81–90 of 98 posts
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The claims about geothermal and fusion are that they will make energy ridiculously cheap. Won't we use much more if it is cheap?
Energy will only ever be as cheap as the government allows, because it gets to tax it.
There has been some effort on going to really deep depths in IDDP (Icelandic Deep Drilling Project) - see https://iddp.is/about/ If I remember correctly, they were never able to hit their goals because of drilling down into magma chambers. The steam coming up was also of a different scale than regular geothermal steam, causing corrosion that has not been dealt with before. As far as I know, the main problem is coming…
Yeah, so drilling into magma chambers might not be the best approach. Iceland sits on a big magma chamber, so they would need to proceed differently. Still, they have a lot of practical experience with utility-scale geothermal energy extraction the rest of us ought to learn from.
I don’t know how to reason on the magnitudes and indirect effects here. If we are using the temperature differential, don’t we have to vent that into the atmosphere? Does that heat eventually go into the atmosphere anyway?
So we have room to ~20x our energy consumption before we start having to worry about climate change from direct heating, so long as we draw down the excess CO2 we've emitted.
Wind doesn't contribute to that total, as it's harvesting energy already in the system. Solar mostly doesn't contribute to that total, but it does increase surface albedo.
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The whole point is that microwave ablation of these materials does not require drilling mud and is self-stabilizing by the pressures and molten material generated, while also sealing the bore hole and preventing quite a lot of water table, H2S, etc contamination. In theory it should allow substantially deeper boreholes. The technology is real, and the required power density is surprisingly low. https://www.researchga…
Vaporized into what? Something that you’ll have to keep heated to 5000c for 20km until you can vent it?
A 20km borehole with a 10cm diameter is only ~157m3 of rock. If the dig takes four weeks (which would be unprecedentedly fast), you only need to purge ~64cm3/s, which is pretty trivial.
They'll need to do something like mix the dust into concrete. Silicate dust is a respiratory hazard. But that doesn't strike me as a significant hurdle.
I hate to play the Cassandra again, but the deepest hole ever drilled by anyone was 7Km (edit: 12Km), a far cry from drilling 20Km holes everywhere on the earth. I’ve worked in oil and gas for over 10 years, including on the largest rotary drilling rig in North America, and it is insane what kind of machinery it takes to get 6,000 feet down and push a tool 15,000 feet out. Just as insane is convincing anyone that you…
Ah, good. Someone from the drilling industry. Has anyone ever tried microwave drilling? Using gyrotrons to generate enough microwave power to cut and weld glass has supposedly been tried. The company that was doing it seems to have disappeared.[1] Ticker symbol changed from GYTI to GYTIE, indicating failure to file financial statements, and the stock price went to zero. They were talking about this as a precision hea…
yes, many times. as you would expect, it obviously doesn't work.
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> Using gyrotrons to generate enough microwave power to cut and weld glass has supposedly been tried. The company that was doing it seems to have disappeared.
that's correct. they weren't able to cut two inches of well controlled non-porous dry material.
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> You'd expect industrial applications first.
honestly, you wouldn't. it's technical nonsense. lasers are more efficient and easy to build.
the reason we use microwaves to cook is they pass through most material harmlessly, and mostly interact with the water.
which is kind of a dealbreaker here.
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> So, drilling with some kind of energy beam looks worth the trouble.
no, it's really not. it's just science fiction bs.
if we want to save the planet, just build regular 1970s nuclear power, and quit it with the "i'll invent something new with less than ten years on the clock" stuff.
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Ah, good. Someone from the drilling industry. Has anyone ever tried microwave drilling? Using gyrotrons to generate enough microwave power to cut and weld glass has supposedly been tried. The company that was doing it seems to have disappeared.[1] Ticker symbol changed from GYTI to GYTIE, indicating failure to file financial statements, and the stock price went to zero. They were talking about this as a precision hea…
Wouldn't the energy beam push you away from the surface just as well? I get that you don't need to exert torque, but you'd need to stabilise it somehow.
do you believe lasers have thrust?
you could cut through a planet with a laser and still not lift a one ounce weight off the ground with the "push back"
laser ablation is the result of heat, not force
There has been some effort on going to really deep depths in IDDP (Icelandic Deep Drilling Project) - see https://iddp.is/about/ If I remember correctly, they were never able to hit their goals because of drilling down into magma chambers. The steam coming up was also of a different scale than regular geothermal steam, causing corrosion that has not been dealt with before. As far as I know, the main problem is coming…
Yeah, so drilling into magma chambers might not be the best approach. Iceland sits on a big magma chamber, so they would need to proceed differently. Still, they have a lot of practical experience with utility-scale geothermal energy extraction the rest of us ought to learn from.
could it work in 50 years? maybe. probably not.
it's not working in 7 years, which is the climate change timeline.
it's time to stop trying to chase new inventions, and just build 1970s nuclear.
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> it's gotta work on a balance sheet, not just in a pitch deck. It shouldn't have to work on either of those things, because neither of those things take any account of externalities. This attitude that no energy project is worth doing if it's not profitable is how we're going to kill our entire civilization in a few decades. We need to be thinking longer term than "is it cheaper than coal right now?" when the cost o…
Killing our entire civilization now. Now.
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Why not both? Windmills are intermittent, hugely dependent on location, short lifespan, requires a lot of space, dangerous to service etc etc. It's not a full solution.
Jeder Euro fürs Atom fehlt uns beim echten Ökostrom. Because if you habe finite resources, you better invest them in something that works than waste a considerable part to do something that probably maybe should work.
In terms of actual physical and labour resources, they're not fungible. People working on nuclear power or geothermal are not going to be terribly useful to advance the state of the art on wind power, which is already a largely mature technology that needs money and effort put into deployment not research. They also use largely different materials, technology, and equipment.
Likewise, you can't just take "money spent on geothermal" and throw it at "building windmills" because there are other bottlenecks involved in windmills that aren't just magically solved with money. And, of course, likewise.
Anyways, every advance in materials science all of these things engage in helps all of them advance.
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Ah, good. Someone from the drilling industry. Has anyone ever tried microwave drilling? Using gyrotrons to generate enough microwave power to cut and weld glass has supposedly been tried. The company that was doing it seems to have disappeared.[1] Ticker symbol changed from GYTI to GYTIE, indicating failure to file financial statements, and the stock price went to zero. They were talking about this as a precision hea…
> Has anyone ever tried microwave drilling? yes, many times. as you would expect, it obviously doesn't work. . > Using gyrotrons to generate enough microwave power to cut and weld glass has supposedly been tried. The company that was doing it seems to have disappeared. that's correct. they weren't able to cut two inches of well controlled non-porous dry material. . > You'd expect industrial applications first. honest…
Their timeline is pretty tight with first rig in 2 years and commercial level first power plant in another 2. They should have demonstrated at least a couple of holes deeper than a few km by now you'd assume.