8 ms·

Geothermal energy could outperform nuclear power

56 points by rustoo 2y ago

xnx 2y ago
Definitely confused the photo in this article for Maximilian from the movie "The Black Hole" (1979) for a moment there.
pinewurst 2y ago
https://archive.ph/IYNzx https://archive.ph/IYNzx
hulitu 2y ago
[flagged]
- pfdietz 2y ago
  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 2y ago
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/electricity/data/browser https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/browser/?tbl=T01.02#/?f=M&start=199209&end=202405&charted=1-2-3-4-6-13-9 https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/browser/?tbl=T01.02#/?f...
- cinntaile 2y ago
  Nuclear also has essentially zero growth, whichever turtle is fastest still wins.
  - tonyarkles 2y ago
    I mean… somewhat true in the west but https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China
    - cinntaile 2y ago
      He specifically mentioned the US so that is what I responded to.
    - pydry 2y ago
      From 1% to 5% of Chinese power is hardly a standout success either.
      - lrkrsBlurkn 2y ago
        [dead]
- theluketaylor 2y ago
  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.
johnea 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    It's also minuscule. A US person would generate roughly a chicken egg worth of waste across their entire lifetime.
  - ViewTrick1002 2y ago
    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.
    - davidu 2y ago
      That's untrue.
      - ViewTrick1002 2y ago
        Please explain how so.
OutOfHere 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    The problem is not how small the waste is, it is the effects. High level radioactive waste can cause Goiânia like outcomes, or leach into the groundwater. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident 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.
    - 2y ago
ViewTrick1002 2y ago
Near everything outperforms nuclear power. Nuclear power is unfathomably expensive. Come back when it is in the same league as renewables or CCGTs.
- bluescrn 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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/S0301421510003526 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...
    - Krssst 2y ago
      Nuclear power successfully decarbonized almost the entire French electricity grid. The only case I know of of a large industrialized country without heavy hydro resources managing to almost remove fossil fuels from electricity generation. Maybe it's expensive (still less than in Germany which chose NREs, coal and gas), but it's also the only solution proven to work.
      - ViewTrick1002 2y ago
        It is very intellectually boring to have the view that the only things which are possible is what we have already done. Meaning, with your own logic the French nuclear buildout was impossible since no one had done it before. It was possible. Just like renewables are today.
sschueller 2y ago
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.
frank_bb 2y ago
[dead]
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
bandyaboot 2y ago
So if I understand correctly, you create a network of fractures that connect to two boreholes and you pump water into one and out the other. Won’t the fractures erode significantly over time? Do we know what happens when we continuously erode a network of fractures deep underground? And won’t the amount of water that’s required to stay pressurized get larger and larger as the fractures erode?
- skybrian 2y ago
  > One concern in the Project Red test was that 10%-20% of the fluid pumped did not return to the surface. That number is much better than many legacy enhanced geothermal projects but needs improvement. Costs increase and site locations narrow to those with excess cheap water. It could also increase induced seismicity risk over time. > The latest results released for Cape Station do not include the fluid loss number, so we don't know if it improved. Options remain even if it didn't, like reducing fluid throughput. That would hurt productivity, but further gains from drilling and completion intensification could compensate. https://austinvernon.site/blog/geothermalupdate2024.html https://austinvernon.site/blog/geothermalupdate2024.html
- natenatenate3 2y ago
  They fracture the granite and prop it open with sand or other materials, it doesn't really erode the same as surface granite, which is extremely slow to erode as is.
atomic128 2y ago
No amount of batteries can protect a solar/wind grid from an arbitrarily extended period of "bad" weather. It's like range anxiety in an electric car. If you have N days of battery storage and the sun doesn't shine for N+1 days, you're in trouble. Nuclear fission is the answer. Today there are 440 nuclear reactors operating in 32 countries. Nuclear fission is expensive up-front but once built the power plant can last 50 years (maybe 80, maybe more) and the uranium fuel is very cheap, perhaps 10% of the cost of running the plant. This is in stark contrast to natural gas, where the plant is less expensive to build but then fuel costs accumulate rapidly. And natural gas is a poor choice if you care about greenhouse gas emissions. Sam Altman owns a stake in Oklo, a small modular reactor company. Bill Gates has a huge stake in his TerraPower nuclear reactor company. Oracle announced that it is designing data centers with small modular nuclear reactors: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41505514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41505514 In China, 5 reactors are being built every year. 11 more were announced a few weeks ago. You just don't hear about it... yet. Nuclear fission is safe, clean, secure, and reliable.
- danielbln 2y ago
  Is this satire or from an LLM. Amidst the very measured praise for the wonder with no downsides that is fission, user atomic123 seems to have missed that this article is about geothermal energy.

