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Comment by rplnt | Hacker News Reader

Complicated permitting as compared to what? I would assume it's much more complicated than solar, and less complicated than... is there anything else available at small scale?

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Nuclear is the comparable power source -- both have high upfront costs, long build times, low operating costs and clean generation. If deep geothermal can come in cheaper than nuclear, there's basically no reason to do nuclear.

Shallower geothermal has a history of causing damaging earthquakes in some geologies.

Some versions of deep geothermal does also borrow from the fracking industry which has issues with groundwater pollution.

Not really an issue in the US at least. Their primary geothermal basins already have earthquakes far stronger than any that might be triggered by fluid injection. They also have earthquake swarms due to natural circulation of geothermal fluids in some of these areas.

It is mostly an issue in places like Europe that do not have a history of strong earthquakes and therefore lack seismic resistance civil engineering. There are a few places like that in the US (e.g. New England) where a minor M5 earthquake can cause damage but those don't overlap with areas with high geothermal potential.

The deep geothermal people seem to think it can be used ~anywhere, not just traditional geothermal basins.

For sure! I’ve been following this tech for decades. The advantage of high-quality geothermal basins is maximizing the ROI and efficiency of the first installations, which places the product in the best possible light for marketing purposes. It also provides a comparison against more conventional geothermal power generation which is deployed in the same environment.

There's some small wind generation (e.g. designed to go on top of buildings), though I don't think it's ever been a significant commercial success.

I understand the problem to be energy RoI. The larger the size of a wind turbine’s blade, the more energy it produces compared to the cost of producing it. Small wind systems just can’t avail themselves of these economies of scale.

coal or gas i would guess

Nah. Gas isn't comparable and no one in the US is building new coal generation.

Aren’t we getting ”clean beautiful coal”?

The downvotes are presumable because you have misquoted him.

He said ‘BEAUTIFUL, CLEAN COAL’

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1141801993510...

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