The following analysis was sent to me by someone who shall remain unnamed, lest he or she lose his or her job. The take-home message:
As an energy source, geothermal shows a great deal more promise than nuclear. Yet nuclear is being lavished with government largesse while geothermal goes almost entirely ignored. All sources are cited.
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"I would add that a tremendous amount of thought has gone into the requested level of funding and what can be achieved with it, particularly given these tight budgetary times. Now, more than ever, this nation cannot afford to waste taxpayers' dollars on programs that are not well-conceived or are unlikely to be effective ..."
"I'd like to see tangible results from these projects in my lifetime."
-- Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman, age 68.
New Projects Status:
Nuclear energy: 18 projects under some stage of development (Source: Nuclear Energy Institute [NEI])
Geothermal energy: 61 projects under some stage of development (Source: Geothermal Energy Association [GEA])
States Affected by New Development:
Nuclear: 12: Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, Illinois, Texas, New York, North Carolina, and Idaho. (Source: NEI)
Geothermal: 12: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. (Source: GEA)
Future Potential (from comparable sources):
Nuclear: 23,000MW - 62,000MW by 2020 (NEI Testimony to Congress, Marvin Fertel, Senior VP, February 3, 2005, US Senate, Committee on Energy and Natural Resources)
Geothermal: 30,725MW - 100,000MW (GEA Testimony before Senate Energy and Water Subcommittee, and estimate from NREL Geothermal Resource Estimates for the United States (PDF), Technical Report NREL/TP-840-40665, November 2006)
DOE Requested Program Funding (FY 08):
Nuclear: $875 million (PDF)
Geothermal: $0 (PDF)
| Types of DOE Support Provided | Nuclear | Geothermal |
| Market and Infrastructure Support: | Yes | No |
| Financial Support/Loan Guarantees | Yes | No |
| Licensing Support | Yes | No |
| Risk Insurance Support | Yes | No |
| Advanced Technology Development | Yes | No |
| International Market Support | Yes | No |
| Waste Disposal | Yes | No |
Nuclear: Full credit amount (1.8 cents/kwhr) for next 6,000 MW on-line before December 31, 2020.
Geothermal: Full credit amount (1.8 cents/kwhr) for facilities on-line by December 31, 2008.
States Producing Basic Energy Resources:
Nuclear fuels (uranium production): 8 states (EIA)
Geothermal energy (power and heat): 25 states (Oregon Institute of Technology Geo-heat Center, and GEA Senate Energy and Water Subcommittee Statement, April 28, 2006)
Type of Power Provided:
Nuclear: baseload electricity
Geothermal: baseload electricity
Current Size of Industry (total sales based on EIA 2005 date for production and average retail sales price):
Nuclear power sales in 2005: $64 billion
Geothermal power sales in 2005: $1.1 billion
Comments
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GRLCowan Posted 6:15 am
18 Feb 2007
The deep hot rocks that geothermal energy depends on are hot because they have accumulated some of this 22 percent. According to the above-linked document, average continental crust is 0.00025 mass percent U, and if left alone a kg U makes 0.000095 watts, so a kg of rock makes 0.00000000024 W. If perfectly insulated it will heat itself from 25 Celsius to 325 Celsius in 40 million years. I guess geothermal works better where the rock is slightly richer than the crustal average, 0.002 percent maybe, and in that case the mentioned self-heating would of course take five million years.
The kilogram of rock's 300 kJ of heat is therefore nonrenewable, like its 11,800 kJ of fission potential if it is raised and its uranium extracted to feed an ordinary nuclear reactor. (Raising it 1,000 m takes at least 9.8 kJ, crushing it for the extraction takes at most 180 kJ. It is sometimes said low-grade uranium ores do not have a high net energy fraction, but that is a lie.)
The geothermal yield appears to be 2.5 percent of the fission yield, but that ignores the relative low-gradeness of the heat that is available in the geothermal case. 1 percent sounds reasonable.
Getting heat out of fractured rock, but leaving it in place, does not imply leaving all the radioactivity in place. Radon would be extracted. The rock's five-million-year self-reheat time implies not very much radon, but one of radon's daughters is lead-210, which has a 22-year half-life if I remember correctly, so there would be an accumulation of radioactivity on filters at the surface, or throughout the pipework. This also happens in natural gas extraction, although to a lesser degree since gas and uranium aren't associated the way geothermal heat and uranium are; it then is called TENORM, technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive material, q.g.
--- G. R. L. Cowan, boron combustion fan
Oxygen expands around B fire, car goes
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meander Posted 6:27 am
18 Feb 2007
Too bad Halliburton or Exxon-Mobil doesn't have a geothermal division -- there would be plenty of resources if they did.
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amazingdrx Posted 3:25 pm
18 Feb 2007
Geothermal heating/cooling with direct circulation and heat pumps could reduce heating/air conditioning energy use to such an extent that it could replace maybe 40% of present electric power use.
