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The time has finally come for geothermal energy

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Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#201

Post by cassepipe »

Archelaos wrote: post #180
bryanlarsen wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is it usefully dispatchable? Nuclear can be made dispatchable but it's not usefully dispatchable because the costs are fairly similar whether the plant is on or off. Like nuclear, I believe geothermal has high capital cost and low running costs, suggesting that it isn't usefully dispatchable. But that's too simplistic. A big limitation of geothermal is that rock has poor thermal conductivity. So once you remove h…

Nuclear produces very dangerous substances. The long term cost to guard us from them for a million years and the risk that something gets out of control are extemly high.

Yes but a very small amount and it is nothing we don't know how to manage.

> the risk that something gets out of control are extemly high

Except this is false, you are just spreading misinformation. I suggest you confront your current knowledge to different sources and listen to the arguments of the proponents of nuclear energy before you make up your mind. Don't just repeat what you have heard.

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#202

Post by Vera_Wilde »

One underappreciated challenge in geothermal is simply the distribution of usable rock formations — low-prevalence resources. Better drilling reduces the rarity penalty by making more sites viable. Similar structure to many screening problems: improve detection and you can shift what counts as "reachable."

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#203

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 »

kragen wrote: post #192
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US Navy consistently builds reactors on-time and in-budget

The US and Russian Navies deciding to remain mostly petroleum-fueled is one of the strongest arguments against nuclear becoming very cheap: surely they would do it if it wasn't ruinously expensive, because it eliminates the national security risk of a petroleum blockade and simplifies at-sea logistics immediately.

Don't presume too much about the US Navy's fleet decisions. Using that same logic you could presume that smaller, aged and poorly maintained fleets are advantageous for naval supremacy since that appears to be the choice of the US Navy for a couple generations now.

Or you could presume that the complete inability to build a merchant marine fleet was also a strategic advantage!

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#204

Post by andbberger »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #22
yawaramin wrote: post #19

It's nuclear fission. It's always been nuclear fission (well, at least since the '50s) and it will continue to be until we commercialize fusion reactors. Everything else is nice to have but it's like NIH syndrome.

Geothermal is fission, and wind, solar, and batteries are fusion at a distance. In both cases, the failure scenarios are benign vs traditional fission generation. It's fine to keep striving for fusion humans control, but the problem (global electrification and transition to low carbon generation) is already solved with the tech we have today. It took the world 68 years to achieve the first 1TW of solar PV. The next 1…

68 years ago we already had fission plants. the engineering side of energy production has been solved since then, it's all political now

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#205

Post by andbberger »

Spooky23 wrote: post #153
yawaramin wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things are more expensive when we keep reinventing the wheel and trying to do new things instead of just reusing proven designs. Remember that solar power also used to cost wheelbarrows of cash back in the day. When you do something repeatedly, it becomes less expensive over time. Nuclear is actually the leader in waste management. No other energy source has as complete a story. Eg what happens to solar panels when t…

A nuclear plant about 50 miles from my house was closed 15 years ago. The spent fuel rods will be stored there indefinitely until a federal facility is built.

that seems fine

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#206

Post by [deleted] »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #57

Baseload generation is useless in 2025. It's in the name; it's called "base load", not "base generation". Base generation was a cost optimization. Planners noticed that load never dropped below a specific level, and that cheapest power was from a plant designed to run 100% of the time rather than one designed to turn on and off frequently. So they could reduce cost by building a mix of base and peaker generation plan…

[deleted]

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#207

Post by MathMonkeyMan »

kragen wrote: post #192
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US Navy consistently builds reactors on-time and in-budget

The US and Russian Navies deciding to remain mostly petroleum-fueled is one of the strongest arguments against nuclear becoming very cheap: surely they would do it if it wasn't ruinously expensive, because it eliminates the national security risk of a petroleum blockade and simplifies at-sea logistics immediately.

I don't know much about militaries or nuclear reactors, but I know that reactors are used in some submarines and in some aircraft carriers -- situations where you want a vessel to to remain at sea for long periods of time without refueling, and weight is not a primary concern.

That's pretty niche, though. Think about trucks, tanks, aircraft, generators for outposts, etc. It might be cool if you could safely package a zillion nuclear reactors for those use cases, Terminator style, but I'd guess that reactors are a better fit for centralized, permanent power generation.

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#208

Post by cgh »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #160
thedrbrian wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its so easy that you can’t name me a single city of more than 10000 people that runs entirely off renewables.

Norway and British Columbia are 99% renewable energy and they have many cities larger than that.

Canada as a whole is roughly 70% hydroelectric.

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#209

Post by WalterBright »

Archelaos wrote: post #180
bryanlarsen wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is it usefully dispatchable? Nuclear can be made dispatchable but it's not usefully dispatchable because the costs are fairly similar whether the plant is on or off. Like nuclear, I believe geothermal has high capital cost and low running costs, suggesting that it isn't usefully dispatchable. But that's too simplistic. A big limitation of geothermal is that rock has poor thermal conductivity. So once you remove h…

Nuclear produces very dangerous substances. The long term cost to guard us from them for a million years and the risk that something gets out of control are extemly high.

Any substance with a half-life of a million years is giving off very, very tiny levels of radiation.

What you should worry about is half-lives of under a few years.

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#210

Post by kaonwarb »

_whiteCaps_ wrote: post #123
iso1631 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing which is needed too is spinning load, the grid depends on having enough inertia to maintain the frequency. Flywheels I assume would do that.

Caterpillar provides some really neat small scale flywheel UPS - used in places like hospitals where it would be very bad to lose power. They last long enough for the diesel gennies to start up.

I saw these in the basement of a data center about 11-12 years ago. Most steampunk thing I've seen in real life.
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