required to install the solar panels
Yes but you don't need to install your solar panels in arable land. In fact it's better than you don't, because it's cheaper (duh!) Or you're running it on wind or other power sources.
It's actually not surprising that "biological solar power" will kinda match the "electrical solar power" but that should not be the downside of vertical farms (and you know, you can have your solar power come through... windows)
And yes nobody is growing wheat on indoor farms.
TL:DR; the conclusion of the article is "The problem with agriculture is not that it happens in the countryside. The problem is that it relies heavily on fossil fuels. " which is a much more valid point than "vertical farms don't save space"
Yes but you don't need to install your solar panels in arable land. In fact it's better than you don't, because it's cheaper (duh!) Or you're running it on wind or other power sources.
It's actually not surprising that "biological solar power" will kinda match the "electrical solar power" but that should not be the downside of vertical farms (and you know, you can have your solar power come through... windows)
And yes nobody is growing wheat on indoor farms.
TL:DR; the conclusion of the article is "The problem with agriculture is not that it happens in the countryside. The problem is that it relies heavily on fossil fuels. " which is a much more valid point than "vertical farms don't save space"
isn't vertical farming just moving land that was in the horizontal direction, into the vertical direction then creating a complication where the plants grown under the top rows need to be fed by an artificial source of light?
I mean I think this is actually pretty logical because you can't place the solar panel above the top plants because then you are losing the advantage typical horizontal farming gets from being able to directly be fed by the sun, so then you have to place the solar panel next to the plant?
The real question is whether this can save space, is whether you can generate more energy from a solar panel that takes up the same amount of space a plant would require if planted horizontally, than said plant could absorb from the sun directly.
Plants take up much more space than one would expect because their roots branch out further than the actual circumference of the actual plant body itself. So in that way a lot of sunlight is wasted because it hits the extra area of soil the roots need but the actual plant body doesn't. Now if instead of hitting soil, it is instead hitting a solar panel then the general question is whether or not this is creating more efficient use of the sun, because even with a minor improvement in efficiency you should "theoretically" be able to save a considerable amount of space when growing at scale.
Whether it will be cheaper to grow this way, probably not because with vertical farming obviously will come with a ton of logistical problems when it comes to harvesting or maintenance/construction of infrastructure. But I don't see how growing three plants vertically with a solar panel that feeds the bottom two is technically not saving space unless you need more area of solar panels sitting next to them than all 3 plants would consume had you just planted them all next to each other.
In other words would you need 2 or more solar panels + the sun to feed 3 horizontal plants? If so then just plant them horizontally and let the sun do all the work.
I mean I think this is actually pretty logical because you can't place the solar panel above the top plants because then you are losing the advantage typical horizontal farming gets from being able to directly be fed by the sun, so then you have to place the solar panel next to the plant?
The real question is whether this can save space, is whether you can generate more energy from a solar panel that takes up the same amount of space a plant would require if planted horizontally, than said plant could absorb from the sun directly.
Plants take up much more space than one would expect because their roots branch out further than the actual circumference of the actual plant body itself. So in that way a lot of sunlight is wasted because it hits the extra area of soil the roots need but the actual plant body doesn't. Now if instead of hitting soil, it is instead hitting a solar panel then the general question is whether or not this is creating more efficient use of the sun, because even with a minor improvement in efficiency you should "theoretically" be able to save a considerable amount of space when growing at scale.
Whether it will be cheaper to grow this way, probably not because with vertical farming obviously will come with a ton of logistical problems when it comes to harvesting or maintenance/construction of infrastructure. But I don't see how growing three plants vertically with a solar panel that feeds the bottom two is technically not saving space unless you need more area of solar panels sitting next to them than all 3 plants would consume had you just planted them all next to each other.
In other words would you need 2 or more solar panels + the sun to feed 3 horizontal plants? If so then just plant them horizontally and let the sun do all the work.
This article makes a mistake by assuming that an installation (TheFarm) represents the best we can do with vertical or indoor farming. Of course an exploratory art installation isn't going to be particularly cost conscious - it's not designed for that, not really.
Instead, the obvious counterpoint is to look at currently vertical farming installations. The one I'm most aware of is Plenty, which has 350x the yield of standard outdoor farming. At that level, it's leafy green products are organic and cost competitive (i.e., the same price) as other organic spinach/kale/arugula brands.
