Don't believe any nonsense like this regarding geothermal power! This is reckless and irresponsible overpromising!
Geothermal power is no panacea either! The negative environmental impact (e.g. anthropogenic earthquakes) of large scale exploitation or utilization of this power source are yet unknown, but can be presumed to be significant. Just the necessary use of large quantities of (supercritical) water could already pose issues. Of course, geothermal power could become a part of an energy supply mix.
The quoted research itself nor any of the researchers involved do not make any such outlandish promises!
This study by EPFL also relies heavy on modeling and not on hard empirical evidence. Keep that in mind too!
"... By tapping into the enormous heat of the Earth's interior, it's theoretically possible to extract enough clean power to meet all humanity's energy needs for millions of years to come, solving the biggest challenge of climate change more or less overnight. ..."
"... The deepest hole in the world is on the Kola Peninsula in Russia, and extends 12 kilometers – yet that’s less than 25% of the average depth of the continental crust. And even though geologists have been able to dig that far, it’s nearly impossible to take measurements at such depths. That’s why many scientists are working to replicate the conditions inside their research labs. ..."
From the abstract:
"Geothermal projects utilizing supercritical water (≥400 °C) could boost power output tenfold compared to conventional plants. However, these reservoirs commonly occur in crustal areas where rocks are semi-ductile or ductile, impeding large-scale fractures and cracking, and where hydraulic properties are largely unknown. Here, we explore the complex permeability of rocks under supercritical conditions using mechanical data from a gas-based triaxial apparatus, high-resolution synchrotron post-mortem 3D imagery, and finite element modeling. We report a first order control of strain partitioning on permeability. In the brittle regime, strain localizes on permeable faults without necessarily increasing sample apparent permeability. In the semi-ductile regime, distributed strain increases permeability both in deformation bands and the bulk, leading to a more than tenfold permeability increase. This study challenges the belief that the brittle-ductile transition (BDT) marks a cutoff for fluid circulation in the crust, demonstrating that permeability can develop in deforming semi-ductile rocks."
Scientists explore the complexity of rocks within the Earth's crust (original news release) "A team of EPFL scientists has provided insight into the mechanisms at work in geothermal reservoirs located deep underground, known as supercritical reservoirs. Through a combination of computer simulations and lab experiments, they showed that rocks located between five and eight kilometers deep in the Earth’s crust are also permeable to fluids."
Fig. 2: 3D rendering of the XCT images and isolated cracks of the brittle and semi-ductile specimens.
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