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Vertical farming does not save space

lowtechmagazine.com

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Re: Vertical farming does not save space

#191

Post by ant6n »

notatoad wrote: post #178
marshray wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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?

The danger of launch failure making the planet uninhabitable.

Re: Vertical farming does not save space

#192

Post by choeger »

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.

Re: Vertical farming does not save space

#193

Post by shuckles »

dale_glass wrote: post #171
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Isn’t the issue that the windmill also needs a large battery to meet demand?

Re: Vertical farming does not save space

#194

Post by JoeAltmaier »

SimianLogic2 wrote: post #43

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…

Is that including amortizing the space it uses in the house? That's not really free.

Re: Vertical farming does not save space

#195

Post by notatoad »

ant6n wrote: post #191
notatoad wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

Re: Vertical farming does not save space

#196

Post by JoeAltmaier »

OliverGilan wrote: post #75

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 foo…

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.

Re: Vertical farming does not save space

#197

Post by e_y_ »

Ma8ee wrote: post #96
Majromax wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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-...

Re: Vertical farming does not save space

#198

Post by tshaddox »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #182
tshaddox wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Vertical farming does not save space

#199

Post by choeger »

notatoad wrote: post #178
marshray wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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?

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.

Re: Vertical farming does not save space

#200

Post by manfredo »

wffurr wrote: post #110
charlesju wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wh…

I have this giant pile of nuclear waste that's stored haphazardly and needs to be dealt with at a cost of $XXX billions of dollars. I know! I'll keep shoveling more waste into the haphazard piles! Perfect!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_re...

You're overstating the cost of waste storage by two orders of magnitude. It's sealed into concrete cylinders. This doesn't look very haphazard to me: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Nuclear_...

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