Geothermal energy could outperform nuclear power

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/09/13/geothermal-energy-could-outperform-nuclear-power

by rustoo • 2 years ago

56 69 2 years ago

economist.com

pinewurst• 2 years ago

https://archive.ph/IYNzx

xnx2• 2 years ago

Definitely confused the photo in this article for Maximilian from the movie "The Black Hole" (1979) for a moment there.

MichaelNolan• 2 years ago

I wish the best for the geothermal industry, but the phrase “could outperform” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Geothermal thermal has essentially zero growth, in the US, in the last 20 years. And there is basically no growth planned in the near future, or at least nothing on the EIA’s or FERC’s upcoming generation list.

I’m skeptical that geothermal will ever make a significant impact in the US. Though it might make a difference in much farther north places, where solar struggles.

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser

https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/browser/?tbl=T01.02#/?f...

cinntaile2• 2 years ago

Nuclear also has essentially zero growth, whichever turtle is fastest still wins.

tonyarkles• 2 years ago

I mean… somewhat true in the west but https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China

theluketaylor• 2 years ago

Yeah, I'm not sure large scale geothermal electrical production will ever be a thing outside some specialized locations like Iceland.

I do think geothermal has a part to play, specifically for heating and cooling of neighbourhoods and multifamily developments. The construction has to move a ton of dirt anyway, so might as well install some ground loops while you're at it. If you're forced to drill due to site conditions, the load is lower than pure electricity generation meaning the wells are not that deep. For private homes it's far too expensive to be much more than a curiosity, but amortized across a whole new neighbourhood or collection of apartment buildings it's very affordable. Especially in northern climates accessing the consistent ground heat source/sink that allows you to run heat pumps at max efficiency all year is a huge win and is a huge amount of electricity you never need to generate in the first place.

Reason0772• 2 years ago

"I'm not sure large scale geothermal electrical production will ever be a thing outside some specialized locations like Iceland."

You may be underestimating the extent of geothermal power production that already exists around the world. For example, California's Geysers[1] and Salton Sea[2] geothermal complexes are some of the largest in the world, generating more electricity than all of Iceland's geothermal power plants combined.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geysers

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Valley_Geothermal_Pro...

jandrewrogers• 2 years ago

outside some specialized locations like Iceland

I think you underestimate the scale of geothermal available. The US is the largest geothermal power producer in the world though no one thinks of the US as that. Not coincidentally, it also sits on top of the largest high-quality geothermal basin in the world, essentially the entire Mountain West.

The US barely taps these resources at all despite leading the world. Ironically, much of the pushback on developing these geothermal resources in the US comes from environmental activists.

jbm2• 2 years ago

While I agree with you generally, the price I was given was $50k for geothermal heat pump all in. Considering my house has risen in value by 200k over the past 3 years and I intend on it being a permanent family home, it's really not out of the question, especially considering the potential increase in extreme heat events and the impacts on energy.

I understand people see this as an underperforming investment but I instead see it as de-risking.

Veedrac5• 2 years ago

The problem is dominantly that with traditional techniques the US doesn't have useful geothermal energy resources, so not having geothermal energy historically doesn't mean that newer approaches that aim to work in far more areas will also fail to scale.

Skepticism is reasonable around any new technology, but the arguments for geothermal are convincing enough that it seems easily worth the attempt.

rabf• 2 years ago

"Our gyrotron-powered drilling platform vaporizes boreholes through rock and provides access to deep geothermal heat without complex downhole equipment.

Based on breakthrough fusion research and well-established drilling practices, we are developing a radical new approach to ultra-deep drilling."

