SAY NO TO A NUCLEAR AUSTRALIA

Altrnative Energy Sources... Geothermal

1:02 PM, Fri 9 Feb 2007 .. Posted in Geothermal .. 0 comments .. Link

Sooner or later we will HAVE to consider an alternative source of energy (and ideally it should be a renewable source), as our planet is groaning under the fog that we've created around it. When we look at the problem realistically, logic tells us that we should find a new source of power and implement it as quickly as possible. It makes sense then, that a lot of people have jumped on the nuclear and clean coal bandwagons. What do you do when your ship sinks? Grab onto anything that floats and try to keep up. So along comes nuclear, and it seems to be floating pretty well. It's just a pity it leaves you glowing green at night.

But seriously, we need a renewable source of power. Even if we can manage to keep a check on greenhouse gas emissions, sooner or later all of our natural resources will run out... even uranium has a limited amount of mass (ie, there's only so much of it), and life span. As it stands there seems to be almost an over-abundance of it, but if every country were to use nuclear to source their energy it would quickly become as rare as hen's teeth, let me assure you. And then what?... on top of the initial costs of implementing nuclear, will we have to buy back our own uranium at greatly inflated prices? What's to say that our economy will be able to support that... and what's to say that supplies wouldn't just run out within a very short time? Then we'd be stuck studying renewable energy anyway. Wouldn't it make sense to start on it now? It would certainly save us a whole heap of dollars in the long run. Shouldn't we take the initiative and take our part in setting a precedent that the rest of the world can follow?

So, what alternative would be best to choose? Well... this is a tricky one, as each of our choices have both benefits and drawbacks associated with their use. Also, most of them have an optimum environment in which they can be best used. Personally, I think solar is the most promising of the current technologies, considering the amount of research that has gone into it already, the funding that it's received, improvements in technologies, availability of sunlight to most of the world, etc. I'll concede that solar doesn't guarantee you power 100% of the time, it can be hard to store, and that it's just not suitable for some climates. And problems like these are associated with most other renewable sources too. But that doesn't mean that we should discount any of those sources. Many of them will only be improved, if we can talk the government into funding some research. But essentially, I think it will take the implementation and amalgamation of a number of differing technologies to fully change to a renewable power source.

So, let's get down to the nitty-gritty and start looking at some alternative energy sources. I was going to flog the old solar horse again, but we've been there. I will be going back, but for now I think I'll focus on some of the lesser-known ways to produce energy. We might as well start with Geothermal.

So, what is geothermal energy (check out the Wikipedia definition)? Well basically... it's energy produced from tapping into the earth's natural underground heat... for example, trapping the steam that escapes from geysers. It can be very cost-effective and is being successfully used in over 20 countries, including Iceland (producing 17% of its electricity from geothermal sources), the United States, Italy, France, New Zealand, Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Russia, the Philippines (production output of 1931MW (2nd to US, 27% of electricity), Indonesia, the People's Republic of China, Canada and Japan. '

But there are drawbacks. For one... geothermal plants need to be built on or near a fissure, volcano or other suitable heat source. This means that it just can't apply as well to many countries, due to not meeting the requirements. Then there's the cooling aspect... for the steam to be produced there must be water present. With the harvesting of the steam comes the need to replace the water that has boiled off. Most geothermal plants will replace the water with treated (or sometimes untreated) severage. This has the added benefit of cleaning up a lot of the effluent that was being pumped into rivers, etc. But this replacing of hot water with cold can cool both the remaining water and the general area around it. Therefore, eventually, and with enough call for the technology, geothermal heat could be depleted from a particular area.

Geodynamics, a Brisbane-based mining company, has been researching geothermal energies by exploring Hot Fractured Rock (or Hot Rock Energy) techniques in the Cooper basin (in south-west QLD. They have a quite informative website based on geothermal power and the technologies behind it.

The Geothermal Education Office has some good info to read too. This will probably tell you more than I could in a month of Sunday's... go on, have a look.

So, tell me what you think?

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Altrnative Energy Sources... Geothermal

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