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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

#51

Post by yawaramin »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #39
yawaramin wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Failure scenario in modern fission reactors is also benign. Reactors are designed to lock down to prevent any leaks. We deploy solar PV capacity, this doesn't mean we actually get that much power from the deployments. Nuclear fission provides reliable, baseload power, and doesn't require huge battery arrays to compensate for the sun setting or winds calming.

Enough renewables are deployed annually to replace the global nuclear fission fleet, year after year, even when accounting for capacity factor derating (to make a like for like comparison). The race is over, and renewables (with batteries) won. If you can find someone unsophisticated to invest in a fission reactor that takes billions of dollars and 10-15 years to build, more power to you. There will be no need for it…

> If you can find someone unsophisticated to invest in a fission reactor that takes billions of dollars and 10-15 years to build

Unsophisticated investors like the Chinese government? 'Nearly every Chinese nuclear project that has entered service since 2010 has achieved construction in 7 years or less.'

https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/chinas-impressive-...

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#53

Post by yawaramin »

klabb3 wrote: post #37
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.

Ive been very pro nuclear my whole life, but a part of me is disheartened by the mega projects that commercial fission deployments have become (even if the reasons are bad) that’s a problem that nerfs traditional fission. If nuclear remains both political, extremely bureaucratic and requires public investment, it just won’t be the solution, and not because the tech or physics is bad, but the decision makers & investo…

Nuclear has broad bipartisan support, and the Trump administration is heavily into it, so I wouldn't count it out just yet. If the various Green parties of the Western world ever come into power though, we are cooked.

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#55

Post by drcongo »

drcongo wrote: post #28
quacked wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can't even declare total victory with LED bulbs over incandescent. The LED bulbs I have access to (whatever's in the aisles at Home Depot, Costco, etc.) fail much more frequently than the incandescent bulbs I used to buy, and produce an uglier light that is less warm even on the softest/warmest color settings. My suspicion is that incandescents were at the "end" of their product lifecycle (high quality available…

Maybe buy your bulbs somewhere else? I'm yet to replace any of the LED bulbs I've bought over the past 15 years and honestly can't even remember the last time a bulb failed.

Actually, since posting this I've vaguely remembered a previous discussion on here about differences between LED bulbs sold in the US and those sold in UK/EU so maybe that explains it.

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#56

Post by toomuchtodo »

yawaramin wrote: post #51
toomuchtodo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enough renewables are deployed annually to replace the global nuclear fission fleet, year after year, even when accounting for capacity factor derating (to make a like for like comparison). The race is over, and renewables (with batteries) won. If you can find someone unsophisticated to invest in a fission reactor that takes billions of dollars and 10-15 years to build, more power to you. There will be no need for it…

> If you can find someone unsophisticated to invest in a fission reactor that takes billions of dollars and 10-15 years to build Unsophisticated investors like the Chinese government? 'Nearly every Chinese nuclear project that has entered service since 2010 has achieved construction in 7 years or less.' https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/chinas-impressive-...

They dabble in nuclear, but it is not their focus. China can do what the developed world cannot because they are a command economy with less expensive labor, which will only last for a bit longer due to their structural demographics. Unless the developed world no longer has labor regulations, developed world wages, and capital based allocation systems, my statement stands with regards to investment. If capital and labor does not matter, certainly, anything is possible (Paraoh demanding pyramids, for example).

Your citation comes from an organization with pro nuclear bias.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Institute

Can China Break Nuclear Power’s Cost Curse—and What Can the US Learn? - https://rooseveltinstitute.org/blog/can-china-break-nuclear-... - September 17th, 2025

China built more solar power in the last 8 months than all the nuclear power built in the entire world in the entire history of human civilisation. And even if you adjust for utilisation rate to compare against nuclear utilisation China built more solar power generated per hour than all the nuclear power currently in operation generate in an hour - and did so in 12-18 months - https://bsky.app/profile/climatenews.bsky.social/post/3lggqu... - January 23, 2025

China is installing the wind and solar equivalent of five large nuclear power stations per week - https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-07-16/chinas-renewa... - July 15th, 2024

Nuclear Continues To Lag Far Behind Renewables In China Deployments - https://cleantechnica.com/2024/01/12/nuclear-continues-to-la... - January 12th, 2024

Nuclear Energy & Free Market Capitalism Aren’t Compatible - https://cleantechnica.com/2023/11/06/nuclear-energy-free-mar... - November 6th, 2023

https://x.com/MoreBirths/status/1910780131318374524 | https://archive.today/iu9jx (China demographics citation)

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#57

Post by bryanlarsen »

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 plants.

In 2025, that's no longer the case. The cheapest power is solar & wind, which produces power intermittently. And the next cheapest power is dispatchable.

To take advantage of this cheap intermittent power, we need a way to provide power when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing. Which is provided by storage and/or peaker plants.

That's what we need. If added non-dispatchable power to that mix than we're displacing cheap solar/wind with more expensive mix, and still not eliminating the need for further storage/peaker plants.

If non-dispatchable power is significantly cheaper than storage and/or peaker power than it's useful in a modern grid. That's not the case in 2025. The next cheapest power is natural gas, and it's dispatchable. If you restrict to clean options, storage & geographical diversity is cheaper than other options. Batteries for short term storage and pumped hydro for long term storage.

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#58

Post by patall »

flowingfocus wrote: post #27

Instead of drilling deep, there is also an intersting case for storing cheap solar energy as hat in piles of dirts in the summer to power turbines in the winter: https://austinvernon.site/blog/standardthermal.html

The Berlin one also had some promising news today: https://www.adlershof.de/en/news/successful-tests-on-undergr...

We have to see if and when any of them goes into production, but the technology seems very interesting

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#59

Post by buu700 »

pjc50 wrote: post #10
hodgehog11 wrote: post #3

I've always been curious why a cost-effective widespread implementation of geothermal energy has never been considered a holy grail of energy production, at least not in the public debate. Much of the discussion is so focussed on nuclear fusion, which seems so much harder and less likely to be reliable.

Drilling is one of those things which used to be extremely expensive but has very gradually come down in price. Thanks, ironically, to the oil industry. It's unsexy because there's no "silver bullet" waiting in the wings. It's also quite hard to find suitably hot rocks suitably close to the surface. Focusing on fusion .. I think that's a legacy of 60s SF, when the fission revolution was still promising "energy too ch…

To be fair, that promise of fission made sense from a purely scientific and mathematical perspective, before running into the practical realities of how its externalities interact with real-world politics. Fission is expensive because in practice it turns out we care quite a lot about proper waste management, non-proliferation, and meltdown prevention.

In a world where anyone could just YOLO any reactor into production with minimal red tape, consequences be damned, fission energy would actually be extremely cheap. Hence the optimism around fusion. The promise of fusion is an actualization of last century's idealistic conception of fission. It can be a silver bullet for all intents and purposes, at least once it's established with a mature supply chain.

Re: The time has finally come for geothermal energy

#60

Post by hackeraccount »

hodgehog11 wrote: post #3

I've always been curious why a cost-effective widespread implementation of geothermal energy has never been considered a holy grail of energy production, at least not in the public debate. Much of the discussion is so focussed on nuclear fusion, which seems so much harder and less likely to be reliable.

Harder absolutely but "less likely to be reliable"?

If economically viable fusion was "cracked" what would the nature of it's unreliability even be?

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