How Mushrooms Could Repair Our Crumbling Infrastructure
technologyreview.com
technologyreview.com
* the proposal is to mix the fungal spores when pouring concrete, in the hope the spores remain dormant in concrete pores. When cracks form and water/mositure seeps into the cracks, the spores germinate and produce calcium carbonate deposits that "fix" the cracks.
* The article notes that more research is required before this mechanism is proven to work; it has been showed to work in petri dish/controlled conditions
* Probably won't fix existing infrastructure as it requires to be mixed with concrete when its poured.
Exactly. Using the term "fix" here is disingenuous to the actual research being done.
This is simply research into a fungal addititive which if added to concrete could prevent cracks from worsening.
What is likely to happen if they ever figure out how to add it to concrete is that the life span of concrete structures will be upgraded accordingly and the neglect will stay at it's present level until the new and improved structures start to fail.
Strong Towns writes about this often:
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/8/9/939-million-sho...
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/4/26/what-are-you-d...
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/18/highway-spendi...
* The claim is that the spores would be "dormant" until cracks appeared and brought water to them. How exactly does that happen? What ensures the calcium carbonate grows ONLY in the cracks? Why would this not lead to uneven/bumpy roads? * They say that the spores would probably get crushed in existing concrete blends, but maybe we could add air bubbles to the mix. I'm not a material scientist, but I'd guess that taking something with 1 micrometer holes and making them into 4 micrometer holes would have impact on the resulting material.
I'm not saying that the research isn't worth pursuing, but it is a bit of a smell that such questions aren't even acknowledged in the article.
The biggest problem our crumbling infrastructure faces is the cost of aging: most heavily trafficked bridges are nearing the end of their expected lifespan, 11% of our bridges are structurally deficient, and we don't budget enough money to keep up with the backlog of bridges to repair. As bridges are allowed to age and maintenance is deferred, the cost to repair them triples. And since it's so expensive, we get lost in debate over whether we should replace them.
If we designed our infrastructure to actually collapse at a set time, it might instill the correct level of panic for government to actually fund and repair our infrastructure before it kills people and burdens the economy. Without a deadline, government just waits for the eventual emergency.