Geothermal energy and earthquakes?

Dwindling oil supplies may force people to look for alternative fuel that could have disastrous backlashes in the future, right at their backyard. For example, the diversion of land to biofuel may result in immediate profit for farmer or government to offset oil prices, but the downside would be more competition for arable lands for agriculture farming for both food and biofuel. I still though my earlier idea of having a mammoth SHIT (Methane) power plant would be more feasible, at least for a metropolitan city with million of people, whether locals or migrants or just passing by… All Shit are welcome!

BEWARE OF GEOTHERMAL ENERGY BACKLASHES TOO

As I just read yesterday (5 May 0 about a series or rather swamp of tremors in Nevada that COULD NOT be possibly explain and are intriguing scientists. Well I thought so too. But then again, wasn’t there the MASSIVE series of Geothermal Plants in Nevada?

Well what has this got to do with a geothermal plant?

You see, just as recent as in Jan 2008, an series of earthquake in Switzerland was attributed to have been trigger by a Geothermal energy plant there. Neighboring Germans could feel the quake and political reverberations have reached Berlin, where questions are being raised about 70 to 80 geothermal projects which are seen as essential to Germany’s planned exit from nuclear power generation.

Imagine this compared to the massive series of geothermal plant in Nevada that is has now seen the moving of the series of tremors higher up onto the surface. Maybe the entire city would simply disappear into hell (literally in molten magma) or to that effect to whatever they are doing. Good grief!

I think the plausible explanation here is that after the oil had been sucked up dry, there are no residual “coolant” since oil act as a coolant to buffer the massive tectonic plate movements, the resultant dry hot magma masses acting like a hot charcoal would not only releases it thermal heat energy when blasted with water but could possibly also cause larger and larger fissures (cracks) to develop in the vicinity of the water inputs (maybe in a fissure algorithm) thus facilitating the unnatural tectonic movements. The fissured plates should crumple easily in time. Well I think this is a plausible explanation that I can think of for the time being.

Regionally

Looking around this region, it seemed that there was a disastrous rockslide (which was mostly reported as mudslide) in Feb 2006 that killed over a thousand people on Leyte island in Central Philippines. I am not sure how it happened but one thing for sure, there is a geothermal plant nearby.

“.. In June 2006, the PNOC Energy Development Corp.—the renewable energy subsidiary of the state-owned Philippine National Oil Co.—took over the 130-megawatt Upper Mahiao geothermal power plant. Located in the sprawling Leyte geothermal reservation in Tongonan, Upper Mahiao has been operated for the past 10 years by CE Cebu Geothermal Power Co., a Philippine corporation owned by CalEnergy Co. Inc. It began commercial operation on June 25, 1996…” (link)

Taken from Wikepedia: (link) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Southern_Leyte_mudslide

After more than 2 years, scientists are still clueless on the cause of the catastrophe: “Was the landslide caused by ground shaking or excessive rain? This is one of the things that is not yet resolved.” Mark Albert Zarco, a professor at the Department of Engineering Sciences, University of the Philippines, Diliman and other scientists from the Philippines, Canada, United States, Japan and Sri Lanka gathered at Southern Leyte workshop, on May 3, 2008, to determine the cause of the landslide. Richard Guthrie, of University of Waterloo, Canada, stated: “We have not completely sorted out the earthquake portion of it but we have had very large rains and we have had very large earthquakes in the past; The rocks have been stretched and strained. As time moves on, the rock begins to age and die and finally it collapses. The important thing is that we’re able to know the preconditioning of the slopes.”^[10]

Comments: I thought maybe after 12 years of operation for the Leyte Geothermal Plant, maybe, there may not be enough coolant (water) recycled back onto the hot fissured rocks below. This would be particularly dangerous if the geothermal plant belongs to a particular type that in the absence of a stable geothermal reservoir, it merely flushes water onto hot dry rocks that would surely result in uncontrolled rupture and fissuring at the upper crust. This was shown in Switzerland and recently in Nevada. Maybe not all locations are feasible for geothermal energy extraction especially those with inhabitants nearby.

By the way, during the proceedings of the World Geothermal Congress 2000 held in Japan, there was already a paper “DEFORMATION IN THE LEYTE GEOTHERMAL PRODUCTION FIELD,
PHILIPPINES BETWEEN 1991 AND 1999″ that pointed to the probable under estimation of
the true deformation of the geothermal fields in the area back then.

We should be mindful of this, especially those who wants to venture into Geothermal energy. Do it wisely.

Cheers

Mikey