Wednesday, March 11, 2015

CLEAN ENERGY, ANYONE?


No-one ever needs to mine coal, drill for oil or gas, dig up and refine uranium or anything else to burn or react: all the energy we could ever need is below our feet.

If people want to have electricity made in big installations that can run 24 hours a day seven days a week that do not emit any pollution, burn anything or create toxic or dangerous waste material there is only one answer: Geothermal power stations.

All of the technology needed to make this work almost anywhere on the Earth's surface has already been tried and proven.

All we need to do is drill a deep enough hole, pump water down it and steam will return which we can then use to generate electrical energy. The only “waste product” is heat, which every other type of power plant (apart from hydroelectric) creates too.

The drilling might cost something but the hole does not close up or “run out of heat” (unlike an oil well) and the water we sent down the well to heat up and drive the generators can be cooled in radiators and sent back down again so there is no need for a continuous supply of water or heat pollution of rivers. It is cheap in terms of generating systems and safer than any other power system (apart from maybe solar panels). All of the generator parts are available off the shelf.

So why isn't this happenning? Why aren't all of the countries of the world installing geothermal power plants? 

There is no technical reason why not.

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