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Solarpunk is plants on buildings (slrpnk.net)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/memes@slrpnk.net
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[–] 1 point 4 months ago (5 children)

More radiation, more hydrogen splitting. Anyway it was just an idea which you took to imply I don't even understand what fusion is.

But the overall point is that you don't need anything like this. If you stop producing meat and resource or energy inefficient foods like almonds we have more than enough land to feed even 20 billion people. There is no need to invent superfood or vertical farming. It's not the critical path. Much more important is saving heating and cooling in buildings and reducing the amount of transport and infrastructure spread we need.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (4 children)

    Except fusion waste isn't radioactive, it's just helium. The fuel is literally already hydrogen, so I don't know why you would even want to fuse hydrogen into helium just to try to split a water molecule. You literally do electrolysis to split the water to get the hydrogen to use in a fusion reactor to make helium and release a ton of energy. There's no radioactive material involved.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (3 children)

    This is just speculation, more like a "if someone figures it out". We don't have working fusion yet anyway. Fusion does produce radiation, which can be used to split additional water. Or maybe this might be impossible with a fusion reactor setup. Normally the radiation is used to heat water and convert it into steam to drive a turbine. But specifically to grow food, hydrogen production could be more efficient. Say in a space colony too far away from the sun.

    Otherwise, light and photosynthesis will basically always be the most efficient to grow calories for sustenance.

    BTW there is also the concept of aneutronic fusion to directly generate electricity without steam turbines.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (2 children)

    There's no "figuring it out." Fusion waste isn't radioactive. You can't do radiolysis with it.

    There's a difference between radiation and radioactivity. Heat and light are radiation. Radiolysis requires radioactivity.

    It's not "more efficient" to take hydrogen, apply fusion to turn it into helium and generate power, and then use that power to "split" water molecules.

    You already have the hydrogen from doing the electrolysis. The closest thing you could do is capture the power generated by the fusion and convert it into electricity, and then use that electricity to do more electrolysis. I'd have to look at the specific numbers to calculate loss, because fusion is weird and generates enormous amounts of energy, but it also isn't captured with 100% efficiency. And besides, it takes power to run the fusion reactors, which is currently the main hurdle in the way of running it at scale.

    If you're in a space colony though, water is too precious to be splitting into hydrogen and helium. You would probably just get your hydrogen directly from a gas giant instead.

    Otherwise, light and photosynthesis will basically always be the most efficient to grow calories for sustenance.

    So we've come full circle, and you've admitted that nuclear fusion cannot generate calories. Great.

    You also continue to ignore macro- and micro- nutrients. Dietary requirements are more than just "calories."

    Lastly, aside from aneutronic fusion being hardly more experimental than it is theoretical, that's a complete red herring and has nothing to do with what we're talking about.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    So we’ve come full circle, and you’ve admitted that nuclear fusion cannot generate calories. Great.

    Sure it can't, because it doesn't exist. I said that outside some fantastical sci-fi technology like fusion directly producing hydrogen, sunlight will always be more efficient to produce calories. And you only need a radiation source for radiolysis, radioactive waste is only one source of it.

    Every single method we have to produce chemical energy is less efficient than sunlight and plants.

    Because solar panels, LEDs, hydrolysis, all have low efficiency. You loose massive amounts of energy and therefor space when your goal is to produce calories.

    And sure we need vegetables and for that vertical farming is fine, great even, except for calories. But if we wanted to solve climate change, the infrastructure like solar panels and pumps contain a lot of embedded energy that you could save. It's only profitable under capitalism and land hoarding and in a society where we consume way too much meat.

    One economic collapse or global conflict and all our complex supply chains go away. So if we're dependent on tractors and heavy machinery and fossil fuel and fertilizers, or on or robots and electronics or LEDs or solar panels just to produce food - the vast majority of people remain slaves to industry for their very basic needs.

    The real solarpunk for me is potato farming. Or some sci-fi genetic engineering to produce shrubs that produce all sorts of food without needing tilling or fertilizer.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    So much of what you're saying is actually an argument in favor of warehouse farming and you don't even realize it, that it's obvious you've never read the requisite literature, and I'm done trying to explain this to you.

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