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I can see the headlines from 40 years in the future: Geofracking Responsible for Devastation of the State of Tennessee as Record Breaking Earthquake Shakes the

I can see the headlines from 40 years in the future: Geofracking Responsible for Devastation of the State of Tennessee as Record Breaking Earthquake Shakes the Eastern Seaboard” Also how exactly is extracting heat from underground renewable? What exactly renews the constantly cooling core of our planet?

martythemaniak 5y ago
As others have pointed out, nothing is renewable on long enough timelines. The earth will burn out, the sun will burn out, eventually the universe will burn out.
Lammy 5y ago
Try “from 2019” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30139155 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30139155
baremetal 5y ago
radioactive decay.
- jeffbee 5y ago
  In other words it isn’t renewable, it’s just very long-lived.
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    So is the Sun.
  - connicpu 5y ago
    There's no such thing as infinite energy in this universe. There's enough deuterium in the oceans to power humanity at our current pace until well after the sun expands and makes earth uninhabitable, but that is still a limit where we'd run out.
burlesona 5y ago
The core of the earth is essentially a fission reactor with quite a lot of fuel available. While this heat source is technically finite, so is the sun, and the universe itself. If you somehow live to see the heat death of the universe, you’re probably SOL. But for humans living on earth today, and in timescales we care about (millions of years), the Earth’s core won’t run out of heat.
- kragen 5y ago
  Not the core, which is made of stable elements like iron, but the crust. You'd think that uranium and thorium would settle to the core because they're heavy, but they're not siderophilic, so most of them stays in the crust. About two thirds of the geothermal heat flux is from fission in the crust: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_gradient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_gradient Non-sustainable heat extraction is much more likely, because the sustainable resource is only about 44 TW, while world marketed energy consumption is already 18 TW (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consum...). By contrast, there are about 100 000 TW of solar energy available. There are billions of years of fossil heat locked up in the crust, amounting to conservatively many millions of times the total oil supply, and by extracting it faster than it was produced you can get much higher power. Like (above-ground) nuclear energy, this is not currently an economically competitive source of exergy because of the cost of the heat engines required, except in unusual cases. It was until only a few years ago, but PV has gotten much cheaper since then. It probably won't be again until a revolution in manufacturing technology.
  - burlesona 5y ago
    Thanks for the clarification! I was under the impression that the heavier elements would be found toward the center. I appreciate the links :)

martythemaniak 5y ago

As others have pointed out, nothing is renewable on long enough timelines. The earth will burn out, the sun will burn out, eventually the universe will burn out.

Lammy 5y ago

Try “from 2019” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30139155 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30139155

baremetal 5y ago

radioactive decay.

jeffbee 5y ago
In other words it isn’t renewable, it’s just very long-lived.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  So is the Sun.
- connicpu 5y ago
  There's no such thing as infinite energy in this universe. There's enough deuterium in the oceans to power humanity at our current pace until well after the sun expands and makes earth uninhabitable, but that is still a limit where we'd run out.

burlesona 5y ago

The core of the earth is essentially a fission reactor with quite a lot of fuel available. While this heat source is technically finite, so is the sun, and the universe itself. If you somehow live to see the heat death of the universe, you’re probably SOL. But for humans living on earth today, and in timescales we care about (millions of years), the Earth’s core won’t run out of heat.

kragen 5y ago
Not the core, which is made of stable elements like iron, but the crust. You'd think that uranium and thorium would settle to the core because they're heavy, but they're not siderophilic, so most of them stays in the crust. About two thirds of the geothermal heat flux is from fission in the crust: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_gradient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_gradient Non-sustainable heat extraction is much more likely, because the sustainable resource is only about 44 TW, while world marketed energy consumption is already 18 TW (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consum...). By contrast, there are about 100 000 TW of solar energy available. There are billions of years of fossil heat locked up in the crust, amounting to conservatively many millions of times the total oil supply, and by extracting it faster than it was produced you can get much higher power. Like (above-ground) nuclear energy, this is not currently an economically competitive source of exergy because of the cost of the heat engines required, except in unusual cases. It was until only a few years ago, but PV has gotten much cheaper since then. It probably won't be again until a revolution in manufacturing technology.
- burlesona 5y ago
  Thanks for the clarification! I was under the impression that the heavier elements would be found toward the center. I appreciate the links :)