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Geothermal Power Advances
An anonymous reader writes "A group of geothermal power engineers have created three reservoirs from a single well in a place where none existed previously. This is a breakthrough for Enhanced Geothermal System technology — people who need power often can't choose a spot where there happens to be a geothermal reservoir, and EGS could allow us to create them where needed. 'Last fall, engineers pumped cold water into the ground, cracking open fissures in the deep rock, a process known as hydroshearing. They then sealed one reservoir from the other using a new technology. They injected ground-up recycled plastic bottles, which plugged up the cracks in one reservoir while millions of gallons of cold water were being pumped in to create another. Then the plastic diffused, leaving behind three reservoirs. ... The U.S. Department of Energy, which is covering half the $43.8 million cost of the Newberry project, says if the initial indications hold up, the Newberry project would mark the first time in the world that multiple geothermal reservoirs have been created on purpose from a single well in a new area.'"
No Sir, anything but. Not fracking at all. Fracking is only done by the evil gas companies...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I've seen videos of Everclear-- uh, I mean "tap water" -- that lit on fire because of fracking!
The gas in the groundwater is caused by improperly sealed boreholes. This can occur in wells regardless of whether they use fracking or not. Fracking, per se, does not cause flammable groundwater.
Wikipedia excerpt
"The main target depth was set at 15,000 m (49,000 ft). On 6 June 1979, the world depth record held by the Bertha Rogers hole in Washita County, Oklahoma, at 9,583 m (31,440 ft)[3] was broken. In 1983, the drill passed 12,000 m (39,000 ft), and drilling was stopped for about a year to celebrate the event.[4] This idle period may have contributed to a break-down on 27 September 1984: after drilling to 12,066 m (39,587 ft), a 5,000 m (16,000 ft) section of the drill string twisted off and was left in the hole. Drilling was later restarted from 7,000 m (23,000 ft).[4] The hole reached 12,262 m (40,230 ft) in 1989. In that year the hole depth was expected to reach 13,500 m (44,300 ft) by the end of 1990 and 15,000 m (49,000 ft) by 1993.[5][6] However, due to higher than expected temperatures at this depth and location, 180 C (356 F) instead of expected 100 C (212 F), drilling deeper was deemed unfeasible and the drilling was stopped in 1992.[4] With the expected further increase in temperature with increasing depth, drilling to 15,000 m (49,000 ft) would have meant working at a projected 300 C (570 F), at which the drill bit would no longer work.[citation needed]"
As long as it hurts the oil companies it's a good thing.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
There really is almost no risk this will contaminate anyone's drinking water. No one lives near the well and it's a sparsely populated area in general. The well they are drilling is over 6,000 feet deep in to dry rock. The water they inject will be used in a closed cycle so it's not released to contaminate surface waters.
At the rate humans are currently using energy it would have no effect. This development is just tapping residual heat off the magma chamber below Newberry Volcano so it would have no effect other than perhaps slowing down the timing of the next eruption a bit.
Creating three reservoir out of one well will mean one thing - each reservoir will have less than one third the potential power of that one well.
Damn, if only you'd been around to tell the scientists this before they wasted their time.
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest it's actually a lot more complicated and non-linear than that, that these guys know what they're doing, and the article just doesn't go into quite enough detail.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
There really is almost no risk this will contaminate anyone's drinking water. No one lives near the well and it's a sparsely populated area in general. The well they are drilling is over 6,000 feet deep in to dry rock. The water they inject will be used in a closed cycle so it's not released to contaminate surface waters.
The point we're making is that everything you (and others) are saying is the exact same type of thing the oil companies said about fracking. But since the hydrocarbon waste material we're pumping down and spreading around is described as "Recycled" and "Dissipated", and because it's for a "clean" type of energy, the apologists are out in force.
It's just amusing watching the exact same people who bitch about fracking saying "Trust us, nobody will get hurt".
Enhanced Geothermal energy has the potential to replace almost all US baseload electricity generation except hydro and serves as an excellent counterpoint to wind and PV. Total system levelized costs are overall are quite low - as low as coal, nuclear; some types of natural gas are cheaper now but not the more eco-friendly sort. It requires no fuel so fuel supply cost issues are of no concern, nor a national security or global policy risk. There is no gas pipeline that might rupture and burn down an entire neighborhood. There are no nuclear proliferation issues. It's a closed loop and does not generate CO2, nor toxic coal ash, nor spent nuclear fuel to be rid of. There is no risk that it will blow up. The energy driver is residual fission occurring in the Earth's core (80%) that is in no danger of being depleted ever. The plants themselves can be unobtrusive and small.
It has utility almost everywhere in the world, as the only question is really how deep you must drill to get to the hot rock. There is hot rock under everywhere. Some of it is impractical to reach right now though. It is of most economical use notably on the "ring of fire" - the western edge of North and South America, the Eastern edge of Asia. And Iceland of course, where they are eagerly exploiting the resource already - 87% of building heating and 26% of electrical energy from this source. Shoot in Iceland it's so cheap and plentiful they defrost streets and sidewalks with it - even a beach.
The problem is that the costs are all up front. It takes years to dig the hole, so a long lag time between starting the investment and yielding a return. You have to drill the hole, buy the generators, build the plants and so on before you get the first watt-hour. After that it's free power, essentially forever. Every 30 years you have to refurbish or replace the turbines. Once a year the gear has to be inspected. Somebody's got to man the gate to keep kids from spraypainting the condenser. That's about it.
It is the lack of a need for ongoing fuel supply that is perhaps the problem. Over the lifespan of an electrical plant the ongoing revenues from providing its fuel is a bigger motivator for the fuel supplier than the plant operator. The fuel costs more than the plant. Naturally fuel providers are going to be opposed to this radical notion of continuously generating baseload power for the whole life of the plant without paying them money. It's bad for jobs.
As for natural gas being cheaper, this is true but it may not always be true. LNG is also useful for powering internal combustion engines and may become a valuable export to improve our balance of trade or make us less dependent on other forms of portable energy import. It's a resource with global demand and that global demand introduces the risk that market rates for the fuel may go up. This portability factor makes the use of natural gas in generating electricity when you don't have to a waste of a valuable resource better used another way.
Help stamp out iliturcy.