Posted on 08/01/2006 11:15:01 AM PDT by aculeus
True.
Geothermal is expensive, so will probably not be a large factor in the near future.
The cost of geothermal power varies considerably, depending on location. In places where a geothermal power plant can be built relatively cheaply, it can be an economical thing to do.
Geothermal may or may not be able to be used around the world
Current geothermal power technology is only practical on a small percentage of the Earth's surface. The point of the above article, is that Professor Tester believes that the technology may soon make it practical to build geothermal power plants anywhere on Earth. This would require building artificial geothermal fields, several kilometers below the surface, something that would be tremendously expensive to do (presently), and would have been unthinkable a few years ago.
Geothermal is good as individual home pumps
These do exist and do seem to be practical for some people in some places, but are not a general solution to mankind's energy problem.
If we remove the heat from the earth's core, will that make the crust hotter?
No. Geothermal power plants don't go anywhere near the core. They simply intercept heat which has already traveled thousands of miles toward the surface, and is not quite there yet.
Will heat radiation from the earth increase?
The answer to this is a little too complicated to answer briefly, and you probably wouldn't understand a full answer, anyway. Suffice it to say that any difference would be insignificant, even if mankind's total energy needs were supplied from geothermal sources.
Will we be able to pump all excess waste back into the ground?
The only "excess waste" is hot water and gasses that come up from the geothermal field. Since only the heat is useful, it makes sense to pump the cooled materials back down to where they came from. In fact, if this is not done, the field loses efficiency, so this is how modern geothermal plants work. They sit on the surface, looking like they are doing nothing, and simply put out electricity.
What is it that makes it so expensive? If we can use some of our oil drilling techniques and machines, then why is the expense issue.
Drilling lots of very deep holes and installing plumbing deep underground, is very expensive to do. It also costs a lot of money for oil companies to do it, but what is required to build an "anywhere" geothermal plant is much greater than what is needed to drill oil. As technology advances, these costs decrease.
Hope this helps.
All that said, we already have the technology to build much better nuclear reactors. Modern reactors would be much cheaper to build, much cheaper (and safer to fuel), much cheaper (and safer) to operate, and much more efficient at extracting energy from available fuel sources than current reactors. They could also be used to eliminate (by burning as fuel) virtually all high level nuclear waste currently in existence.
Most of the technology to accomplish this has been well understood since the 1970s, but its use has been suppressed by the adherents of the anti-nuclear religion.
Ping me, please to energy related stuff.
Giving that as a preliminary, I would answer your questions as indicated below:
What are the environmental repercussions of Geothermal. In that process minimum, as the brine is reinjected. Possible danger from leakage of the Isobutane into the atmosphere.
If we remove the heat from the earth's core, will that make the crust hotter? I don't think you meant what you have asked. Removing heat never makes anything hotter, except the source that the heat is being transfered to, which in this case is the Isobutane. What would happen is a lower temperature brine would be re injected into the earth. If anything the earths core would be cooled. But this would be a very minimal effect.
Will heat radiation from the earth increase?
No comment.
Will we be able to pump all excess waste back into the ground? Yes unless not permitted to do so by local regulations.
What is it that makes it so expensive? Geothermal brine is very corrosive and abrasive, requiring high cost equipment.
If we can use some of our oil drilling techniques and machines, then why is the expense issue.Drilling is a capitol coast, what I refer to above is an ongoing maintenance cost and an high capitol cost.
pressure
I'll try this ONE MORE TIME. If geothermal is to be broadly useful in solving the energy problems of the United States, then either 1) its sources must be widely dispersed across the population in need of power, or 2) the power that it generates at the isolated points of availability must be transmittable to the places where it is needed.
A short perusal of any map of the potential area of availabilty shows that 1) is not the case. An examination of the physics of power transmission shows that 2) is impossible as long as the transmission is as electric power due to transmission losses. Being "attached to the grid" does ZIP to solve 2), given the size of the USA.
Because of these unchangeable facts, geothermal will never be a significant part of the solution to the United States energy needs.
The ONLY sense in which you could sell your position is an economic one--i.e. that energy is fungible, and that electricity generated by the relatively small and isolated geothermal "hot-spots" frees up other forms of energy usable in electrical generation to be used in other regions that don't possess geothermal. But "being hooked to the grid" is irrelevant in the economic sense, because what is being "transmitted" is the dollars to buy the fuel.
a) Why is the problem you speak of isolated to power produced by Geothermal?
b) Why can fossil and nuclear plants exist at remote (+300 miles) from major urban areas w/o problem?
Because all the OTHER major means of generating electricity can be sited according to the needs of the grid. Nuclear can be sited virtually anywhere (albeit less cheaply as one might be forced to use reactor-to-air cooling rather than reactor-to-water).
You can't move a geothermal site. Even solar is much better than geothermal with respect to "location, location, location".
