I expect that you have already read that the Government in Germany has decided to get out of nuclear power completely within 10-1/2 years – by the end of 2022. I am proud that my Government (I am a German citizen, resident in Switzerland) has made a firm decision – and an irrevocable decision at that – on such a critical matter. For me personally, I am not strongly and irrationally against nuclear power, but it is obvious that – with only three major failures in 30 years – that nuclear power is not safe to use on this earth. As I wrote on the GEOCOGEN blog, I think that the World was extremely lucky that the disaster at Fukushima happened in Japan. I cannot think of a country more qualified to handle such an emergency as Japan. While I am not wishing bad luck on the Japanese, I think if such an accident had occurred in another country, almost any other country, the results for the World would have been much, much worse.

It is important for national economies that such decisions as the one made by the German Government, and more recently the Swiss Government as well, are essentially irreversible. The reason is that business, and therefore the national economies, need to have firm foundations on which to make major decisions. Investments in new technologies are not something that will bear fruit next week or next month or even next year. A new major power plant, regardless of the source of the energy, will take 7-10 years to complete, including fuel supply, etc., and be placed on the grid. If rules and regulations are changing every 2 or 3 years, no responsible energy supplier will be willing to plan ahead and invest the major amount of money that is necessary for a major power plant.

Another factor that is now in discussion in many different forums is – simply put – how do we replace the electricity that is presently being produced in nuclear power plants within the next 10+ years? The more-or-less automatic answers to date have been “more renewable energy” and “save energy.” I have not yet seen a responsible assessment of exactly how these massive amounts of electricity will be produced and/or saved. But I am open to suggestions! One massive replacement option, from my viewpoint, is the GEOCOGEN Power Plant which is supposed to produce 1 GW (1’000 MW) of elecricity in addition to 3 GW of thermal energy for district heating or perhaps producing an additional 400MW of electricity. The count in Germany, if I am not mistaken, is 8 reactors are already out of service, 6 more that will be stopped by the end of 2021, and a final 3 that will be stopped at the end of 2022. Assuming a round number of 1GW electricity per reactor, and also assuming that the 8 reactors that are already out of service have already had their production replaced somehow, that leaves an additional 9 GW of electricity that must be replaced or saved by the end of 2022.

On the basis of a major power plant, the capital cost should be somewhere around €6’000 million (€6G) each, or about €40-50G over 11 years, probably peaking in 2018-2021. Can we do that? I think it is possible – replacements and major repairs and overhauls for the existing nuclear facilities would most likely have consumed close to the same amount of money, but it may have been planned as expenses (and would be written off against profit for tax reasons) instead of capital. That probably depends on how “creative” the accounting advisors have been.

In any case, it will be a challenge that the German economy has not really faced up to since the post-war reconstruction era. I think it will be an exciting time to be living and working in Germany!

1. Part 1
2. Part 2
3. Part 3
4. Part 4

GEOCOGEN 5

Ecological Concerns

Well, there really are not many ecological concerns with the GEOCOGEN process. The current design is to run the facility for about 50 years, at which point the rock core will have cooled down by about 50°C (80°F). The interesting part is, if we wait for another 50 years or so, the rock will have heated back up, and we could go through the same cycle again! Solution: build two heat-extraction plants for one consumer block 50 years apart, and switch every 50 years. Talk about sustainability!

There will be hardly any emissions: nothing is burned, so no CO2 or NOx or SOx or CO will be produced. There are no hydrocarbons, so no VOC (volatile organic compounds) will be produced. No dust since everything is contained in a closed loop. The water is recycled for the most part so there will be almost no water usage (there will be some low-level steam/water losses, particularly if a district heating system concept is used). Efficient design practices will produce a plant that consumes a large percentage of the heat so that there is little waste heat pollution, particularly when compared to a conventional thermal power plant, which means no ugly cooling tower and no heating of any river or stream and no new lake for cooling. There will be no fuel transport and no combustion waste so transportation-based pollution also will be at a minimum.

