How This Fusion Tech is Solving the Geothermal Energy Problem

If in doubt, use more lasers. This was fun, thanks to Carlos and the Quaise team! Use my link ground.news/DrBen to get 40% off the Vantage plan. Access local perspectives to better understand world politics and current events with Ground News.

"By which time fusion power will be 5 years away."😂

Drilling down conventionally and then switching to the microwaves when you gain more with that process would be a better choice overall when the process is fully developed.

My napkin math on Quaise: 1MW output, assume beam has 50% efficiency and $0.10 per KWh which is $100 per MWh so around $200 per hour or $4800 per day in just the beams energy cost. If estimates are it takes 100 days to reach depth that's around half a million USD in beam costs to dig the well. Of course... nothing this technically challenging ever goes without a hitch. Looking at the macro investment numbers, assuming a very boring (pun intended) 10 year break even point a 300 MW power plant at 10 cents per KWh would generate 300MWh *1000 * $0.10 *24 * 365.25 * 10 = $2,629,800,000 or about $2.6 billion in revenue. Assuming the operation and maintenance costs are similar to a coal plant (both are steam) they run around $40/MWh so around $12,000 per hour or about $1.05 billion so the cost of the facility construction and sinking the well needs to be under $1.55 billion. The cost of the plant itself (again comparing it to coal) should be around $500 million leaving a budget of about $1 billion to sink the well. Considering an offshore oil well can run around $100 million to sink my napkin numbers for Quaise seem to check out... this is a much better idea than stuff floating around with big investment where the numbers don't make any sense. IF, and that's a very big if... Quaise gets the technology to the point where they can sink wells on existing coal plants and essentially reuse all that investment then Quaise would quickly become one of, if not THE most valuable corporations on the planet. Keep an eye out for that IPO.

There was no mention of what would happen with the vapors as it travels back up the borehole and cools down on the way. I think they could easily clog up the hole or at least slow down the "drilling" considerably.

2 million years, at which time fusion will only be 5 years away,,,,,, now that was a good one liner.

Geothermal energy actually sounds like it can be big, excited to see news about it

I love this. It brings back fond memories of Master of Orion tech tree. It is truly SciFi. For example: "Core Waste Dumps take man-made toxic and polluting agents and stash them deep within the planet. Since they’re so far below surface water supplies and often destroyed by the intense pressures and temperatures at the fringe of the molten core, this completely eliminates all Pollution on the planet."

What happens to the rock vapor? Does it settle to take up less space than it started, or does it have to be vented out?

The microwave "Drill bit" may not wear down, but it will have the opposite problem, accretion of rock vapor into a thick layer on the waveguide. Indeed, the rock vapor is pretty much a not-so-tame lava flow and THAT engineering process will be a beast.

I saw this years ago. Glad they managed to develop it further

Not to mention the risk of awakening Cthulhu.

This is the best description of Quaise's process that I've ever heard. Thanks Dr. Ben!

From my career experience (wellsite geologist) I can say that one of the most important concerns, while drilling a hole, is to (over)balance fluid pressures otherwise there's a high probability of pressure 'blow out' / explosion. The principle method is to use a sufficiently dense drilling/circulating fluid creating a fluid-column pressure sufficient to hold back formation fluid pressures

Is it unlimited energy though? If you open heat sinks to the surface what are the ramifications?

One form of geothermal not mentioned is mine water geothermal. No need for fracking when you can use the extensive mined out areas already present. Its much shallower, much cooler, but obviously has huge volumes to work with. Its already in operation in England, with more sites being set up. I also wonder if this kind of rock vaporising technology could be given a significant boost by starting in a deep mine, or could even be complimentary to mine water geothermal as a part of the cost cutting with existing infrastructure plans.

I'm a Geologist with +20 years experience drilling oil and gas wells. As you stated we already can drill hydrothermal wells, butt in geographic locations identified with a high geothermal gradient 100 m/hr for conventional drilling is a gross exaggeration of drilling speeds at the depths you're aiming for. These speeds can be only achieved in upper softer sequences of shales and sands. I was on a well offshore Nile delta that was at the time of drilling the deepest vertical well in the Mediterranean and over 21,000ft. Problems we had on this well at depth was the temperature on the tools in hole kept frying the tools. You need special HP/HT tools as you need them to know a) where you are and b) what your drilling. Limits on my tools at the time was 350F/175 deg C. That is circulating temperature not static bottom hole temperature Then of course you need a fluid in the wellbore (which is your primary well control) with a specific gravity (mud weight) greater than the highest pore pressure of fluids in the wellbore. If not you will have what is call a blowout. So, this technology would have to work at high temps and IN a fluid without vapourising the fluid. Other thoughts are you need seal off sections drilled with steel casing with potentially different pore pressure regimes and having a uniform sized hole is beneficial in running the steel casing. Not sure how uniform a hole this technology would produce. Clearly this technology would be utilised in the base sections with conventional drilling in the upper sections.

Another application is access to ultra deep ore bodies to mine perhaps via a leaching-type method. All the ore bodies we can reach with current tech are gradually getting mined out, and the ones left are of decreasing quality. The ability to continue mine copper, lithium, rare earths, and phosphate at acceptable rates with current tech are likely to be bottlenecks for industry well before peak oil becomes a problem.

Everybody's gangsta until they awake a Balrog.

I live in the Netherlands near The Hague. Not far from my home there’s a geothermal installation. It’s primarily to provide heat for greenhouses but it can generate enough warmth for a couple of neighbourhoods too. They had to drill two holes of ‘only’ 3 km to reach a reservoir of warm water. It’s not warm enough to generate electricity but more than warm enough to heat houses.