Abundant Power from Universal Geothermal Energy (MIT Technology Review)

[jpak]

http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17236&ch=biztech

The answer to the world's energy needs may have been under our feet all this time, according to Jefferson Tester, professor of chemical engineering at the MIT Laboratory for Energy and the Environment. Tester says heat generated deep within the earth by the decay of naturally occurring isotopes has the potential to supply a tremendous amount of power -- thousands of times more than we now consume each year.

So far, we've been able to harvest only a tiny fraction of geothermal energy resources, taking advantage of places where local geology brings hot water and steam near the surface, such as in Iceland or California, where such phenomena have long been used to produce electricity. But new oil-field stimulation technology, developed for extracting oil from sources such as shale, makes it possible to harvest much more of this energy by allowing engineers to create artificial geothermal reservoirs many kilometers underground.

Tester calls it "universal geothermal" energy because the reservoirs could be located wherever they're needed, such as near power-hungry cities worldwide.

Technology Review spoke with Tester about the potential of universal geothermal energy and what it will take to make it a reality.

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edit: total global resource claimed = 100 million ex-o-joules...

[ThomCat]

1. If this is true, then this would be very cool.

But I want to see some reports on how much toxic waste is produced when they create these geothermal reservoirs. What will they be pulling out of the ground and where will they dump it? What will they be putting into the ground?

[mopinko]

2. so, am i misinterpreting something here, or

could this be easily implemented in played out oil and gas wells?