[Tanada]

Check out Iceland. The whole country runs off geothermal and hydro. I think there is a lot of potential out there, its just pretty far off the beaten path and expensive to develop. With the cost of metals spiraling out of control, i doubt you'll see much money move into this sector.

Given the fact that Iceland is basically volcanic and covered in a bunch of glaciers hydro and geothermal are a peice of cake to develop there. Name another region in the USA or EU with the same kind of geological factors.

[DavidFolks]

Given the fact that Iceland is basically volcanic and covered in a bunch of glaciers hydro and geothermal are a peice of cake to develop there. Name another region in the USA or EU with the same kind of geological factors.

Areas with similar characteristics include Yellowstone national park in Wyoming, Bath in England, Spa in Belgium, Baden Baden in Germany... I'll admit there are no glaciers there, but water is pretty easy to come by.
Try these links for more detail... link1 and link2

[Beat]

Emissions don't make Europe happy...Iceland has the highest ratio of wellbeing to emissions..
Countries like Iceland... demonstrate that living within our environmental means doesn't mean sacrificing human wellbeing, said Nic Marks, founder of Nef's Centre for Wellbeing.
link

European Geothermal Map:

[xrotaryguy]

Given the fact that Iceland is basically volcanic and covered in a bunch of glaciers hydro and geothermal are a peice of cake to develop there. Name another region in the USA or EU with the same kind of geological factors.

Areas with similar characteristics include Yellowstone national park in Wyoming, Bath in England, Spa in Belgium, Baden Baden in Germany... I'll admit there are no glaciers there, but water is pretty easy to come by.
Try these links for more detail... link and link

Eastern Oregon has some geothermal potential as well.

[Roccland]

Cal Energy has numerous geo thermal plants in the Salton Sea area. I worked on one of the units a few years back.
Geothermal is a highly corrosive form of energy development. Maintenance costs can be high.
That said, I think Old Faithful is a great place to bolt a geothermal plant to the earth surface.
Wonder how "greenies" would accept the trade off...reduced coal for a national treasure?? Guess you could put a picture of what it did look like when they drive up there.
Makes one wonder just how green the greenies are willing to be green.

[xrotaryguy]

haha, maybe an energy company could drill a diagonal shaft from outside the park

[JimRingo]

I inspected a 30 MegaWatt Geothermal plant in Nevada early this year. This plant was providing power for 30,000 homes in California. It was manned by 3 employees dujring my visit. 2 on computers and another guy going around tighting nuts. I was informed that the plant cost $65 million to build and produces power at an aveage cost of 3 cents a KWH. That compares with the next cheapest production cost of 8 cents. Geothermal power has no effect on the atmosphere and works even if the sun isn't shinning or the wind is not blowing. I live in Florida, so how will geothermal power work for me? Recent studies by the University of Maryland and MIT in Boston have identified several good sites for Geothermal power in the East. Those people ignoring Geothermal power must be in denial. I've been buying cheap stocks with companies in the geothermal power business; US Geothermal and Vulcan Power Co. Some day geothermal power will be discovered and I will be able to afford air conditioning even at night.

[Blacksmith]

The comments by others have covered most of the problems associated with deep wells.
Heat is the main problem, the mud system required to stabilize the well, is what has so far stopped deeper wells in Iceland.
Don't forget Iceland is on the Mid Atlantic Rift where the crust is actually splitting apart.
My last point is diagonal wells, or indeed horizontal wells are not only possible, but common.

[Sideous]

Geothermal resources in most countries in the EU and most states in the US, are sizable. In order to be practical for power generation, temperatures need to be high. This means that in most places you need to drill down a long way (~6km in western England) to get high enough temperatures (~200C) to generate superheated steam. That is expensive to do.

In most places, geothermal will provide space heating at modest drilling depths. In the UK, drilling depths of 2km will provide geothermal heat of sufficient temperature for space heating, perhaps 50-80C. The problem with the US is that cities tend to be diffuse and generally sprawled across a massive area. This would make the sort of district heating system required to distribute the geothermal heat, difficult and expensive to engineer. But the resource is sizable, but is generally available as low-grade haet rather than electricity.

