Project to Pour Water into Volcano to Make Power

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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A consortium of investors including Google, the Federal Government and others are funding a geothermal project to artificially create steam power from what is hoped to be a dormant volcano. The project site is the Newberry volcano, located in Oregon and will go live this summer, although hopefully, not too live. :D

Efforts to use the earth's heat to generate power, known as geothermal energy, have been further hampered by technical problems and worries that tapping it can cause earthquakes.
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If this causes a volcano to erupt up here in WA, we are nuking you dirty Oregonian hippies.
 
Geothermal has potential. Economically it is as cost effective as nuclear and coal, if not more. Not so big on the "hoped to be dormant" volcano, though.

The U.S. Department of Energy has given the project $21.5 million in stimulus funds.
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What park of "broke" does the US government not understand? :mad:

In related news, woman born with two vaginas!
 
Uvaman said:
eh sounds OK.. but I think this could be the future
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor
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+1 to Thorium power.

The US has ridiculously large deposits, enough to give it away for free, and it could easily replace current nuclear reactors as well as coal and oil power plants while being far more efficient than current nuclear power. Hell, there are concepts for using Thorium to power cars for 100 continuous years without the need to refuel and without the possibility of the fuel reaching critical mass.
 
We all know the obvious solutions to our issues will never be fully realized.

That's just how we work, unfortunately.
 
r9ohcop said:
That's pretty cool. What do you pay per kwh?
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I have no idea. We moved to Virginia when I was 18 so I never paid any utilities when I lived there.
Gas was $4/gallon when I left in 1991.
 
Hmmm ... I did this in terraria and all it made was obsidian.
 
sleepeeg3 said:
Geothermal has potential. Economically it is as cost effective as nuclear and coal, if not more. Not so big on the "hoped to be dormant" volcano, though.

What park of "broke" does the US government not understand? :mad:

In related news, woman born with two vaginas!
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$21 mil, though not to be sneezed at, is actually not a whole lot of money for the government to throw at any project. And if this works, and works well and safely, it's money well invested imho. No greenhouse gases, no nuclear waste, no tar sands, no fouling of the water supply, etc.

(re: your link? she's not the only one, rare it may be, but it happens and it's usually found by accident!)
 
I don't envision this being too successful. I live about 25 miles from Newberry Crater and a bunch of different companies have tried to find a way to tap a heat source from that mountain, and have yet to do so. They caused a bunch of small earthquakes last time they tried. You can read up on their progress here.
 
Marlfox said:
+1 to Thorium power.

The US has ridiculously large deposits, enough to give it away for free, and it could easily replace current nuclear reactors as well as coal and oil power plants while being far more efficient than current nuclear power. Hell, there are concepts for using Thorium to power cars for 100 continuous years without the need to refuel and without the possibility of the fuel reaching critical mass.
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It's a pipe dream that is decades away from even seriously being tested and more on the order of 40+ years out before you can even seriously think about it MAYBE becoming practical. Keep in mind also that is an extremely large maybe.
 
Marlfox said:
+1 to Thorium power.

The US has ridiculously large deposits, enough to give it away for free, and it could easily replace current nuclear reactors as well as coal and oil power plants while being far more efficient than current nuclear power. Hell, there are concepts for using Thorium to power cars for 100 continuous years without the need to refuel and without the possibility of the fuel reaching critical mass.
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And those very reasons are why it'll never see the light of day. :(
 
mynamehere said:
And those very reasons are why it'll never see the light of day. :(
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I don't think so... At least about the car stuff. Look how many cars live up to be 20+ years old... Very, very few. So the limiting factor of greed and money probably doesn't exist. Cars will be always be crashed, body ruined due to corrosion and so forth.
 
krogen said:
I don't think so... At least about the car stuff. Look how many cars live up to be 20+ years old... Very, very few. So the limiting factor of greed and money probably doesn't exist. Cars will be always be crashed, body ruined due to corrosion and so forth.
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Like people with vested interest in big oil will let anything with high efficiency...on non fossil fuels get any traction.
As for replacing nuke reactors. The whole CO2 craze came from a marketing ploy to promote nuclear power, and you see how well that worked out for them. It got taken and twisted into a "green machine" (as in money), then rammed it down out throats so hard it flushed out out wallets.
 
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