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This Fusion Tech is Solving the Geothermal Energy Problem (Original Post) Warpy Jun 2024 OP
very interesting et tu Jun 2024 #1
This sounds great if they can make it work.. Like fusion it's only 5-10 years away. The best they have done mitch96 Jun 2024 #2
Geothermal tech of this sort would be a boon for Vogon_Glory Jun 2024 #3
Yes for CEntral America Warpy Jun 2024 #4

mitch96

(14,658 posts)
2. This sounds great if they can make it work.. Like fusion it's only 5-10 years away. The best they have done
Tue Jun 25, 2024, 01:50 PM
Jun 2024

is 100 inches from what I can find...This was a few months ago.
m

https://spectrum.ieee.org/geothermal-energy-gyrotron-quaise

Vogon_Glory

(9,572 posts)
3. Geothermal tech of this sort would be a boon for
Tue Jun 25, 2024, 01:53 PM
Jun 2024

Central America and much of South America. Much of Central America is volcanic territory, as is much of the territory in or alongside the Andes. Tapping into geothermal this way would allow many of these countries to shut down pollutant-belching power plants more often than not running on imported fossil fuel.

EDIT: Also, I suspect that the heat sources in volcanic areas are a lot closer than 10 miles down.

Warpy

(113,130 posts)
4. Yes for CEntral America
Tue Jun 25, 2024, 02:16 PM
Jun 2024

but probably not for the west coast of South America. Yes, it's volcanic, but there's little water there, it's why they are in the forefront of harvesting water from the air for drinking water and crops. While shallow bores would access plenty of heat, that heat would need to be harvested by something other than steam turbines. High temperature thermoelectric ceramics are in the tinkering stage, but that tech is likely decades away from being scaled up for power generation.

Deep bore tech is for places like the eastern US that rely on coal fired plants. The microwave drills might be cheaper to operate and the geothermal energy equal to modular nuclear plants being proposed today. As the video pointed out, the turbines in the existing coal fired plants could be used as is, in situ, the superheated coming from deep in the earth instead of a coal boiler.

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