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160 points riordan | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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hodgehog11 ◴[] No.45954362[source]
I've always been curious why a cost-effective widespread implementation of geothermal energy has never been considered a holy grail of energy production, at least not in the public debate. Much of the discussion is so focussed on nuclear fusion, which seems so much harder and less likely to be reliable.
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pjc50 ◴[] No.45954493[source]
Drilling is one of those things which used to be extremely expensive but has very gradually come down in price. Thanks, ironically, to the oil industry. It's unsexy because there's no "silver bullet" waiting in the wings.

It's also quite hard to find suitably hot rocks suitably close to the surface.

Focusing on fusion .. I think that's a legacy of 60s SF, when the fission revolution was still promising "energy too cheap to meter".

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1. hodgehog11 ◴[] No.45954863[source]
Many others here have talked about the difficulties of geothermal, which doesn't really get to the heart of my question: why the lack of hype around breaking down those difficulties? I appreciate that you took the time to comment on why it isn't so sexy, the SF argument probably has a lot to do with it.