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from the taking-hot-springs-to-the-next-level dept.
Friday, March 11, 2011, Japan was rocked by the largest earthquake ever to strike its shores. The 9.1 magnitude quake triggered a devastating tsunami that killed more than 15,000 people. It also took out the back-up emergency generators that cooled the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant complex, causing a series of catastrophic meltdowns.
But amid the chaos, the Yanaizu-Nishiyama geothermal power plant in Fukushima prefecture didn't miss a beat. Along with two more of the nine geothermal power plants in the region, the 65-megawatt facility continued to generate power, even as many other power plants around them failed because of damaged equipment and transmission lines.
[...] In a country as seismically active as Japan, it was a clear signal that geothermal energy was worth investing in.
http://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/1/15/14270240/geothermal-energy
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday January 17 2017, @01:35PM
the 65-megawatt facility
That's the problem in a nutshell. Most nuke reactors run about 1 GWe (probably 3 or so GWt) for a variety of engineering and economic optimization reasons, although you can build the cutest little baby nukes for submarines.
The problem with 65MW (presumably MWe) is its way the heck too much to slap on an inverter and pump the electrons into my neighborhood like a small solar installation. Its the scale where you need distribution level connections to a substation. On the other hand its such a pitiful small amount that you run into labor problems and other scalability problems. So whats the name of that site in maple-leaf-and-hockey-land with like 10 reactors... Barrie or Bruce or something. Anyway they're probably running maybe 5 to 7 GWe no problem lets call it 6500 MWe to make the math easy at one site which would obviously take about 100 geothermal sites to equal.
The other problem is geothermal is both cool and pretty stinking obvious, so the best sites were harnessed up to antique steam engines a century ago, the hard sites were drilled and installed half a century ago, there just ain't gonna be no expansion in geothermal, its "dotcom explosive growth moment" was in like 1905 or something.
There are other problems with geothermal such as the steam is traditionally wet and and if you thought wet steam in nuke plants was an expensive PITA wrt to turbine wear and tear its worse with geothermal something to do with the scale being smaller so the obvious solution of a lower pressure steam loop for the turbines isn't going to work.
My suspicion is the journalist has no idea what the difference is between 65 MWt and 65 MWe efficiency is another issue. I'm too lazy to look the plant up. But if its 65MWt obviously it depends on the exact temperatures involved but that could be as little as 20 MWe going out the power line. And of course you've just installed a dozens of MW space heater with environmental effects. Or its 65MWe and that would imply they have "two hundred or so" MW space heater warming the local area. You'd be surprised how well a small lake or ocean can soak up hundred of MW and not blink, but locally in close the fish can darn near get cooked (actually they get suffocated by boiling the O2 out, same thing happens in an overheating tropical fish tank)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 17 2017, @07:02PM
All of the points you make are good ones. I would however disagree on the conclusion of that it is 'not a good idea'. We need more power options not less. I do not think Japan will shy away from a big project, they are pretty good at them. I think if they can remove just 1 or 2 aging nuke plants along their coast they will be happy. They have an entire city which is basically a no-go zone because of a nuke plant. In their country space is considered a premium so they probably do not like that. That is probably their thinking. Oh yes nuke can be very safe and very clean and last for years. It is when they go sideways because of mismanagement that people become concerned about it. Most plants are safe. However, they have the same problem most organizations do. They are run by people. Either through neglect or negligence or outright fraud they can fail. So the regulations that govern them is not strong enough, properly done, or the money is too deep, or a combination of those.