That's the equivalent of 400 nuclear power plants or 1000s of geothermal steam plants. Geothermal heating/cooling is the conservation aspect of energy re-evolution, along with conservation from more efficient buildings, appliances, and plugin vehicles.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Nucbuddy Posted 3:56 pm
18 Feb 2007
That would be magical, given that only 31% of home electricity use is accounted-for by HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Cooling).
eia.doe.gov/emeu/reps/enduse/er01_us_tab1.html
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amazingdrx Posted 6:16 pm
18 Feb 2007
I think they use heating/cooling electric power too. Not to mention food processing, distillation, food storage, it can all benefit from conservation using geothermal heat pump heating/cooling.
31% is a pretty encouraging conservation target on the home front.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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jtholmes Posted 7:48 am
19 Feb 2007
or search for that title.
I personally know of a home that is heated with a geothermal/heatpump using a collector in a lake, that is now under 3 to 4 feet of ice. It works great and saves money. Why not in the USA?
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spaceshaper Posted 8:48 am
19 Feb 2007
Ground source (and water source) heat pumps are a different animal altogether, using heat pump technology to leverage the fairly constant ambient temperature to be found in shallow drillings, trenches and ponds relative to the much wider seasonal and diurnal variations in the local air temperature, and they are most commonly used (at least in my neck of the woods) in small-scale installations for individual residential heating and cooling.
Both are really significant, important and valuable technologies and both are well worth developing as part of our long-term energy strategies.
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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amazingdrx Posted 4:30 pm
19 Feb 2007
Geothermal heating/cooling using direct circulation and heat pumps is capable of saving a huge portion of our total generating capacity. and substituting for combustion of fossil fuel for heating.
By using heat pumps to store heating/cooling capacity in buildings, food storage facilities, and other large heating/cooling uses, electric power can be stored when solar and wind produce excess power that exceeds demand. A way to avoid backup generation and electrical storage.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Nucbuddy Posted 5:00 pm
19 Feb 2007
Why is it only possible to store solar and wind power?
.
phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter14.html#5
if electricity storage should become really cheap, nuclear power would be in a position to compete for peak and intermediate load service.
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Nucbuddy Posted 5:38 pm
19 Feb 2007
monolithic.com/pres/freshair
For a very long time we have known, planned around and used the thermal inertia of the Monolithic Dome. We call that thermal inertia the thermal battery. Why battery? Because significant savings in heating and cooling equipment can be achieved if you can trim off the highs and lows by using the battery.
Even more savings can be achieved depending on the days and times of day heating or cooling is used. The amount used can be adjusted by taking advantage of the battery. For instance, we might cool the dome shell with night air and let that coolness carry us through the day -- thus eliminating the need for refrigerated air. On the other hand, we might heat the structure with warm, outside, daytime air and let it carry us through the night with little or no additional heat.
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Nucbuddy Posted 6:22 pm
19 Feb 2007
Geothermal power sales in 2005: $1.1 billion
Nuclear power has 98 gigawatts of capacity installed. Geothermal power has 2.8 gigawatts of capacity installed.
Ratios of billions of dollars in sales to gigawatts of capacity:
Nuclear: 64/98 = $.65 billion/gigawatt capacity.
Geothermal: 1.1/2.8 = $.39 billion/gigawatt capacity.
Nuclear power capacity is 67% more effective at producing revenue.
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spaceshaper Posted 9:55 pm
19 Feb 2007
In the Antarctic, I believe a steady-state heating condition applies pretty much all year, even in the summer. Thermal mass would seem to be of significant value only if you were to be so foolish as to not have an airlock on the doors, or to leave them open.... What really matters is the insulation, not the mass.
In fact in an unheated small building thermal mass can be a detriment: a thermally-lightweight small enclosure such as tent can actually be warmed pretty quickly by the body heat of its occupants. Don't expect this in a stone hut. This of course is why sleeping bags are made of down.
I should mention that thermal mass can also be valuable in turning an intermittent heat source such as a wood fire into a steady emitter more like a modern heating system. To maximize this benefit the mass should be concentrated close to the heater, as in a traditional Russian stove: mass in the shell of the building is of lesser value.
In this as in all our building practices it would behoove us as we go into a more frugal future to look at traditional ways of doing things which are local to our own area: how did people manage to live comfortably in this place in the past, before the the profligate use of cheap energy became the norm?
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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spaceshaper Posted 10:06 pm
19 Feb 2007
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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amazingdrx Posted 12:25 am
20 Feb 2007
For storing heat around home heating temperatures, sodium sulphate decahydrate is a good example. The compound breaks down into salt precipitate and water as the heat is released, as heat is absorbed the salt dissolve and form the compound.
For storing high temperature heat molten salt or wax heat storage is good. The temperature of the phase change is high enough to drive a steam turbine.
For storing cold a saline solution can be adjusted to freeze at a variable temperasture depending upon the salt concentration. This project for storing cold in large food cold storage facilities is interesting.
http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2007/02/cold_st ...
