Another Casualty of Typhoon Haiyan: Geothermal Power

necro81 writes "Little known even in environmental circles is a renewable energy success story: five geothermal power plants on Leyte Island in the Philippines — each of which produces enough power for the entire island — that collectively produce more than 10% of the Philippines' total electrical demand. From boreholes deep underground comes pressurized water heated to 280 Celsius. At the surface it flashes into steam, turning one set of turbines, then cools and contracts to spin a second set of turbines. The low-grade steam is then condensed back into water and reinjected into the bedrock. But Typhoon Haiyan destroyed the cooling towers, snapped transmission towers, and scattered the employees."

Comments

Shame, but at least they didn't melt down

[AmiMoJo]

Such a shame, hopefully they plants can be repaired quickly. And hay, apparently they are much safer than the alternatives.

Renewable Doesn't Mean Invincible

[cervesaebraciator]

For many in the Philippines, the damage here exemplifies a broader paradox: A storm consistent with some scientists’ warnings about climate change has done tremendous damage to an island that is one of the world’s biggest success stories of renewable energy, and to a country that has contributed almost nothing to the global accumulation of greenhouse gases.

Come on NYT! That not paradoxical; it's ironic.

Regardless, this is an odd way to frame the story. Such a storm would (and did) destroy other kinds of power plants. Geothermal power is not a casualty of the typhoon.

Re:Renewable Doesn't Mean Invincible

[leathered]

It's not ironic, it's unfortunate.

It's like rain on your wedding day.

Runaway global warning.

[thegarbz]

That's it, we've reached the tipping point. The environment is now attacking the environmentally friendly sites first feeding it ever increasing amounts of carbon and making it's stronger.

The scientists did warn us about a runaway chain reaction.

Re:Geothermal power

[roc97007]

I dunno, it occurs to me that this leads us to a dark place, where any creation of energy is condemned because it has some effect on the environment, without any appreciation of scale. (In this case, the (paltry, in comparison) geothermal energy actually in use by the plant vs the several orders of magnitude higher thermal energy contained within the earth's core.)

It reminds me of a conversation I had several years ago with a Green, regarding fusion power, where I described taking sea water, separating out the deuterium for fuel, heating the water to drive turbines for power, and using a portion of that power to continue the process. (This is probably impractical for several reasons, but it was what I knew at the time and served "for sake of argument".) Her reaction was indignation that I would mine sea water for an isotope and dare to heat water to drive turbines, both of which clearly had an impact on the environment. At that point I realized there would be no solution that would be considered acceptable, and avoided the topic in the future. This was also when I came to realize that regular people often have no sense of scale.