56 points by rustoo 2y ago

xnx 2y ago

Definitely confused the photo in this article for Maximilian from the movie "The Black Hole" (1979) for a moment there.

pinewurst 2y ago

https://archive.ph/IYNzx https://archive.ph/IYNzx

hulitu 2y ago

[flagged]

pfdietz 2y ago
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 2y ago

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/electricity/data/browser https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/browser/?tbl=T01.02#/?f=M&start=199209&end=202405&charted=1-2-3-4-6-13-9 https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/browser/?tbl=T01.02#/?f...

cinntaile 2y ago
Nuclear also has essentially zero growth, whichever turtle is fastest still wins.
- tonyarkles 2y ago
  I mean… somewhat true in the west but https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China
  - cinntaile 2y ago
    He specifically mentioned the US so that is what I responded to.
  - pydry 2y ago
    From 1% to 5% of Chinese power is hardly a standout success either.
    - lrkrsBlurkn 2y ago
      [dead]
theluketaylor 2y ago
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.

johnea 2y ago

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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  It's also minuscule. A US person would generate roughly a chicken egg worth of waste across their entire lifetime.
- ViewTrick1002 2y ago
  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.
  - davidu 2y ago
    That's untrue.
    - ViewTrick1002 2y ago
      Please explain how so.

OutOfHere 2y ago

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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  The problem is not how small the waste is, it is the effects. High level radioactive waste can cause Goiânia like outcomes, or leach into the groundwater. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident 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.
  - 2y ago

ViewTrick1002 2y ago

Near everything outperforms nuclear power. Nuclear power is unfathomably expensive. Come back when it is in the same league as renewables or CCGTs.

bluescrn 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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/S0301421510003526 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...
  - Krssst 2y ago
    Nuclear power successfully decarbonized almost the entire French electricity grid. The only case I know of of a large industrialized country without heavy hydro resources managing to almost remove fossil fuels from electricity generation. Maybe it's expensive (still less than in Germany which chose NREs, coal and gas), but it's also the only solution proven to work.
    - ViewTrick1002 2y ago
      It is very intellectually boring to have the view that the only things which are possible is what we have already done. Meaning, with your own logic the French nuclear buildout was impossible since no one had done it before. It was possible. Just like renewables are today.

sschueller 2y ago

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.

frank_bb 2y ago

[dead]

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]

bandyaboot 2y ago

So if I understand correctly, you create a network of fractures that connect to two boreholes and you pump water into one and out the other. Won’t the fractures erode significantly over time? Do we know what happens when we continuously erode a network of fractures deep underground? And won’t the amount of water that’s required to stay pressurized get larger and larger as the fractures erode?

skybrian 2y ago
> One concern in the Project Red test was that 10%-20% of the fluid pumped did not return to the surface. That number is much better than many legacy enhanced geothermal projects but needs improvement. Costs increase and site locations narrow to those with excess cheap water. It could also increase induced seismicity risk over time. > The latest results released for Cape Station do not include the fluid loss number, so we don't know if it improved. Options remain even if it didn't, like reducing fluid throughput. That would hurt productivity, but further gains from drilling and completion intensification could compensate. https://austinvernon.site/blog/geothermalupdate2024.html https://austinvernon.site/blog/geothermalupdate2024.html
natenatenate3 2y ago
They fracture the granite and prop it open with sand or other materials, it doesn't really erode the same as surface granite, which is extremely slow to erode as is.

atomic128 2y ago

No amount of batteries can protect a solar/wind grid from an arbitrarily extended period of "bad" weather. It's like range anxiety in an electric car. If you have N days of battery storage and the sun doesn't shine for N+1 days, you're in trouble. Nuclear fission is the answer. Today there are 440 nuclear reactors operating in 32 countries. Nuclear fission is expensive up-front but once built the power plant can last 50 years (maybe 80, maybe more) and the uranium fuel is very cheap, perhaps 10% of the cost of running the plant. This is in stark contrast to natural gas, where the plant is less expensive to build but then fuel costs accumulate rapidly. And natural gas is a poor choice if you care about greenhouse gas emissions. Sam Altman owns a stake in Oklo, a small modular reactor company. Bill Gates has a huge stake in his TerraPower nuclear reactor company. Oracle announced that it is designing data centers with small modular nuclear reactors: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41505514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41505514 In China, 5 reactors are being built every year. 11 more were announced a few weeks ago. You just don't hear about it... yet. Nuclear fission is safe, clean, secure, and reliable.

danielbln 2y ago
Is this satire or from an LLM. Amidst the very measured praise for the wonder with no downsides that is fission, user atomic123 seems to have missed that this article is about geothermal energy.