This company looks promising in the geothermal space. They are looking to be able to create 10km boreholes in 100 days. This would make geothermal viable anywhere in the world. Bonus points if you create the borehole next to an existing coal plant to use the existing turbine and infrastructure.

https://www.quaise.energy/

rpmisms• 2 years ago

Looks amazing as a disruptor in the space, but I also want to say that Gyrotron is an excellent name for a device. Very industrial.

pb1729• 2 years ago

Bhauth wrote an analysis of this idea, and tldr is that trying to get an energy payback on literally vaporizing such a long cylinder of rock is brutally difficult, probably enough to make the economics of the plan unworkable.

https://www.bhauth.com/blog/flawed%20ideas/microwave%20drill...

amelius• 2 years ago

How are "mm waves" helping them drill?

thinkcontext• 2 years ago

So far they have only drilled INCHES in a lab. File this under extremely speculative.

natenatenate32• 2 years ago

Look up Fervo Energy, I think you will be surprised how quickly their method will grow and expand as they gain more experience with their current projects.

xnx2• 2 years ago

Came here to say this. Google has a test project with them: https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/sustainability/goog...

johnea• 2 years ago

Two hamsters on a treadmill could outperfom nuclear power 8-/

Nuclear is the biggest boondogle in electric generation history. And a huge fraction of that bloated cost is still hidden in externalities, as the overwhelming majority of all spent fuel is still sitting in "temporary" storage onsite with the reactor where it was used.

Geothermal aside, using money to increase grid storage is a vastly better investment than nuclear can ever be.

davidu3• 2 years ago

The word temporary is only used to placate people who don't understand nuclear / nuclear waste (waste is a bad term) and who have been badly influenced by 70 years of misinformation from The Sierra Club and others.

None of this spent fuel is really that spent, has plenty of other use cases, and should be used. Also, storing it in concrete casks for 40 years is perfectly safe and has caused 0 harm.

The cost is largely due to regulatory hurdles that are slowly being eroded.

hungie4• 2 years ago

It's also minuscule. A US person would generate roughly a chicken egg worth of waste across their entire lifetime.

ViewTrick100212• 2 years ago

It has so many other uses that is has been sitting without uses for 40 years.

The problem is that you need to keep it for thousands of years before it becomes tractable to more easily deal with it.

OutOfHere3• 2 years ago

Nuclear fission is basically pushed by those who don't think to worry about: (1) nuclear accidents/terrorism (2) nuclear waste.

Th hallmark of a great civilization is one that saves its future self from problems, not one that piles on problems for its future self to deal with. In this light, nuclear is not great.

Geothermal using fracking toxins is not great either if it irreversibly pollutes the water supply as fracking often does.

Solar and wind have no such issues for us to deal with, considering we don't domestically produce the solar panels anyway.

hungie4• 2 years ago

How much nuclear waste would be generated, across 100 years of American levels of energy use, per person?

I'll save you the effort, it's about one chicken egg, maybe as large as a tea cup.

For your whole life, all the energy you'll use across all sectors. Over 100 years you don't think we capable of finding a space to safely fritter away a chicken egg? Or even 300 million chicken eggs?

And even more amazingly, that "waste"? It's still fuel, we could reprocess it.

Coal, you'd need 50-60,000 kilograms to create the same energy. The waste disposal for 60k kg of coal's ash is non trivial (and much harder to prevent from spreading). To say nothing of the 150-180,000 kg of CO2 emitted.

Solar panels would need to be replaced 2-5 times in that timeframe. They are a whole lot less wasteful than coal, but that'd still be a significant volume of difficult to reprocess material.

So, before wringing your hands about waste from nuclear, make sure you understand just how small the amount of waste is and think about the waste of alternatives. There's not a free lunch here, but waste just isn't a material concern compared against other power sources.

ViewTrick100212• 2 years ago

The problem is not how small the waste is, it is the effects.

High level radioactive waste can cause Goiânia like outcomes, or leach into the groundwater.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident

It is quite intellectually dishonest to try frame it as pixie dust rather than the true problem it poses.

OutOfHere3• 2 years ago

Nuclear waste slowly leaks into the groundwater and river water. Also, waste is only one of the two major concerns I noted.

Comparing it with coal is 100% disingenuous. Coal is never an option going forward.

