Does Geothermal Power Cause Earthquakes?

I hope the U.S. doesn't give up on this. Our planet's interior generates enormous quantities of heat; we just need to find ways of accessing that thermal energy from the surface.

In my humble, non-geologist opinion, it might be a smart idea to try developing deeper drilling technology before we start building too many geothermal plants near seismically active areas. Hot, dry rock is in no short supply; it's just farther below the surface in geologically stable areas. If we can tap the Earth's thermal energy in less quake-prone areas, it might make this method of power production more practical.

One question, though: from the looks of the diagram "On Shaky Ground", it seems that injecting water into the crust causes more fractures (the branching "roots" below the drilling site). Could this technique actually create new faults? If it did end up turning once-stable areas into earthquake zones, then perhaps the risks would indeed be too great.

@G42:

Not a geologist either but, from what I understand of geology, the drilling itself can't cause new fault lines. A fault line is formed where 2 plates come together and there is movement of the 2 plates constantly. The drilling in the geothermal couldn't cause a new fault to form as there isn't the pressure of the 2 plates coming together. Additionally, the drilling isn't deep enough to cause any sort of pressure or wide range enough to do so either (it would essentially have to be a large enough job as to form a new plate all together to create a new fault zone.) Again, not a geologist so I could be wrong at some spot on that.

As for the story, wasn't this something we already knew? I seem to recall the military wanting to dump liquid waste into a large hole it had drilled. Unfortunatly, it was drilled on top of an undiscovered fault line. Shortly afterwards, small quakes started to hit the area. They eventually figured out that there was the fault line there and that the liquid dumped into the hole was lubricating the fault line and allowing it to slip. They then had to remove all the liquid and fill in the hole.

Was wondering if the system couldn't be made into a closed loop system. Instead of pumping the high pressure water into the rock where it can fracture and lubricate faults, why not use directional drilling methods to make a "U" shaped racetrack that could be lined with pipe. Send high pressure water through check valves down into the lower chamber to boil and allow the steam to escape the return pipe. Several residential Geothermal HVAC systems on the market right now, although in much shallower wells than we are talking here and they don't boil water, use this sort of setup with metal and PVC pipe coils. I don't know if you would cool the surrounding rock too much but it sounds like you wouldn't.

I find it amasing that the Swiss have buildings so poorly constructed that they are damaged by a 3.4 earthquake.

This will likely scare off the liberals and funding will be reduced, history is doomed to repeat itself. A single facility shows the possible risk and we halt research. This will go the way of nuclear power plants and UV radiation for our food.

This side effect could potentially be beneficial as well. By lubricating fault lines and inducing microseismicity, you could be releasing built up pressure and preventing a larger more damaging earthquake.

@JRS One
Your thought is exactly my thought. The pressure that creates movement is a result of plate tectonics. That energy is finite, even if large. If you have a very large number of small earthquakes, that dissipates more energy than a small number of small earthquakes and you have less energy available for the"big one".

I wonder why this angle isn't covered by Popsci.

Of course, just because the release of energy through many small quakes is much less damaging and results in less loss of life than one or a few big quakes does not change how the law sees things. If a big quake would kill 1 million people 100 years from now and a series of small quakes would completely prevent that big quake but cause1 million homes to be damaged $1k worth each in 1 million separate quakes over the 99 year leading up to the big-one-that-would-have-happened, the owners of the houses could still sue for $1k each when the home suffers damage because the drilling is the proximate cause.

Since you can't know exactly when the "big one" would have come or which house would have been damaged how much, you can't charge people money for saving their lives and property to pay for the minor damage the small quakes did.

So you can prevent $1 trillion dollars of loss of life and property and cause $1billion in property-only damage, and the law sees only the cases where you caused damage, not where you prevented it. The tech ends up not getting deployed.

If this tech prevents large earthquakes, even without generating any geo-thermal energy, it might be economically worth it (to say nothing of human lives). But who will pay for it?

My guess is that the research will never be done, but if it was, the people who would pay for it are the insurers who would rather cause a small earthquake a month and pay out a small amount of money in a predictable way, than pay out billions every 15 years.

If we could get the data, it would be very interesting whether or not the insurance company would see dispersing tectonic energy as a service worth money....

--)->

Extracting geothermal energy in general and near to sesmic sensitive spots in particular will definitely prove to be disastrous for mankind. Mankind was surviving and can still servive without making use of geothermal energy which scientists and engineers think is available in abundance inside the inner of the Earth. Earth's geographical composition may be a result of this untapped geothermal energy in a natural balance. Experiences from France's advances to tap this risky source of energy related to earthquakes taking palce is a serious note as well as a worthy lession to others not to exploit Erath's resources just totally for the sake that we have technology for that. It is rightly said that there is enough for need than greed. Running after energy and its use will take mankind no where except the end of civilization on the earth. Countries well developed in terms of technology and its uses should make its judicious use with great sense of responsibility towards nature and also set an examples for others.

I´m the only one that think this could be one of the causes of the natural earthquakes?

Water could infiltrate through the plates and be vaporized, that lubricates the fault and triggers the earthquake.

Just a tough.

There are a couple facts many of you are not considering.

1: The original seismic work done to identify the faults was not adequately done or checked.

2: Rock has a specific fracture pressure. This can be calculated and operations can exist so not to exceed these values (the oil industry does it every day).

bdhoro87,

Why, why, why do you have to think "liberals" are somehow going to react in a negative way? I'm a "liberal" and I am doing none the such. I do think there is great potential in geothermal and we have to determine the benefits and negatives. In the end, reason will hopefully prevail and I believe it will support the development of geothermal as a great resource for all mankind

Please stop your blame of everything you don't like on "liberals" as it unbecoming of an intelligent conversation.