The most serious concerns are connected with the construction of the tunnel. The excavated material will be essentially the stone that the tunnel removes. Most likely, there will be silicates, some other relatively rare minerals which can most likely be reclaimed above ground, maybe even gold or platinum or other rare materials in small amounts, and the remainder should make excellent inert road or construction fill and aggregate for the project’s own structural elements.

The footprint for the electrical generation plant is small, about the size of a large office building, but this can also be installed underground to eliminate it as a “visual pollution.” The district heating piping can be underground as well – but that would be a question of finances versus aesthetics for the local government. The electrical transformers and switchgear can be disguised reasonably well so that they are not apparent, even if they remain above ground.

Over the 50-year life of the project, there may be some surface level subsidence centring on the tunnel – roughly 1,5 meters (5 feet) sinkage after 50 years. This can be ignored, planned for, or even filled to maintain the original level. Remember, in the second 50 years, as the stone reheats, the surface should rise again!

In the case of a major electrical upset outside the plant that causes our generators to go off line, there could be some high pressure steam venting until the situation stabilises. There will be noise deadeners on the release vents, so even this should not disturb the neighbourhood.

So, like I said at the top, really no environmental concerns for GEOCOGEN! How about that?!

To be continued …

Thanks for looking in,

Jimmy Craig
for
Sue & Craig Websites

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Note: The name GEOCOGEN and the GEOCOGEN trade mark are registered trademarks of ICEC Holding AG and GEOCOGEN AG – all rights reserved. Read more about GEOCOGEN at http://geocogen.net

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GEOCOGEN 5

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1. Part 1
2. Part 2
3. Part 3

GEOCOGEN Project – Part 4

The GEOCOGEN Project

Point number 1 – how do we get the energy to the surface?

This is the crux of the project – it is the part of the project that was not feasible when Kurt Brunnschweiler invented it 30 years ago. Today’s tunneling equipment is fully capable of building a shaft or tunnel as much as 15-20 kilometres deep – that is around 10-15 miles deep. Switzerland has some of the premier tunneling operators in the world, and they are drilling tunnels this long – albeit mostly horizontally – through the Alps and in many other locations around the world. For these tunnels, large diameter vertical ventilation shafts are also necessary, and some of these are 2 kilometres (6600 feet) long and more.

The objective is to make the tunnel up to 10 meters (33 feet) in diameter, shore up the walls to prevent cave-ins, and run piping from the surface level to the bottom of the tunnel where the water will be heated to supercritical temperature and will rise back to the surface under pressure. The process will be what is called a thermosiphon, but on a grand scale. A thermosiphon is where there is a heat source at the bottom of a hairpin of tubing, and the lighter heated water (or steam) rises by itself in the exit (outlet) side because it is less dense and it is replaced by more dense, cold water coming down the other (inlet) side. Looking at is another way, the column of water weighs more than the column of steam, and so it tries to displace it. A daily example is the percolator coffee maker.

The supercritical steam (don’t worry about what “supercritical” means here – just think of it as being REALLY HOT! – far above 100°C) will be used to drive conventional steam turbines, similar to those being used in powerhouses today, coupled to electrical generators. The systems will be sized to create around one GigaWatt of electrical energy – that’s 1’000 MegaWatts – enough to power a city of around half a million inhabitants, depending upon the degree of electrical consumption per capita.

In addition to the electricity generated, there is enough heat available that the entire city could be heated by steam and/or hot water from the GEOCOGEN plant in a district heating concept, with enough left over for many greenhouses and hot water spas.

To be continued …

Thanks for looking in,

Jimmy Craig
for
Sue & Craig Websites

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Note: The name GEOCOGEN and the GEOCOGEN trade mark are registered trademarks of ICEC Holding AG and GEOCOGEN AG – all rights reserved. Read more about GEOCOGEN at http://geocogen.net

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GEOCOGEN Project – Part 4

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