ViewTrick100212• 2 years ago

Near everything outperforms nuclear power. Nuclear power is unfathomably expensive.

Come back when it is in the same league as renewables or CCGTs.

bluescrn• 2 years ago

We don't do nuclear because it's expensive, and that's why it stays expensive. No economies of scale, minimal opportunities to iteratively improve designs.

Solar was expensive until we started building a lot of it (often due to heavy subsidisation)

ViewTrick100212• 2 years ago

We tried tons of nuclear power. It peaked at 18% of the global electricity mix in the 90s.

Comparatively solar sits at 5.5% today but is rapidly increasing.

If 18% of the global electricity mix is not trying hard enough then the technology did not work out.

The cost savings never materialized, it’s always been a case of negative learning by doing.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...

MostlyStable• 2 years ago

And, importantly, we have chosen to make it expensive by mandating a level of safety that is orders of magnitude higher than for any other generation method.

lucb1e2• 2 years ago

For anyone else who didn't know that CCGT is a euphemism for gas:

A combined cycle power plant is an assembly of heat engines that work in tandem from the same source of heat, converting it into mechanical energy. On land, when used to make electricity the most common type is called a combined cycle gas turbine plant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_cycle_power_plant)

ViewTrick100212• 2 years ago

A backup system which can be ran on hydrogen or e-fuels when the time comes to tick off the final hard problems.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-renewable-gr...

sschueller• 2 years ago

Two not insignificant earthquakes (3.4 and 3.5) were triggered in two attempts to drill for geothermal power plants in Switzerland. Switzerland is a seismically active area and it should theoretically be possible to generate significant power but these man made earthquakes set back projects for many years.

bandyaboot• 2 years ago

So if I understand correctly, you create a network of fractures that connect to two boreholes and you pump water into one and out the other. Won’t the fractures erode significantly over time? Do we know what happens when we continuously erode a network of fractures deep underground? And won’t the amount of water that’s required to stay pressurized get larger and larger as the fractures erode?

skybrian• 2 years ago

One concern in the Project Red test was that 10%-20% of the fluid pumped did not return to the surface. That number is much better than many legacy enhanced geothermal projects but needs improvement. Costs increase and site locations narrow to those with excess cheap water. It could also increase induced seismicity risk over time.
The latest results released for Cape Station do not include the fluid loss number, so we don't know if it improved. Options remain even if it didn't, like reducing fluid throughput. That would hurt productivity, but further gains from drilling and completion intensification could compensate.

https://austinvernon.site/blog/geothermalupdate2024.html

natenatenate32• 2 years ago

They fracture the granite and prop it open with sand or other materials, it doesn't really erode the same as surface granite, which is extremely slow to erode as is.

atomic128• 2 years ago

No amount of batteries can protect a solar/wind grid from an arbitrarily extended period of "bad" weather. It's like range anxiety in an electric car. If you have N days of battery storage and the sun doesn't shine for N+1 days, you're in trouble.

Nuclear fission is the answer.

Today there are 440 nuclear reactors operating in 32 countries.

Nuclear fission is expensive up-front but once built the power plant can last 50 years (maybe 80, maybe more) and the uranium fuel is very cheap, perhaps 10% of the cost of running the plant.

This is in stark contrast to natural gas, where the plant is less expensive to build but then fuel costs accumulate rapidly. And natural gas is a poor choice if you care about greenhouse gas emissions.

Sam Altman owns a stake in Oklo, a small modular reactor company. Bill Gates has a huge stake in his TerraPower nuclear reactor company. Oracle announced that it is designing data centers with small modular nuclear reactors:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41505514

In China, 5 reactors are being built every year. 11 more were announced a few weeks ago. You just don't hear about it... yet.

Nuclear fission is safe, clean, secure, and reliable.

danielbln• 2 years ago

Is this satire or from an LLM. Amidst the very measured praise for the wonder with no downsides that is fission, user atomic123 seems to have missed that this article is about geothermal energy.

Geothermal energy could outperform nuclear power

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