This is really substantially understating the case for Plenty, but I don't think I can say much more and I would encourage anyone interested to just go look up what they and other vertical farming operations are doing.
Instead, the obvious counterpoint is to look at currently vertical farming installations. The one I'm most aware of is Plenty, which has 350x the yield of standard outdoor farming. At that level, it's leafy green products are organic and cost competitive (i.e., the same price) as other organic spinach/kale/arugula brands.
This is really substantially understating the case for Plenty, but I don't think I can say much more and I would encourage anyone interested to just go look up what they and other vertical farming operations are doing.
There is lots of land, at least in the USA, covered in parking lots, buildings, roads that would be excellent places for solar panels. But acreage of cultivated land peaked in the Fifties. We could till far more land than we do now. In the USA, vertical farming is a solution in search of a problem.
It might be the same space needed, but in another area. It's much easier to transport electricity than goods and definitively better for the air quality.
If you can produce electricity 50 km away and then produce produce in the city center, you are sparing the transport costs.
If you can produce electricity 50 km away and then produce produce in the city center, you are sparing the transport costs.
I feel like this whole thing is like arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
We have a shit tonne of land. And we already grow vastly more food than we need. So why do we care? Aside from maybe building farms on Mars, what is the expected use of this tech?
We have a shit tonne of land. And we already grow vastly more food than we need. So why do we care? Aside from maybe building farms on Mars, what is the expected use of this tech?
Lack of diversity and vegetables are expensive ; the former leads to overuse of all those "-ides"(and fertilizer) and the 2nd to the obesity epidemic, because derivatives from corn are so much cheaper...
This classic example is why some journalists need some real good education in Economics.
How many sq feet of land do you need to grow say 1000KG of wheat ? That number would widely vary. In Nevada that number would be really really huge compared to say fertile soil of Kansas. But with a vertical farming that number can be made much more uniform all across the geography. With a vertical farm someone in Nevada might put to use the vast empty land they have to produce wheat.
At the end of the day, success of vertical farming would come from such efficient usage of land and in my opinion even if authors narrow case of growing wheat using solar panels comes to fruition would still lead to more efficient use of land
How many sq feet of land do you need to grow say 1000KG of wheat ? That number would widely vary. In Nevada that number would be really really huge compared to say fertile soil of Kansas. But with a vertical farming that number can be made much more uniform all across the geography. With a vertical farm someone in Nevada might put to use the vast empty land they have to produce wheat.
At the end of the day, success of vertical farming would come from such efficient usage of land and in my opinion even if authors narrow case of growing wheat using solar panels comes to fruition would still lead to more efficient use of land
I do not want to repeat what other said but I do not see this as problem there are deserts in the world, which are not used for food production and they are have not been use for anything else in that sense. Nothing lives there so there is nothing that could be endangered.
Total area needed to power entire world with solar would be ~ 532,900 square kilometres (square with sides 730 km) roughly area of Spain.
Space of just 3 deserts is:
Sahara 9,000,000+
Australian Desert 2,700,000
Arabian Desert 2,330,000
Gobi Desert 1,295,000
Further more, vertical farms are not just about space, correct me if I am wrong but vertical farm use less water and they have a better control of pests without usage of chemicals, they are easier to work with and automate food production.
Total area needed to power entire world with solar would be ~ 532,900 square kilometres (square with sides 730 km) roughly area of Spain.
Space of just 3 deserts is:
Sahara 9,000,000+
Australian Desert 2,700,000
Arabian Desert 2,330,000
Gobi Desert 1,295,000
Further more, vertical farms are not just about space, correct me if I am wrong but vertical farm use less water and they have a better control of pests without usage of chemicals, they are easier to work with and automate food production.
> These companies are profitable, but only because the process relies on a supply of cheap fossil fuels. If solar panels supplied the energy, the extra costs and space for the energy supply would again cancel out the savings in terms of space and costs.