It could benefit from using phase change storage. That way the food would stay right in the right temperature range rather than swing too far to the warm side and risk damaging it's quality.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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GreyFlcn Posted 7:13 am
28 Feb 2007
Thats actually a great arguement for geothermal versus nuclear.
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Nucbuddy Posted 9:04 am
28 Feb 2007
Geothermal power sales in 2005: $1.1 billion
Nuclear power has 98 gigawatts of capacity installed. Geothermal power has 2.8 gigawatts of capacity installed.
Ratios of billions of dollars in sales to gigawatts of capacity:
Nuclear: 64/98 = $.65 billion/gigawatt capacity.
Geothermal: 1.1/2.8 = $.39 billion/gigawatt capacity.
Nuclear power capacity is 67% more effective at producing revenue.GreyFlcn wrote: Said another way, doesn't this also mean that Geothermal costs 67% less per Kwh?.
Apparently not, since there is information there regarding neither production- nor generation-cost per unit of delivered energy. Sales prices are based upon supply-and-demand, rather than upon generation costs.
However, visiting this Nuclear Energy Institute webpage, we see that:
The [nuclear] industry's average production costs--encompassing expenses for uranium fuel and operations and maintenance--were an all-time low of 1.66 cents/kwh in 2006, according to preliminary figures. Average production costs have been below 2 cents/kwh for the past eight years, making nuclear power plants highly cost competitive with other electricity sources
[...]
Even when expenses for taxes, decommissioning and yearly capital additions are added to production costs to yield a total electricity cost, nuclear-generated electricity typically clears the market for less than 2.5 cents/kwh. By comparison, production costs alone for natural gas-fired power plants averaged 7.5 cents/kwh in 2005, according to Global Energy Decisions data..
Geothermal's electrical generation costs are reported by NREL thusly:
Geothermal electricity costs, in the range of 5 to 8 cents per kWh, while very attractive compared to many other clean energy technologies, cannot compete against 3 cents per kWh electricity from natural gas power plants..
So, we have sub-2.5-cents/kWh for nuclear electric generation vs. 5-to-8-cents/kWh for geothermal electric generation. The same report goes on to note that:
The actual power output of plants has also declined, with U.S. generation now at 2,200 MW compared with a rated output of about 2,800 MW. This decline is mostly the result of changes at The Geysers, where power output has dropped from 1,875 MW in 1990 to 1,137 MW today. This drop is due both to the retirement of older plants and a loss in reservoir volume over the years.
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Nucbuddy Posted 10:28 am
28 Feb 2007
As an energy source, geothermal shows a great deal more promise than nuclear..
Differently, NREL states:
As a result of the unfavorable economic conditions for geothermal energy in the United States, the industry has looked for opportunities abroad..
David Roberts wrote: Yet nuclear is being lavished with government largesse while geothermal goes almost entirely ignored.
Please see my previous post which reports that the generation cost of nuclear electricity is typically 1/3 that of geothermal electricity. Everything else being equal, which one would you lavish with government largesse -- 1) the less-expensive option which also has unlimited opportunities for expansion in the United States, or 2) the more-expensive option which also has essentially-zero opportunities for expansion in the United States?
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GreyFlcn Posted 5:56 pm
28 Feb 2007
Which would be like coal fired power plant not monetizing emmisions, or the payback of the facility.
Or better yet, Solar has 0 cents per year in O&M and fuel. Beat that :P
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GreyFlcn Posted 6:15 pm
28 Feb 2007
The United States is seeing its first wave of new geothermal power development in a decade. "The first new power plant resulting from a state Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) was commissioned in Nevada in 2005. "This is the first of many new plants that will deliver clean, reliable electricity to consumers," Gawell noted. "Over 500 megawatts (MW) of new projects have secured power contracts in 2005, with more expected in the coming year," he added.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0915/p02s01-uspo.html
I wonder how they are doing for 2006-2007
_
Also likewise, Geothermal and Ocean Current tech isn't getting much help from the Feds.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0915/p02s01-uspo.html
As mentioned, Geothermal would be doing a lot better if it was lavished with the same benefits as nuclear. Instead of having to fend for it's own in regions that don't monetize coal.
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GreyFlcn Posted 6:17 pm
28 Feb 2007
http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=41 ...
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Nucbuddy Posted 10:21 am
01 Mar 2007
Geothermal electricity costs, in the range of 5 to 8 cents per kWhvisiting this Nuclear Energy Institute webpage, we see that:
[...]Even when expenses for taxes, decommissioning and yearly capital additions are added to production costs to yield a total electricity cost, nuclear-generated electricity typically clears the market for less than 2.5 cents/kwh.
GreyFlcn wrote: I'd hardly call $0.16 typical. They aren't monetizing the cost of of anything besides operations, maintence, and fuel.
The industry's recent record-low production cost of 1.66 cents/kwh in 2006 does not include the cost-items: taxes, decommissioning and yearly capital additions. As noted in the quoted sections above, when those cost-items are added to production costs, they typically yield a total electricity generation-cost of less than 2.5 cents/kwh.
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