MIT-Led Study Says Geothermal Energy Is Viable
amigoro writes to tell us about a study for the US Department of Energy, led by MIT, indicating that geothermal energy could account for 10% of energy production in the US by 2050. The study concludes that geothermal is proven, could impose markedly lower environmental impacts than fossil-fuel and nuclear power plants, and is likely to be cost-competitive with the alternatives. This coverage in LiveScience points out how big a player geothermal already is in the US: "The United States is the world's biggest producer of geothermal energy. Nafi Toksöz, a geophysicist at MIT, noted that the electricity produced annually by geothermal plants now in use in California, Hawaii, Utah, and Nevada is comparable to that produced by solar and wind power combined."
>This isn't some apologetic green technology that is decades or more from delivering affordable massive power, like solar, wind, etc. No, this is the real thing: a geothermal plant puts out power at nuclear reactor levels. And these things are clean.
Cut your bullshit. Seriously. Just because you are uneducated and just happen to have experienced GT in person, thats still no reason to spread bullshit about other energies (seeing that over here more energy is produced by wind than in the US by geothermal)
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
A project for deep-heat mining here in Basel, Switzerland, went horribly wrong - after having pumped water into the ground for a couple of weeks, we've started to have earthquakes. First we got a couple of 2.1s, then we had a 3.2, the last one we had was 3.6 and counting. They now stopped the project but the earthquakes continue to rise in magnitude. We've had 4 major ones in the last month alone and about 10 minor ones.
I'd say it's not smart to start such projects in areas with very high population densities.