[HN Gopher] Geothermal energy could outperform nuclear power
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Geothermal energy could outperform nuclear power
Author : rustoo
Score : 37 points
Date : 2024-09-14 15:12 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| pinewurst wrote:
| https://archive.ph/IYNzx
| xnx wrote:
| Definitely confused the photo in this article for Maximilian from
| the movie "The Black Hole" (1979) for a moment there.
| hulitu wrote:
| > Geothermal energy could outperform nuclear power
|
| Wait till they find out that the Sun emits energy. /s
| pfdietz wrote:
| Geothermal, unlike nuclear, scales down well enough to be a
| plausible source for high latitude markets, where solar is
| disadvantaged. It's a niche, but one that could well sustain
| the technology even in a solar-dominated world. This is
| especially the case if it can benefit from cold winter
| conditions to improve efficiency (with solar taking up the
| slack in summer).
| MichaelNolan wrote:
| 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...
| cinntaile wrote:
| Nuclear also has essentially zero growth, whichever turtle is
| fastest still wins.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| I mean... somewhat true in the west but
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China
| cinntaile wrote:
| He specifically mentioned the US so that is what I
| responded to.
| pydry wrote:
| From 1% to 5% of Chinese power is hardly a standout success
| either.
| theluketaylor wrote:
| 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.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| jbm wrote:
| 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.
| Veedrac wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| ..
| johnea wrote:
| 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.
| davidu wrote:
| 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.
| hungie wrote:
| It's also minuscule. A US person would generate roughly a
| chicken egg worth of waste across their entire lifetime.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| 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.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| 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.
| hungie wrote:
| 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.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| The problem is not how small the waste is, it is the effects.
|
| High level radioactive waste can cause Goiania 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.
| hungie wrote:
| If, and only if, you store it stupidly. There's plenty of
| ways to safely store it for millennia. It's not a truly
| difficult problem.
|
| And I'm just doing my best to present the facts as they are
| -- no fud.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| 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.
| outofpaper wrote:
| Nuclear waste only slowly leaks if its stored improperly.
| The better option is to use it, reacted fuel is still super
| useful stuff. N breeder reactors have been developed to
| decrease fuel requirements by a factor of 100. Instead of
| one egg of "spent fuel per person... one egg per 100!
| hungie wrote:
| Nuclear waste leaking into the groundwater? Sure, if
| someone is being absurdly callous. But if we're going to
| invent a villain with no morals as just dumps the stuff
| then we might as well do the same for any other form of
| energy.
|
| I prefer to assume we're comparing competent operators of
| any energy type in our portfolio. Saying it leaches into
| the groundwater is like saying "dams break and destroy
| towns". Yeah, it does happen I guess, but not often. And
| we've got lots of systems to prevent it.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Near everything outperforms nuclear power. Nuclear power is
| unfathomably expensive.
|
| Come back when it is in the same league as renewables or CCGTs.
| bluescrn wrote:
| 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)
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| 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.
| ..
| sschueller wrote:
| 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.
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