Why This Fusion Tech May Be a Geothermal Energy Breakthrough

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[justaguyfromreddit]

I don't know if you will ever read this, but your channel pushed me to start going to engineering

[gbsbill]

I like many aspects of this tech, geothermal replacing coal fired and reusing the existing infrastructure is a great plan. I hope this does come to commercial scale and get widely applied.

[JerryRigEverything]

Awesome! Hopefully all their tests go well. I'd love to see this succeed.

[Zappygunshot]

I remember reading an article about this guy only a few months ago when he published his results; it's amazing to see how quickly this has been picked up and how fast we're getting to industrial scale. Usually that kind of stuff takes ages.
Also, using fusion stabilizing magnetron beams to drill holes to the centre of the planet is both mega sci-fi and reminiscent of the many technological developments that were made during the space race in service of taking a human crew to the moon and back, and how we're still using those technologies today for a wide variety of applications. These stories are always fascinating.

[grahamclark]

Matt, I'm just an observer, but this week I informed the provincial Govt. here of using the Iceland example for using Geothermal to power our province in Canada, we grow every wheat above ground, mine uranium, & the province from day 1 was A Potassium Ocean, so we extract the Potash& send it all around the globe to farmers.

[MahlenMorris]

If this pans out, one could even imagine power generation eventually becoming far more localized, with each metro area having power plants, thus reducing the energy loss on long transmission lines. Lots of "ifs" to get there, no question, but this is exciting.

[ulrichraymond]

You could drill horizontal once you reach a certain depth if the temperature gradient is high. Also a lot of the cost can be offset if gas pockets like helium, argon, xenon, etc are recovered. It could also be used to set up seismometers and detect the depth of the earthquake and triangulate the location. You could even use the heat for desalination plants from such wells.

[erfquake]

I particularly like the idea that you could just drill in the parking lot of an existing power plant & convert it over to geothermal very easily, with zero emissions and a pre-built power infrastructure already connected to it.

[budshoot]

I LOVE your content! When I found you, I didn't care so much about green energy/renewables however as an engineer I was curious about the statistics as well as tech and design concepts behind a lot of your topics. Now that I've been watching you for a bit, I'm looking into geo-thermal cooling for my house and actually excited to buy my next house so I can go solar as well. Thank you for bringing such GREAT topics to this platform and for covering them in such an informative way.

[AnthonyPDavis-ofij]

I listened to QUAISE Carlos on the Insiders Guide to Energy podcast. I hope this works out. It could be a big clean large scale portion of the solution to our worlds clean energy transition. Thanks for bringing this forward Matt Ferrel.

[yash_kambli]

This is the most promising renewable energy source i ever seen. It might have its own limitations or say side effects but compare to other renewable alternatives this is most reliable and very straight forward. Only efforts will goes into making the hole deep enough and prevent it from being collapsed. Apart from that nothing challenging as such.

[donnh]

I was just looking at the web site for Iceland's geothermal power production. Pretty amazing. Many power plants and 70% of the electricity generated goes to making aluminum. The energy goes to things we don't think of like longer showers, heating the streets to keep ice off. Some drilling has been required but the sources are so shallow not a lot of drilling has been required.

[aleenaprasannan]

I took a course in geothermal energy in college and I really wanted to learn more towards it. But was disappointed as there was absolutely no geothermal energy production in India. The tectonically active areas in India is a convergence between two crustal plates and so the crustal thickness along those areas are extremely high as rocks pile up.
That meant way too much drilling is needed to get to superheated water there.
If this technology works and is adopted by India, it would be a game changer.
That would mean there wouldn't be the need for those gigantic dams in Himalayas that are now under serious threat from mudslides and flashfloods from cloudbursts that are happening more frequently because of climate change.
But I'm curious as to how the absence of seismic probe in conventional drilling could impact the process. It's kind of like driving blind.
Though this might require using a separate probe after drilling to collect geological data, it will still help us research and understand a whole lot more about deeper earth. Then again, the lack of physical samples of rocks could still be a severe limitation.

[geoffreykail]

Please keep us up to date on this. This is one of the most practical ways it seems to end some of the fossil fuel dependence. Since the drill rigs are all over the place and the lack of need for casing. Thanks, I enjoy all your research and presentations.

[kenpeterson]

Hopefully, this works as it does in theory, and their testing so far works when actually getting down to the required depth. This would be a great renewable source that works 24/7 with no pollution.

[patrickmorse]

Your welcome for the idea. I am glad you contacted them and figured more out on the feasibility side. Only time will tell how successful their project will be.

[Merennulli]

I'm skeptical of how clearing the borehole will work over those distances and how the borehole will hold up with it relying solely on the result of melting the surrounding rock layers. They must have thought of these factors already, but that's a lot of pressure difference to rely on one mechanism for lifting debris, and the classic problem of drilling is going through transitions between layers of different types of rock. Not all types of rock will form the same sort of "glass" when melted, so transition boundaries are something that would be worrying to me, particularly when you repressurize the hole with acidic water.

Even though I'm skeptical, I'm really hopeful this works. If it delivers on its promise and the boreholes prove to be sufficiently durable, this could be amazing.

[Bill_CBR]

This is certainly a cool option. I think they'd definitely need to drill a deep test hole to demonstrate it's ability to withstand the pressure.

[Gfbackflip]

It's these types of videos that remind me the world really isn't as bad as it seems. We might be having hotter summers every year, but we're creating technology now that will benefit us immensely over the next 100+ years.

[DanielinLaTuna]

Thanks, Matt; one thing though - I was in the power system industry before I retired. We, that is, Los Angeles, had some geothermal resources. What we found was that drilling is one thing - using that heat was another: The water coming out of the ground was very caustic, resulting in high maintenance costs.
On the other hand, any non-coal/gas resource is welcome. We (LA) also ran significant wind and solar, which has had a hard learning curve. Renewables, so far, have required expensive backup replacement energy (quick-start gas turbines), to fill in for the variability of wind and solar. (On a minute by minute basis renewables could swing hundreds of megawatts if the “farms” are large enough, which they are when these resources are scaled to utility levels .)