Northwest looks to develop energy from volcanoes

[babylonsister]

Northwest looks to develop energy from volcanoes
By Les Blumenthal | McClatchy Newspapers

* Posted on Tuesday, January 22, 2008


WASHINGTON — Deep beneath the Cascades Mountains in the Northwest, where molten magma heats the Earth's crust and occasionally bursts through cracks and fractures in violent volcanic eruptions, lurks an energy source that scientists think could be tamed to help power the region.

Though there's been little exploration, and no deep test holes have been drilled, the geothermal potential of the Cascades — which run from Washington state south through Oregon into Northern California — is starting to attract a buzz. In the next 10 or 15 years, some predict, commercial-sized power plants could start generating electricity.

"As this area is predicted to contain vast geothermal resources, development plans for the Cascades are becoming an increasingly frequent topic of conversation," said a report late last year for the Department of Energy.

Behind Iceland, which gets more than 26 percent of its electricity from geothermal plants, the United States is a world leader in geothermal development, with plants producing more than 3,000 megawatts of electricity. California is No. 1, and resources in such other Western states as Nevada, Utah, Idaho and Oregon are being developed. Nevada has been dubbed the "Saudi Arabia of geothermal."

A recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology study found that the amount of geothermal power that could be recovered from deep drilling would represent almost 3,000 times the amount of energy currently consumed in the United States.

Last year's Energy Department report said the Cascades contained "potentially significant" geothermal resources, but it cautioned that the effort to tap these resources — including drilling miles into volcanoes to tap "supercritical fluids" — won't be easy.

more...

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/25163.html

[Mythsaje]

1. Now THAT would be an amazing achievement.

Far preferable to nuclear power, in my opinion.

[Massacure]

5. Geothermal ultimately is partly nuclear.

Uranium decays naturally in the Earth's crust, creating heat...

[kestrel91316]

9. Then you could argue that solar is also essentially nuclear power....

which it is. But not in any sense that it has the nuclear waste disposal problem that nuclear power plants do.

Solar is clean and renewable. Geothermal is clean and renewable. Nuclear is not clean by any stretch of the imagination.

[Blue_In_AK]

2. They could do that here, too...

We have a whole chain of volcanos out to the west.

[TooBigaTent]

3. And we could increase the output by "feeding" the volcano... nt

[XemaSab]

4. Huh?

The volcanoes are "fed" by the Cascadian subduction zone. :shrug:

[pscot]

6. I think he probably has in mind

a more atavistic approach that involves immersing recent immigrants to our fair state in lakes of bubbling lava.

[Javaman]

7. I was thinking more like repukes. LOL nt

[pscot]

8. Works for me

n/t