Given that solar has become so cheap that new solar is able to compete with existing fossil fuel power this conclusion seems outdated. Solar can be placed in many places where it's not possible to plant in to the ground and it also doesn't account for power from other renewable energy sources that aren't available to plants in a field ie. Wind and Hydro
Given that solar has become so cheap that new solar is able to compete with existing fossil fuel power this conclusion seems outdated. Solar can be placed in many places where it's not possible to plant in to the ground and it also doesn't account for power from other renewable energy sources that aren't available to plants in a field ie. Wind and Hydro
This article seems to be making a few assumptions that might not be correct. It assumes that all land is the same so it doesn’t matter if agriculture is replaced by solar panels. But this isn’t true. Some land is fertile, other land might not be. So if fertile agricultural land is replaced by vertical farming powered by solar panels in the desert, that fertile land can now be reclaimed. It could be used to grow a forest, certainly something you couldn’t do in the desert.
Secondly, it assumes that there’s some limit on vertical farming. But it’s possible to build several storeys on the same land.
Secondly, it assumes that there’s some limit on vertical farming. But it’s possible to build several storeys on the same land.
The headline seems poor, the article not well structured.
Space isn't necessarily the major conservation of vertical farms. As stated in the article, water, soil, transport are all concerns in the total cost compensation, as are the current externalized costs in traditional agriculture loss of biodiversity destruction, soil erosion, and pesticide introduction.
Finally... they're growing crops totally indoors? Um... windows?
Solar panels can be placed on unused land (rooftops, deserts, etc), the false conclusion is that solar would be used on farmland or high biodiversity.
And there's wind.
What a train wreck. Almost a hit piece.
Space isn't necessarily the major conservation of vertical farms. As stated in the article, water, soil, transport are all concerns in the total cost compensation, as are the current externalized costs in traditional agriculture loss of biodiversity destruction, soil erosion, and pesticide introduction.
Finally... they're growing crops totally indoors? Um... windows?
Solar panels can be placed on unused land (rooftops, deserts, etc), the false conclusion is that solar would be used on farmland or high biodiversity.
And there's wind.
What a train wreck. Almost a hit piece.
The Article said space is only saved if cheap fossil fuels are used instead of solar panels.
If the vertical farm is powered by wind, the land the turbines are on can be used for other purposes like non vertical agriculture.
If the vertical farm is powered by wind, the land the turbines are on can be used for other purposes like non vertical agriculture.
> Artificial lighting saves land because plants can be grown above each other, but if the electricity for the lighting comes from solar panels, then the savings are canceled out by the land required to install the solar panels.
Solar panels don't have to be on land; they can be on buildings. Moreover, they don't have to be on land that is arable. Moreover, solar is not the only way to avoid fossil fuels in the quest of electricity.
Also, it's cheaper to transport electricity from a distant electric farm, than vegetables from a distant vegetable farm.
Solar panels don't have to be on land; they can be on buildings. Moreover, they don't have to be on land that is arable. Moreover, solar is not the only way to avoid fossil fuels in the quest of electricity.
Also, it's cheaper to transport electricity from a distant electric farm, than vegetables from a distant vegetable farm.
> paradox unless fossil
Or some of the other many non solar panel renewable energy sources, like gaining electricity from water (fall or sea tide) wind or geothermal sources.
And while atom power is human unfriendly (i.e. humans are weak against it) it not so much climate unfriendly and even nature itself can live fairly fine with the radiation pollution they might cause in the worst case. Sure humans are not fine, we have societies and are long lived enough so that the cancer caused from such radiation poltion is a serious problem.
Or some of the other many non solar panel renewable energy sources, like gaining electricity from water (fall or sea tide) wind or geothermal sources.
And while atom power is human unfriendly (i.e. humans are weak against it) it not so much climate unfriendly and even nature itself can live fairly fine with the radiation pollution they might cause in the worst case. Sure humans are not fine, we have societies and are long lived enough so that the cancer caused from such radiation poltion is a serious problem.
But how much space would you save if all the veggies that are vertical farming friendly are moved indoors?
Does everything have to grow indoors? no, but we need to save the space for crops that need it.
Does everything have to grow indoors? no, but we need to save the space for crops that need it.
Consider countries like Spain where outdoor farming is no longer possible due to climate change. Indoor ag, of whatever kind, will likely be essential in many places.
> Artificial lighting saves land because plants can be grown above each other, but if the electricity for the lighting comes from solar panels, then the savings are canceled out by the land required to install the solar panels.
Is this true?
