TL;DR:
Geothermal energy is currently only feasible in very few places where heat comes close to the surface. We are limited by how far we can dig.
The article doesn’t really go into detail on how, but basically it’s due to pressure and heat, drill bits last less time the deeper we go, eventually there’s just way too much pressure.
But lasers don’t have this problem, enabling us to dig much much deeper, potentially making geothermal practical in many more locations.
I can’t help but read “aggressive mining disguised as geothermal tech”.
(…) This study challenges the belief that the brittle-ductile transition (BDT) marks a cutoff for fluid circulation in the crust, demonstrating that permeability can develop in deforming semi-ductile rocks.
white paper in Nature
Permeability partitioning through the brittle-to-ductile transition and its implications for supercritical geothermal reservoirs
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-52092-0Fine, I’ll take my attention elsewhere if you insist…
Weird, I read fine with Ublock+Firefox
geothermal
renewable
WTF are they smoking?
I guess it’s not technically renewable but the reservoir of geothermal energy is so vast it’s hard to see how it could be used up and it has minimal environmental impacts.
To be fair, I don’t even consider solar and wind power to be renewable. But then again I’m the sort of weirdo that considers things on astronomical timescales.
