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Geothermal power may be about to kill the Nuclear Energy industry. Drilling costs are falling so fast, by 2027 it will be able to provide baseload electricity at the same price. (www.nature.com)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

It does cool down the surrounding rock, which means there's less potential power output the more you try to use it.

But it's also a rock floating on a pool of magma, it warms back up relatively quickly.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 20 hours ago

I read a proposal a while back for using the Yellowstone magma chamber for geothermal power generation. It's not currently in danger of erupting as a supervolcano, but the paper worked the numbers and showed that it would actually be feasable with realistic engineering to tap enough heat from the magma chamber to literally "defuse" it if it actually came to that. And turn a profit while doing so.