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West Virginia Is Geothermically Active
sciencehabit writes "Researchers have uncovered the largest geothermal hot spot in the eastern United States. According to a unique collaboration between Google and academic geologists, West Virginia sits atop several hot patches of Earth, some as warm as 200C and as shallow as 5 kilometers. If engineers are able to tap the heat, the state could become a producer of green energy for the region."
Will they be scraping even more mountains off the planet to get to it? Will they fill the remaining creek beds up with the effluvia from getting to it? Will they keep even more public roads under a permanent state of "repair" and detour to disguise the fact that they're simply ruining more tax funded roadway with heavy machinery? Will they drive residents out of even more entire towns due to blasting damages and constant noise from heavy machinery? Are they going to do anything with the energy rather than find cheaper ways to dig coal? WV has two industries, coal and railroad. If they replaced coal money with energy money the railroads would die. They won't let that happen. They've been fighting off a 3/4 MV high tension line for years, you think they're going to allow an energy exporting industry to pop up, string wire for multi MV lines and sell electricity to its neighbors now that they're got them hooked on WV coal? I lived there are loved it. But I realized the state is owned by stockholders for whom green is considered a place to dig. Even of they took advantage of a chance to do something good, they wouldn't do it right -- they'd do it cheaply to maximize profits and the population would suffer the effects. WV *was* green. It's owners don't give a shit about green.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Oil Well drillers want to put a hole in the ground and get money out of it. Simple as that. Most oil wells last about 20 years (if lucky). A binary geo-thermal well will last 50+ years assuming that you do not pump it too fast.
Dems run around throwing money at Wind (meh) and Solar PV (a waste of money). Yet, the simple answer here is to not just support geothermal, but do it in a smart way. Most dry wells are ran down to about 10'K feet. Yet most heat is in the 10-20'K feet arena. So who not offer up a tax break for dry wellers to drill down to that region to locate heat. This would not occur everywhere, but it would occur where ever heat is generally known to exist. With this approach, drilling companies bear the first half of the risk while gov. then helps in the second half.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Yeah, it would never dawn on a mining state to be interested in obtaining lithium, Rare Earths, etc. Nor would they or the EPA know how to handle this correctly.
Skipping the sarcasm, the drilling will likely be a binary system, and would be a good way to obtain minerals, elements since it is a by-product. Then what is left can be re-injected back in. Basically, it turns a well from a energy producer into a energy and mineral producer.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Actually, drilling is far more environmentally cleaner than is mining. Mining normally involves tailings, except for Coal. With coal, they simply strip mine it as you have pointed out. Geo-thermal, is a fairly clean operation. Yeah, it has its issues, but they are SOOO much less than Coal. In fact, it is around the same as Solar PV, and even less than Wind. Solar PV involves some pretty wicked chemicals. Likewise, Wind requires loads of Rare Earth Elements, iron, etc. In the end, you have to pick your poison on where you are going to get your energy. Myself? I will take geo-thermal. Ideally, we would allow all energy to compete on a level field, rather than allowing politicians to pick it by who lines their pockets.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
They tried it in Basel (Switzerland), didn't work out too well for them.
Which makes me think of a question maybe someone here at /. can answer: Can miners/drillers set off enough "little ones" to cause a big one? The reason I ask is I was recently shown a map I found most disturbing. A friend is working processing geological data for a wildcat drilling company, which since 2003 or so these groups have been given the keys to the kingdom around here since the economy has been down here since the factories closed ( which BTW we have lost 42 THOUSAND in the USA since 2001, thanks greedy corporations!) and the earthquake data was scary. Before they showed up we are talking an average of 1.4 on the Richter scale, and only one every decade. Since 2004 we are talking dozens in the 2.4-3 scale, all concentrated in tiny areas near the wells.
So my question is this: If these guys set off enough earthquakes in that range, can they set off New Madrid, which we are on? Not that it really matters much in the end I suppose, as we are so "corporation yay!" here they could dump their garbage on the court house steps and everyone in the chamber of commerce would pretend its roses, but those places that aren't complete corporate whores might want to watch out if it is possible. Of course if they did cause a disaster I have no doubt they'd just fold the corporation and walk away with the cash, which is why I think we need serious corporate reform in this country, not that it will ever happen.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I think the birthplace of the word "geyser" would disagree with you on that assessment.
And yet, you lack the courage of your convictions necessary to log in.
"The Geysers" is the most geothermally active region in the world acre for acre. If you measure a country, which is too large to build a single geothermal plant on, you will get another result. If you measure a 1x1 inch area, you can probably come up with still another result. In practical terms, The Geysers is the most geothermally active spot that there is. This doesn't mean it's the best place to build a geothermal plant, of course; there are other considerations.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
How much heat can we suck out of the earth before we start noticing effects? When we first sipped from oil deposits we thought the supply was unlimmited - so we built billions oil-fueled cars and painted ourselves into a corner. Would someone with real credentials please stand up and say what needs to be said: Geo-thermal is a finite supply - and at some level of human consumption mining it will destabilize our planet.
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
Have you ever been to West Virginia? Much of the economy is based on mining, forestry, tourism, and agriculture. It's not hopelessly poor and dead end; many parts of it are quite nice. Even the low income areas are orders of magnitude better than inner cities in more populous areas.
Much of the earth's internal heat is not generated by radioactive decay or tidal forces, but is transient, left over from when the earth formed. Its necessary for plate techtonics, which helps keep the surface chemically in balance despite erosion and natural forms of pollution. Its also necessary for the magnetic field and its shielding effect.
If we drill for geothermal energy for power on a large scale, do we hasten the earth's cooling by any appreciable amount? The effect must be tiny, and adverse results would be very, very, long term. But people don't seem to care very much about the very long term, and hastening the geological death of the earth would seem to me to be a very bad thing.
Maybe someone who's done a crude estimate could answer this. I haven't seen it discussed anywhere on the net.
Not that this comment will get read, you know, being so far down the page...
Presumably, the hotter the temperature, the better, in terms of generating geothermal energy. That means that the eastern part of the state (with the exception of the panhandle) would be the best for generating geothermal. However, a lot of that land along the WV/VA border is protected: state parks, national forests, national rec areas, and a large number of caverns that are declared off-limits. The Greenbanks radio astronomy telescope is also in that area, and a couple miles around it are restricted from having wireless communications or other serious electrical equipment that could interfere with radio astronomy.
On the other hand, if coal ever goes out of fashion, I guess the state will have to make a decision - with coal and tourism being our two biggest sources of money, I guess they'll have to decide whether the state parks are more valuable for tourism or generating power.
Just got back from Iceland, the whole country is powered by geothermal wells. In fact, the main power plant has a pipe feed of hot water to supply Rejykavik, and when you take a shower there you smell like rotten eggs.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!