Word: innamincka
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...Innamincka has some of the hottest rocks anywhere, and Geodynamics has spent $150 million drilling deep into them. The biggest and most advanced of some 40 companies seeking to capture Australia's underground heat, it aims to be the first to prove that deep-earth geothermal power is commercially viable. Geothermal is already a bit player in the power business: underground water heated by volcanoes is already used for heating and electricity generation in countries like Iceland and New Zealand. But supplies of natural hot water are limited. The new push is to mimic nature by creating artificial water-heating...
...theory, says Geodynamics chief executive Gerry Grove-White, there's enough heat in the rocks of the Cooper Basin, on which Innamincka sits, to replace all the coal-fired power stations in Australia for more than 250 years. He says one cubic kilometer of hot granite has about the same stored energy as 40 million barrels of oil. With several thousand cubic kilometers of these granites, Australia has enough heat to last millennia...
...Innamincka granites are buried under 3 km of sedimentary rock, which acts like a blanket on a bed. Heat is generated by the radioactive decay of elements in the granite, but it can't escape. Five km below the surface, the rocks' temperature...
...surface hasn't been easy, and one well had to be abandoned. But Geodynamics now says the flow from 4 km deep is sufficiently strong and hot to run a 1-MW power station by the end of the year - enough to power the drilling-camp site and Innamincka...
...Innamincka, Leon Cartledge has his fingers crossed for the pioneering project to succeed. He thinks a hot-rocks power plant could draw curious tourists to sample his beer and oysters. Throw in free electricity, and "a business like this might even stand to make a profit...