One idea that has met with some enthusiasm is to use geothermal heat to pre-heat the feed water for a conventional fossil fuel plant. Using high entropy geothermal heat (<100C) to do this would cut fuel consumption by 8-15%, depending upon the cycle temperature.

[Graeme]

Glitnir Eyes $40 Billion For Geothermal Financing

Glitnir said Wednesday it's planning to invest up to $ 40 billion in geothermal energy projects in North America by 2025 as the Nordic financial group eyes growth in the business of harnessing heat from the earth to produce electricity.
Glitnir projects an annual U.S. geothermal electricity market of $11 billion by 2025 from about $1.8 billion now, with geothermal potentially providing up to 20% of California's electricity needs, 60% of Nevada's and 30% of Hawaii's.

CNN

[xarkz]

Yes, its interesting. Glitnir(an Icelandic bank) is working with companies here that are leading in the geothermal field.
This amount of energy is likely to be badly needed when its ready so this investment looks good. Not to mention that Las Vegas might even be saved, for now

[Kylon]

What if we dropped small nuclear bombs deep in the ground, exploded them, and used the heat to construct geothermal hot spots. Or we could drop a series of small nuclear fusion bombs in the ground, to create a really large geothermal hotspot, we could then build geothermal power stations on the locations once all the initial work was done.

If we used 1000 lfusion bombs, a couple of gigatons worth of energy, maybe 30-40, then we could tap into those with a geothermal power station, and use the resulting power to power our facilities and what not. If it was deep enough down it might not effect the water table. Also, if it was deep enough down, the radiation would be shielded from the people above.

Also, before you say "crank", think of the alternative-
Total societal breakdown due to a lack of cheap energy. Recession, choas, the four horsemen, ect., Or possibly, total nuclear war.
Which is better, nuclear blast occuring above ground or below ground? What do you think?

[Kylon]

Why is no one replying to this?

[jboogy]

I don't know about anyone else Spedley , but I like this idea . I can't really understand all the science and stuff your talking about but blowin' shit up? Mark me down as on board! What's our next move ?

[Kylon]

Well, we could e-mail the idea to geologist or scientist in the field.
See what they think about it. I would think that we would do it in areas that have low population densities as well as being low on life and waste, perhaps North Dakota. The energy could then be transferred to another power station where it could be used to take water and make hydrogen via electrolysis.

It could then be shipped all across the country to various power plants for use, or used for hydrogen cracking in heavy crude hydrocarbon deposits(oil shale), in order to produce useful oil for our oil infrastructure. It wouldn't be a perfect solution but it's better than the alternative.
BTW, I'm all open to alternative power source ideas as long as there is some feasibility behind them. To me it doesn't matter if there dangerous to consider as long as there feasible, because the alternative to little energy is for the most part death.

[jboogy]

Ixnay on the ailmay chief, I don't think too many of them pointy-headed geothermal / nuclear physicists would grok the sheer genius of what your proposing. We need to start thinking in terms of what two determined , smart go-getters such as ourselves can accomplish with a little planning and elbow grease . By the by , I recently read a story about how lax security has been at the nuclear storage facilities in some of the former soviet bloc countries.Just something to mull over while we think of those glorious underground explosions.

[Plantagenet]

What if we dropped small nuclear bombs deep in the ground, exploded them, and used the heat to construct geothermal hot spots.

Its already hot deep under the ground. The earth's heat flow produces higher temperatures the deeper you go. Places like volcanoes are exceptionally hot. There is no need to set off nukes to make it hot.

[jboogy]

That's right Pstarr , you go out and have a good time sniffin' bikinis and what not , secure in the knowledge that me an' Kylon are hard at work makin' sure that there will be a liveable planet for you and yours well into the future. We don't want accolades or even acknowledgement of the hard work we're about to undertake on everyones behalf , just a little understanding would be nice.