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Nitrogen is only one ingredient, what about the others phosporus and potassium? If it was so readily available why did the war in the Ukraine affect the fertili

Nitrogen is only one ingredient, what about the others phosporus and potassium? If it was so readily available why did the war in the Ukraine affect the fertilizers market? Also what about soil degradation...? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_phosphorus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_phosphorus In the top 5 phosphorus producers are China, Russia, Morocco and Jordan. Sounds super stable. > Way before that happens, we should be able to use Thorium or fusion. I hope we can but it's not a given and no one knows the likelihood. Bigger VC investments are finally being poured into energy but nuclear fission and fusion are not new concepts - we haven't been able to do anything with them at scale yet.

trashtester 4y ago
> Nitrogen is only one ingredient, what about the others phosporus and potassium? I did cover that, above. > If it was so readily available why did the war in the Ukraine affect the fertilizers market? Primarily because the most popular chemical processes for creating ammonium is to use natural gas to bind the nitrogen. (It carries the hydrogen needed as well as the energy, and is cheap when natural gas is cheap.) But if you don't have natural gas, you can take the hydrogen from somewhere else (like water) as long as you have the energy needed.
trashtester 4y ago
> I hope we can but it's not a given and no one knows the likelihood. Bigger VC investments are finally being poured into energy but nuclear fission and fusion are not new concepts - we haven't been able to do anything with them at scale yet. If we're willing to use uranium, we have enough energy there for a few hundred years (even if extracting it gets somewhat more expensive over time, it will take a while before the fuel becomes more expensive than hydrocarbons). And let's say we use 40/40/20 solar/uranium/other renewables, we can double that or more. I'm pretty confident we will be able to leverage some other energy source before that time.

trashtester 4y ago

> Nitrogen is only one ingredient, what about the others phosporus and potassium? I did cover that, above. > If it was so readily available why did the war in the Ukraine affect the fertilizers market? Primarily because the most popular chemical processes for creating ammonium is to use natural gas to bind the nitrogen. (It carries the hydrogen needed as well as the energy, and is cheap when natural gas is cheap.) But if you don't have natural gas, you can take the hydrogen from somewhere else (like water) as long as you have the energy needed.

trashtester 4y ago

> I hope we can but it's not a given and no one knows the likelihood. Bigger VC investments are finally being poured into energy but nuclear fission and fusion are not new concepts - we haven't been able to do anything with them at scale yet. If we're willing to use uranium, we have enough energy there for a few hundred years (even if extracting it gets somewhat more expensive over time, it will take a while before the fuel becomes more expensive than hydrocarbons). And let's say we use 40/40/20 solar/uranium/other renewables, we can double that or more. I'm pretty confident we will be able to leverage some other energy source before that time.