"b) Why can fossil and nuclear plants exist at remote (+300 miles) from major urban areas w/o problem?"
You're the one fixated on +300 miles as "remote". I consider 300 miles or so to be reasonably "nearby". "Remote" is >700 miles (the length of the longest single transmssion line in the world). Why do you think I'm talking about California vs. Maine, or the region West of the Mississippi vs. the region east of the Mississippi?
The only way geothermal can contribute in a significant way is if technology develops super-conducting transmission of electricity, or if there is a shift from the "electric grid" to the "hydrogen economy" to overcome the problems of transmission losses. Fundamental physics will NOT be denied.
Geysers is 150 miles from SF.
Steamboat is 30 miles from Reno, 175 from SF.
You are all wet on this one. Bye.
I've looked at the map. I think you need to spend a bit more time doing so. Geothermal is useful in a very SMALL portion of the area of the United States, and accessible to only a tiny fraction of the population. Thus it won't ever make up a significant fraction of the total energy usage of the country--and in fact is probably not even capable of supplying the total electric needs of the area you mention.
I note you never did answer the question of what is the likely total DEVELOPABLE geothermal potential even of California. I also noted in passing through various online geothermal energy references that they can't even run the full installed capacity of "The Geysers", I assume because they were depleting the available resource.
You need not assume that. If you had been paying attention to my posts you would have seen that I said that much earlier in this thread.
But I think you only listen to what you want to listen to and tune out much of everything else.
Drill Yellowstone!! Chill the Caldera!!!
They picked a good area, imo. Of all the areas I have worked on oil wells, Nevada had the highest bottom hole temperatures (easily) at 10,000 ft. In places, on the order of 350+ degrees. (It cooked the film in the survey tools we used back then and made it difficult to keep track of hole deviation).
Here's the information YOU consistently "tune out":
http://geoheat.oit.edu/images/map/usmap.map
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/90/USA-2000-population-density.gif/800px-USA-2000-population-density.gif
Note the location of the geothermal resources.
Now note the location of the population.
Now note that the vast majority of that population is greater than 700 miles from those geothermal resources.
I can' make it any plainer than that---geothermal energy is a typical "green boutique" project. It makes the greens "feel good" but it doesn't do much to solve environmental problems.
a) The distances to Urban areas that I mentioned in my post above and
b) There are fossil fuel plants (I have named several) which are located at distances further away from urban areas then are the geothermal fields.
Who do you think is using the 230 MW (the size of an average fossil fuels plant) from the Geysers?
Who do you think is using the 200+ MW in the Imperial valley?
By using such power locally, it FREES up more energy to be used by plants already located in major urban areas.
For being a self proclaimed Phd, I should not have to explain such simple facts.
Now I suggest we end this conversation as it has become tedious.
So they're located at distances further away--I'd be willing to bet that those fossil fuel plants are closer than 700 miles, though. But as long as the plants are within economical transmission distance, that isn't the point. The point is that the amount of available geothermal energy is trivial compared to the need for energy. I suspect that any one of those "fossil fuel" plants is on the order of 1000MWe in size. The engineering talent wasted to design the plant(s) to harvest the dinky amounts of geothermal energy would be better invested in an energy source with more viability.
"Who do you think is using the 230 MW (the size of an average fossil fuels plant) from the Geysers? Who do you think is using the 200+ MW in the Imperial valley?"
Again with the dinky numbers. This is half the output on a single nuclear plant.
"By using such power locally, it FREES up more energy to be used by plants already located in major urban areas."
Why not simply build a nuclear plant, and free up a lot MORE energy??
"For being a self proclaimed Phd, I should not have to explain such simple facts."
I understand all those "simple facts". I simply deny that they are relevant to solving the energy problem. (Oh, and btw, I'm not a "self-proclaimed PhD"--that proclaiming was done by a university).
"Now I suggest we end this conversation as it has become tedious."
Feel free.
Nukes provide 10% of the electricity in Calif. That is a dinky number. So nukes are only apart of the solution.
The total solution comes from a multitude of fuel sources including nukes, water,fossil fuels, and alternative and or renewables.
The difference is that nukes have the capacity to be the entire solution--geothermal does not. And the main reason that number is as small as it is in California is that the folks there have bought the eco-lies, hook, line, and sinker and forced the shutdown of nuke plants, instead of building more as fast as possible (which is what they SHOULD be doing).
"The total solution comes from a multitude of fuel sources including nukes, water,fossil fuels, and alternative and or renewables."
Lets see. The Greens tell us we can't build nukes (they might melt and release radiation), we can't build dams (they harm the fishies life cycle), we can't build fossil fuel plants (they cause global warming), we can't build windmills (they hurt the birdies). I'm sure they'll come up with reasons why we can't use solar or geothermal, either.
But of the sources listed, only two have the capacity to replace fossil fuel usage---nuclear fission and solar.
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