University of Texas-led team solves a big problem for fusion energy

Re:University of Texas-led team solves a big problem for fus... by thinkcontext on Monday May 12, 2025 @12:54PM (#43965089)

40% of US corn acreage is used for something like 10% of gasoline. This is an unfathomable amount of land. Solar yields 20x the amount of energy per acre. On top of that many are finding efficiencies of colocating solar with agricultural activities (agrivoltaics). And there's also replacing agricultural activities on marginal or water stressed land.

Conclusion, land isn't really a constraint in the US.

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Re:University of Texas-led team solves a big problem for fus... by BurningFrog on Monday May 12, 2025 @03:11PM (#43966519)

Yeah, I'm not saying solar power is impossible.

Just pointing out that there are real downsides to this energy source, like all the others.

Now is not the time to stop developing energy sources.

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Re:University of Texas-led team solves a big problem for fus... by pfdietz on Tuesday May 13, 2025 @09:42AM (#43972897)

The space issue is obviously a bullshit red herring.

PV provides massively more value per acre than agriculture does. If PV were seriously constrained by land costs, agriculture would be impossible.

But society is perfectly fine with having land producing $500/acre/year of hay, instead of $25,000/acre/year of PV output.

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Re:University of Texas-led team solves a big problem for fus... by HDThoreaun on Tuesday May 13, 2025 @10:15AM (#43973237)

Obviously there are downsides but space is something the US at least has basically unlimited amounts of.

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