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."

Comments

Welcom heavy metals

[giorgist]

Great stuff, so long as they don't bring any of it up top. Othewise find sombody's back yard to dump it ... heavy metals and other goodies.

Re:Welcom heavy metals

[drinkypoo]

What's wrong with the concrete pit design? You're not going to get a much better disposal solution than locking something into concrete. It's not like we can just magically wish for something to disappear.

Concrete and earthquakes don't mix particularly well. Nothing is "locked" into the concrete, they didn't mix the radioactives into it, it's a layer cake. If the cake breaks, then we'll have a worse release than anything we've seen in the region before, and we already have two superfund sites! So far the history at the plant is one of incompetence, so there is every reason to believe that it will fail eventually. The pit is built right next to the power-generating site, which means it's near the epicenter of all geyser-related seismic activity.

Not trying to support the geothermal effort per se - I'm merely trying to figure out what your point on that complaint was.

I don't believe anything a coward says. I think your actual goal is to make me look like an ass. Until you log in I will assume you are a lying troll.

Re:Welcom heavy metals

[TheMidget]

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.

Exactly. If you actually read google's press release about this, you'd know that collateral mining is integral part of the project.

Re:Welcom heavy metals

[drinkypoo]

You're right about the EPA not having any teeth, but that really isn't the fault of the EPA per se, now is it?

It's the environment we exist in, though.

(BTW, I'm not the anonymous coward you were responding to; this is something of an interest, I was out that way in '91 and loved the country there, almost moved there and would have if I hadn't been saddled with college debt. Beautiful country, for the most part really great people. )

Really? I mostly hate the people, they're a bunch of dumb ignorant rednecks who don't want to know anything. Ignorance is curable, willful ignorance is pathetic. There ARE some GREAT people here but as far as I can tell, they are well into the minority. After ignorant rednecks we have racist natives, then neocon retirees. The local government is as corrupt as you could imagine; this is one of those many California towns full of streets still named after the Mafia families who used to run the place, who built the private airfields, et cetera. We still have Mafia road repair which is why it blows. Every year they keep paying the same fuckers to make the roads more lumpy than they were before they worked on 'em.

This used to be a cool place to hunt and fish but you can't eat any large fish you catch from the lake because of mercury toxicity and the public hunting lands are considered dangerous because of Mexican nationals illegally growing marijuana; the death count is still pretty low, but it's rising yearly. Oh yeah, and traffic accidents keep rising, usually on the highway 20, typically around blue lakes but anywhere on the northwest side of the lake is common, mostly due to grey-hairs pulling out in front of people who are doing highway speed, as they are supposed to be, and to texters and drunks and texting drunks coming over the line between Ukiah and Upper Lake.

Don't even get me started on the city of Clearlake, the Mercury-contaminated shallow end of the gene pool of Lake County.

In short, go somewhere else. That's my plan. I moved here because I had family here and I was over a barrel at the time; the family turned out to be more trouble than help so I have no reason to stay. There's good people everywhere but the concentration around these parts is pretty low. And if you don't own an amphibious car then the lake which is too gross to swim in becomes a major hindrance any time you want to get some errands done.

Re:Warm River Cave

[WindBourne]

Yup, 200C is quite close to 100F.
Personally, I think that postings like the parent makes a good case that America really needs to invest and increase the spending on education. Without it, we will continue to churn out ppl like this. Of course, s?he is from West Virgina (the land of dueling banjos in far too many places).

Re:Warm River Cave

[PopeRatzo]

Personally, I think that postings like the parent makes a good case that America really needs to invest and increase the spending on education.

Or pre-emptive euthanasia, South of the Mason-Dixon.

By the way, today I read a Business Week article about how people live a lot longer in the Northern States. They listed the states where peoples' life expectancy is the shortest and they were all Southern, deep-red states. Of course the Hawaii is first for longest life and the District of Columbia is dead last (but they're not a state). But if you look at numbers 40-50 it's all like Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia, South Carolina, Mississippi, etc.

So maybe natural selection is doing it's work.

"shallow"

[v1]

and as shallow as 5 kilometers

Their definition of "shallow" varies greatly from mine.

Is it even practical to do geothermal energy at that depth?