Plants use specific ranges of light (narrow bands of red and blue). Solar panels absorb a broad array of wavelengths. So isn't it at least possible that one solar panel could produce more than its size worth of productive sunlight for the purposes of photosynthesis?
Is this true?
Plants use specific ranges of light (narrow bands of red and blue). Solar panels absorb a broad array of wavelengths. So isn't it at least possible that one solar panel could produce more than its size worth of productive sunlight for the purposes of photosynthesis?
Assuming it has to be powered by solar panels is a bad assumption.
What else is there? Nuclear? I'm with you but it'll take decades before we realize that solar and wind just don't scale and decades more to rebuild and expand nuclear infrastructure. In the short term, it's either natural gas, wind/solar, and hydro (if your geography allows for it).
something interesting from biology that no one is aware of...
plants that do photosynthesis can be stacked if they are different enough to grab different parts of the visual spectrum...it happens in oceans and tropics etc.
metal only get's electron excited in the uv light range and thus cannot be stacked.
Vertical farms do not stack those plants that grab different areas of visible spectrum as plants generally are dominant in one visible spectrum area more than the other one..red vs blue vs green
whereas algae specialize by the visible spectrum they grab for photosynthesis ie red, blue, and green algae...color reflected form them is not the color they use to photosynthesis ie red algae do not use red but a different color to photosynthesis
We are doing it wrong
we should build a bio-battery film of different algae and stack them to generate electricity from the sun instead of metal solar panels. Even transparency and other improvements only gets solar to 45% effectiveness...with algae we could get much higher
plants that do photosynthesis can be stacked if they are different enough to grab different parts of the visual spectrum...it happens in oceans and tropics etc.
metal only get's electron excited in the uv light range and thus cannot be stacked.
Vertical farms do not stack those plants that grab different areas of visible spectrum as plants generally are dominant in one visible spectrum area more than the other one..red vs blue vs green
whereas algae specialize by the visible spectrum they grab for photosynthesis ie red, blue, and green algae...color reflected form them is not the color they use to photosynthesis ie red algae do not use red but a different color to photosynthesis
We are doing it wrong
we should build a bio-battery film of different algae and stack them to generate electricity from the sun instead of metal solar panels. Even transparency and other improvements only gets solar to 45% effectiveness...with algae we could get much higher
Vertical Farming saves space at the expense of electricity. I think the argument against them has to be along the lines of this trade-off >>possibly<< being a net negative for the environment.
No one cares if the net result is using more space if this means farms closer to the city and larger solar farms far away.
No one cares if the net result is using more space if this means farms closer to the city and larger solar farms far away.
>No one cares if the net result is using more space if this means farms closer to the city and larger solar farms far away.
Solar energy is highly diffuse, so you need huge swaths of land to collect it, which has detrimental impact on any ecosystem you place them in.
Solar energy is highly diffuse, so you need huge swaths of land to collect it, which has detrimental impact on any ecosystem you place them in.
@maxharris pointed out the article’s fib about power generation, but the ignore the other important aspect.
Vertical farming does not require the farm be in the same location as the power generation. This allows production closer to population centers, and in climates where production would be otherwise non viable.
Vertical farming does not require the farm be in the same location as the power generation. This allows production closer to population centers, and in climates where production would be otherwise non viable.
The blog appears to be talking about 2 very different things, space utilization and the tradeoff of electricity consumption. I have to disagree about the statement it does not save space. Vertical farming is a means to utilize space in a new dimension, hence the word, vertical.
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I'm going to stop reading these vertical farming "hit pieces" as informative about farming and, instead, informative of how worried incumbent agribusiness is about any entrants to their markets.
Vertical farming isn't necessarily about saving space. It's also about using typically urban spaces to grow food, where before there was none. It's about pest and predator mitigation. And so on.
i think one thing the author is missing is that power is much easier and cheaper to transport than either food or water. the best places to grow food are not always near people and a lot of unused land has reasons for its state. installing solar power to create production in the desert is vastly cheaper then pumping water there, and then transporting the food back to populated areas.
i can think of about 50 other inputs the author failed to include, i don't think it's as simple as comparing square footage efficiency.
i can think of about 50 other inputs the author failed to include, i don't think it's as simple as comparing square footage efficiency.
One thing to look at for any agricultural system is the long-term effect on soil fertility. Are you building up healthy soil and biomass over time, or diminishing it?
