THE POTENTIAL OF GEOTHERMAL

The Power War: Geothermal vs. Nuclear

Kirsten Allen, July 15, 2015 (The Advocate)

“…[Oregon’s Newberry Volcano] is one of five sites that have been awarded $2 million by the Department of Energy [for research on a fracking-like geothermal energy process]…[The winning site will] test technology and equipment, with the eventual goal of geothermal energy production...[I]f the technology demonstrated at Newberry based on extracting heat from an otherwise dry geothermal system [can be] developed into commercial power generation…[it could be a source of New Energy for the Pacific Northwest. Newberry developers are] engineering a hydrothermal system using hydroshearing, the injection of shallow groundwater into deeper very hot rock formations, at modest pressure, to open up a network of small cracks that are meant to allow for the transfer of heat away from the rock and into the circulating water…[This boiling hot water would be turned to steam to drive a turbine and] then cooled and condensed to be reused…[If federal funding for the research continues, the technology could compete] with a nuclear reactor on the scale of power output…” click here for more

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