Biofuels and U.S. Agriculture

The U.S. Department of Agricuture had published a report on the increasing use of ethanol as a fuel additive and the effects of this trend on U.S. agricultural production. Corn is currently used ni ethanol productionand in 2006 some 20% of U.S. corn production was used for this purpose. Increased corn acreage displaces soybean production, causing rising prices for both commodities. Furthermore, increased demand for corn causes higher feedstock prices which are transmitted in to higher pork, beef, poultry, and milk prices as well as the array of processed food products based on corn.The paper discusses the potential of "cellulosic ethanol" to displace corn-based ethanol production. Cellulosic ethanol uses plant waste -- plant stalks, leaves, tree trunks, and other materials that are currently biproducts of agricultural production. The study notes that if cellulosic ethanol technology can be made to work, the U.S. could produce as much as 11o billion gallons of ethanol -- using materials that are currently considered waste, and contributing no net gain to greenhouse emissions (burning the plants removed the same amount of carbon dioxide in the past growing year at was burned in combustion. This production technique may be competitive with conventional techniques by 2012, but significant investment in new production capacity will be required.

Safe (er) Nuclear Energy?

MIT has released a study by the Nuclear Science and Energy Department on a concept to build modular and relatively cheap nuclear reactors to generate electricity or hydrogen. The Pebble Bed reactor described in the study It relies on hundreds or thousands of self-contained, tennis-ball sized graphite "pebbles" encasing small uranium pellets. These pebbles when piled together within a reaction vessel undergo nuclear fission, heating gas to turn a turbine.Has a number of advantages over current nuclear reactor technology: It cannot undergo runaway nuclear fission, damaging or destroying the reactor. The cooling system is dramatically less complicated and more robust than that of current reactor technology, leading to lower construction costs. The design is modular, so components can be constructed in assembly-line fashion and transported into place, again reducing costs of building them. Because the reactor itself is small, multiple reactors can be built in high-demand areas. Disadvantages include the fact that depleted pellets may be difficult to contain over long periods of time. Interestingly, the authors notes that this technology may be small enough to power some vehicles (though likely airship, aircraft, or naval-vessel sized, as opposed to personal-vehicle side). Military implications can include reduced dependence on imported oil, and (with transportable, ship or airship-mounted designs), high-power generation in remote, expeditionary environments.