I’m generally curious after reading this, what effect does our molten core have on our ambient surface temperature? I can’t imagine much, but it can’t be nil, and I genuinely have no idea.
> The flow of heat from Earth's interior to the surface is estimated at 47±2 terawatts
And
> Despite its geological significance, Earth's interior heat contributes only 0.03% of Earth's total energy budget at the surface, which is dominated by 173,000 TW of incoming solar radiation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_internal_heat_budget
For instance heat from the surface “thus penetrates only several tens of centimeters on the daily cycle and only several tens of meters on the annual cycle”
If you have a small area and continually pump the heat out then you end up with the inside of a freezer, which uses the same tech for exactly that purpose, but also intentionally insulates to prevent the heat getting back in.
Except the process has been sort of reversed: there was heat being introduced into the deep layers of clay and rock.
Anyway this is fascinating stuff!
To your question, I'm wondering if they simply pump down water and extract resulting steam once it reaches the point of vaporization? The steam condensers and everything else are already built on-site for coal generation.
One difficulty would be handling any accumulated minerals that got into the steam loop from interaction with the rock in the hole. Unlike traditional closed-loop steam generator, an open system would pick up contaminants and eventually cause scaling.
Maybe you‘re thinking of tidal power plants? Tides are gravitationally caused, and as far as I know tapping into them infinitesimally changes Earth‘s rotation (and to some extent probably also Earths and the Moon‘s orbit).
I've always assumed it's been looked at, so I don't worry about it particularly, but I never see anybody talk about it.
The amount lost is sufficient to power a small toaster oven.
...and it's kept in the basement of the BIPM, right next to the International Prototype of the Pop-Tart®.