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Chloroplasts are a pretty efficient way to capture and store solar energy already and they don’t produce nearly as much toxic waste as solar panel manufacturing.
Even after decoupling energy acquisition and production if you don't use your resources well, blame the guy planning it.
LCOE and chemical footprint of vertical farming probably only makes sense if you're growing non-calorically dense foods.
It may save transports though. Trucks and associated infrastructure takes space. Not sure how the equation works out though.
*using solar as a power source.
I wish they'd include those important parts in the title.
I wish they'd include those important parts in the title.
I feel like whenever I hear about people interested in vertical farming, it's typically centered around greens, or something where freshness is highly important. Is this responding to some group of people who are actually enthusiastic about indoor vertical farming of cereal crops?
Notably absent from this is discussion of transport, storage and refrigeration. People have long complained about the 3000 mile ceasar salad. Is it better to grow lettuce and tomatoes far away and ship them to mostly urban consumers, or is it better to grow those in/near urban areas for local consumption? This is a real question; if someone has numbers on the per-serving energy cost of refrigerated shipping, and how they compare to the lighting energy cost, I think that would be an important comparison.
Do they really need 600 watts of light for one square meter?
IMO the real problem is the decline of fertile soil.
It gives the possibilities to re-purpose the space.
Weed. They grow weed like that. Not wheat.
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>"Artificial lighting saves land because plants can be grown above each other, but if the electricity for the lighting comes from solar panels, then the savings are canceled out by the land required to install the solar panels"
Seems disingenuous.
1) Solar panels can take up space in areas not useable for farming, like areas with too little water and too much sun.
2) Wind energy is moving offshore taking no space from farming at all.
Seems disingenuous.
1) Solar panels can take up space in areas not useable for farming, like areas with too little water and too much sun.
2) Wind energy is moving offshore taking no space from farming at all.
Making thousands of commuters drive past your 'city' farm to get to work burns a lot of fuel too.
It's hard to know what to do with people who don't get even that.
I guess get them to pay $$$ for their energy intensive crops in their fancy cafes. Which if they are happy doesn't make that bad. The environmental movement doesn't help the environment, but it does make people happy, if they would just stop proselytizing it'd be ok.
It's hard to know what to do with people who don't get even that.
I guess get them to pay $$$ for their energy intensive crops in their fancy cafes. Which if they are happy doesn't make that bad. The environmental movement doesn't help the environment, but it does make people happy, if they would just stop proselytizing it'd be ok.
An interesting proposal was discussed by some people on Twitter recently. They discussed it around using Bitcoin mining to create a larger demand for electricity when prices are cheap. Then when an event happens such as in Texas recently, electricity prices would go up, causing mining rigs to turn off since it's no longer economical. There would then be more available electricity for heating homes & businesses.
One would assume vertical farming could be discussed in the same situation. Plants, like mining rigs could go offline for a few days without a major impact I assume, when prices sky rocket due to a major event such as a heat wave or blizzard. Keeping the vertical farm building at a reasonable temperature would be another factor here.
One would assume vertical farming could be discussed in the same situation. Plants, like mining rigs could go offline for a few days without a major impact I assume, when prices sky rocket due to a major event such as a heat wave or blizzard. Keeping the vertical farm building at a reasonable temperature would be another factor here.
So, burn tons of fossil fuels to mine bitcoin, thus forcing tons of fossil fuels to be burned to build new generating capacity? Nope, can't think of any issues with it.
We waste tons of energy every day on useless things. I'm not trying to argue Bitcoins energy usage vs alternatives. To me the thought provoking part is increases demand but for things that could be turned off for a while. I think vertical farming is especially interesting in that case.
Yes we want things to use less energy & be more efficient. I hope that goes without saying.
Yes we want things to use less energy & be more efficient. I hope that goes without saying.
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This entire piece is based on the assumption that the only sources of energy are solar panels and fossil fuels. This is false. According to the US Department of Energy, 19.6% of the energy produced in 2019 is nuclear. In that same year, 7.1% was from wind, 7.0% was hydroelectric, 1.4% from biomass, 0.4% geothermal. Only 1.7% was photovoltaics! https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427
If we look into the relatively near future, fusion energy is going to account for a rapidly increasing share of energy production by the end of this decade. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4