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The Savor dream is so big. We’ll get so much land back from oil crop monocultures it’ll be like we discovered a new continent on planet earth. They’re the same triglyceride molecules we eat already, producible anywhere at very low cost. With virtually no land, no water, no fertilizer, no pesticides, no CO2. ... and of course they're still gonna be controversial when they first roll out.

If you’re afraid of the future in general, sure, be afraid of this. Every calorie you've ever eaten came first from plants, via photosynthesis. Not these. It’s Promethean—the exact same triglyceride molecules that make up 10% of all calories humans eat, made solely by humans. It's fats & oils purer than anything that can be extracted from a plant. Baseload calories you could reliably make on Mars. Calories that are impervious to any drought or crop failure. Calories that'd let you start reclaiming the 50% of all habitable land on earth that's devoted to food production. Calories that'd help people thrive in glistening space habitats or keep them alive underground in nuclear winter. If you fear change, definitely be afraid :)

The cheapest possible battery, literally made of dirt. An order of magnitude cheaper than any other thermal storage idea, with electricity-to-electricity cycling efficiency better than hydrogen. Can't overstate how cool this project is.

All this nuclear regulatory talk made me wonder the other day what would happen if we powered the whole world with literal Chernobyls. Turns out… fewer worldwide deaths than powering the world with fossil fuels: Chernobyl had ~40 direct and ~4000 indirect deaths from its catastrophic meltdown after running for ~10 years. At 6GW capacity per reactor site, that’s around 2M deaths per decade worldwide to supply world energy needs of about 3TW. Compare that to 8M deaths per year from fossil fuel combustion via air pollution. If a quarter of that air pollution is from the electricity generation sector we would still be 10x better off powering the world with literal exploding Chernobyls than with fossil fuels, safety-wise. Of course you can find estimates that say Chernobyl killed more or that air pollution kills fewer. It should be mind boggling that the numbers are anywhere close.

The Savor dream is so big. We’ll get so much land back from oil crop monocultures it’ll be like we discovered a new continent on planet earth. They’re the same triglyceride molecules we eat already, producible anywhere at very low cost. With virtually no land, no water, no fertilizer, no pesticides, no CO2. ... and of course they're still gonna be controversial when they first roll out.

The cheapest possible battery, literally made of dirt. An order of magnitude cheaper than any other thermal storage idea, with electricity-to-electricity cycling efficiency better than hydrogen. Can't overstate how cool this project is.

If you’re afraid of the future in general, sure, be afraid of this. Every calorie you've ever eaten came first from plants, via photosynthesis. Not these. It’s Promethean—the exact same triglyceride molecules that make up 10% of all calories humans eat, made solely by humans. It's fats & oils purer than anything that can be extracted from a plant. Baseload calories you could reliably make on Mars. Calories that are impervious to any drought or crop failure. Calories that'd let you start reclaiming the 50% of all habitable land on earth that's devoted to food production. Calories that'd help people thrive in glistening space habitats or keep them alive underground in nuclear winter. If you fear change, definitely be afraid :)

All this nuclear regulatory talk made me wonder the other day what would happen if we powered the whole world with literal Chernobyls. Turns out… fewer worldwide deaths than powering the world with fossil fuels: Chernobyl had ~40 direct and ~4000 indirect deaths from its catastrophic meltdown after running for ~10 years. At 6GW capacity per reactor site, that’s around 2M deaths per decade worldwide to supply world energy needs of about 3TW. Compare that to 8M deaths per year from fossil fuel combustion via air pollution. If a quarter of that air pollution is from the electricity generation sector we would still be 10x better off powering the world with literal exploding Chernobyls than with fossil fuels, safety-wise. Of course you can find estimates that say Chernobyl killed more or that air pollution kills fewer. It should be mind boggling that the numbers are anywhere close.