🚀 go-pugleaf

Peter Webb wrote:
> "Addinall" <addinall@addinall.org> wrote in message
> news:1167544085.362178.229360@42g2000cwt.googlegroups.com...
> >
> > Landy wrote:
> >> "David Moss" <q0320811@mail.connect.usq.edu.au> wrote in message
> >> news:MPG.2000942a106031ce98a258@news.bigpond.com...
> >> > In article <en4jub$rl8$1@news-02.connect.com.au>, dontemailme@all.com
> >> > writes...
> >> >
> >> >> So tell me what's wrong with this form of energy as an alternative to
> >> >> coal?
> >> >
> >> > Isn't geothermal just another kind of nuclear energy?
> >> >
> >>
> >> Well yes, but one is nuclear fission and the other is not.
> >
> > Nope. Both fission.  Exactly the same process the Green
> > nuts get all pantieless over.  What's more, it's not
> > contained.
> >
> > Environmental Pollution in Sindh, Pakistan
> > By Mrs. Farzana Panhwar
> > September 2004
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > Mass awareness and education program.
> > Pollution- the contamination of air, water or soil with substance
> > harmful to life -has been a seemingly inevitable by-product of
> > industrialisation and urbanisation, should be reduced.
> > Geothermal power brings thermal pollution of air and surface water,
> > contamination ground water, increase, hydrogen sulphide and sulphuric
> > oxide pollutants in the air, create problems in the disposal of salts.
> > These carefully monitored and their pollutants should be controlled and
> > checked at an International Standard to bring sustainable activities in
> > the country.
> > http://www.eco-web.com/editorial/040924.html
> >
> > [...]
> > ------------
> >
> > Of course if you pump a load of water down a hole that
> > is being heated by a load of radioactive rock, some of that
> > radioactive material will be dissolved or kept in supension
> > in the water, and it's going to come up to the surface.
> >
> > It WILL also find it's way into the water table and aquifiers.
> > Water is the slipperiest molecule in the universe.  It
> > will get everywhere once pumped into fissured
> > rock.
> >
> > This is a big scream for the "NO NUKE" crowd, if something
> > weally bad hapens, like tewwowists or a WEALLY big earthquake,
> > you could leak nasty stuff into the WATER TABLE killing
> > all the chilrun for at least 200,000 years.  So THERE.....!
> >
> > Sorry to tell you kiddies, injection driven geothermal power generation
> > does that from day one, week one.
> >
> > In a country like Australia, devising a scheme to take huge
> > quantities of fresh water and polluting it to generate electricity
> > is criminal.  And insane.
> >
> > On the other hand, a closed fuel cycle reactor, metal cooled,
> > will sit there and chug along producing not only power,
> > but nice clean drinking water as well.
> >
> > Here we go.  A few dozen of these little babies
> > all around the coast.
> >
> > http://www.llnl.gov/str/JulAug04/Smith.html
> >
> > Plug-n-Play Power.
> >
> > Mark Addinall.
> >
> >
> >> cheers
> >> Bill
> >
>
> That's not my understanding of geothermal energy (though I may be wrong).
>
> Pump salt water down one hole, and tap it as steam out the other hole. The
> salt is left behind; fresh water is the waste product. Because heat exchange
> (Carnot cycle) engines are so inefficient at comparatively low temperatures
> (a few hundred degrees C), you actually get a lot of fresh water produced
> for each kWh you produce. When the "mining" is completed, you have a huge
> amount of salt from the sea buried deep underground and the other waste
> product - fresh water - available for consumption.

Sure.  Using salt water as a base, a model like that can and is
used in places.

>
> The initial cost is high, because you have to build a salt water pipeline
> from the coast.

Huge.  If you have a look at our hot spots.  And I am very
not keen on introducing MORE salt into our soils.

> As soon as your mine is operational, you start drilling
> another one a few kms away, and extend the salt water pipeline and
> transmission lines to this new location. You are always buiding the next
> mine as you use the previous one. The cost of second and third mines is far
> lower, because you only need local water and power reticulation.
>
> The real guilty secret is that to make the process efficient on a large
> scale, you have to be able to fracture a cubic km of granite a few kms
> underground. I know an excellent, cheap way to fracture a few cubic kms of
> rock underground, which will also give you a nice hot underground cavity a
> couple of hundred metres in diameter which can be used as a boiler. But even
> mentioning this technique will completely destroy the acceptability of
> geothermal energy to the public at large, so none of the potential operators
> advertise this far more cost-effective approach.

Of course.

Mark Addinall.