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I don't know if you will ever read this, but your channel pushed me to start going to engineering

I like many aspects of this tech, geothermal replacing coal fired and reusing the existing infrastructure is a great plan. I hope this does come to commercial scale and get widely applied.

I remember reading an article about this guy only a few months ago when he published his results; it's amazing to see how quickly this has been picked up and how fast we're getting to industrial scale. Usually that kind of stuff takes ages. Also, using fusion stabilizing magnetron beams to drill holes to the centre of the planet is both mega sci-fi and reminiscent of the many technological developments that were made during the space race in service of taking a human crew to the moon and back, and how we're still using those technologies today for a wide variety of applications. These stories are always fascinating.

Awesome! Hopefully all their tests go well. I'd love to see this succeed.

If this pans out, one could even imagine power generation eventually becoming far more localized, with each metro area having power plants, thus reducing the energy loss on long transmission lines. Lots of "ifs" to get there, no question, but this is exciting.

You could drill horizontal once you reach a certain depth if the temperature gradient is high. Also a lot of the cost can be offset if gas pockets like helium, argon, xenon,etc are recovered. It could also be used to set up seismometers and detect the depth of the earthquake and triangulate the location. You could even use the heat for desalination plants from such wells.

I LOVE your content! When I found you, I didn't care so much about green energy/renewables however as an engineer I was curious about the statistics as well as tech and design concepts behind a lot of your topics. Now that I've been watching you for a bit, I'm looking into geo-thermal cooling for my house and actually excited to buy my next house so I can go solar as well. Thank you for bringing such GREAT topics to this platform and for covering them in such an informative way.

Very cool! I am eager to see the results from larger scale tests of this tech. One of my biggest concerns is related to insulating the electronics of the gyrotron. We currently struggle with the issue of electronic borehole instruments failing at ~150° C. 500° C is *very* hot and it seems there might need to be a robust cooling system at a level of sophistication that is hard to imagine without further research. Great video Matt, Carlos, and Paul!

I particularly like the idea that you could just drill in the parking lot of an existing power plant & convert it over to geothermal very easily, with zero emissions and a pre-built power infrastructure already connected to it.

I took a course in geothermal energy in college and I really wanted to learn more towards it. But was disappointed as there was absolutely no geothermal energy production in India. The tectonically active areas in India is a convergence between two crustal plates and so the crustal thickness along those areas are extremely high as rocks pile up. That meant way too much drilling is needed to get to superheated water there. If this technology works and is adopted by India, it would be a game changer. That would mean there wouldn't be the need for those gigantic dams in Himalayas that are now under serious threat from mudslides and flashfloods from cloudbursts that are happening more frequently because of climate change. But I'm curious as to how the absence of seismic probe in conventional drilling could impact the process. It's kind of like driving blind. Though this might require using a separate probe after drilling to collect geological data, it will still help us research and understand a whole lot more about deeper earth. Then again, the lack of physical samples of rocks could still be a severe limitation.

It's these types of videos that remind me the world really isn't as bad as it seems. We might be having hotter summers every year, but we're creating technology now that will benefit us immensely over the next 100+ years.

Hopefully, this works as it does in theory, and their testing so far works when actually getting down to the required depth. This would be a great renewable source that works 24/7 with no pollution.

I was just looking at the web site for Iceland's geothermal power production. Pretty amazing. Many power plants and 70% of the electricity generated goes to making aluminum. The energy goes to things we don't think of like longer showers, heating the streets to keep ice off. Some drilling has been required but the sources are so shallow not a lot of drilling has been required.

I'm skeptical of how clearing the borehole will work over those distances and how the borehole will hold up with it relying solely on the result of melting the surrounding rock layers. They must have thought of these factors already, but that's a lot of pressure difference to rely on one mechanism for lifting debris, and the classic problem of drilling is going through transitions between layers of different types of rock. Not all types of rock will form the same sort of "glass" when melted, so transition boundaries are something that would be worrying to me, particularly when you repressurize the hole with acidic water. Even though I'm skeptical, I'm really hopeful this works. If it delivers on its promise and the boreholes prove to be sufficiently durable, this could be amazing.

Please keep us up to date on this. This is one of the most practical ways it seems to end some of the fossil fuel dependence. Since the drill rigs are all over the place and the lack of need for casing. Thanks, I enjoy all your research and presentations.

Cheap clean energy has been promised my entire life. I keep hoping that one day our species will put our short -sighted ways behind us and throw our intellect into making sure we have a planet healthy enough to live on. Each year I lose a little hope though. I love seeing this new tech, I just hope that we can get it working fast enough.

This is the most promising renewable energy source i ever seen. It might have its own limitations or say side effects but compare to other renewable alternatives this is most reliable and very straight forward. Only efforts will goes into making the hole deep enough and prevent it from being collapsed. Apart from that nothing challenging as such.

This is an exciting development, it will be interesting to see how it makes its way into the field! I've seen research in the past looking into low(er)-temperature geothermal systems that use heat engine cycles that don't rely on steam. While not as efficient on a per-unit basis, they could be deployed far more universally. I wonder how those designs and these could mesh.

Assuming it works as intended, I wonder how differences in minerals might affect the integrity of the glass casing. I hope the project goes well. We need all the baseload power we can get.

Matt, I'm just an observer, but this week I informed the provincial Govt. here of using the Iceland example for using Geothermal to power our province in Canada, we grow every wheat above ground,mine uranium, & the province from day 1 was A Potassium Ocean, so we extract the Potash& send it all around the globe to farmers.

This is certainly a cool option. I think they'd definitely need to drill a deep test hole to demonstrate it's ability to withstand the pressure.

Your welcome for the idea. I am glad you contacted them and figured more out on the feasibility side. Only time will tell how successful their project will be.

Thanks, Matt; one thing though - I was in the power system industry before I retired. We, that is, Los Angeles, had some geothermal resources. What we found was that drilling is one thing - using that heat was another: The water coming out of the ground was very caustic, resulting in high maintenance costs. On the other hand, any non-coal/gas resource is welcome. We (LA) also ran significant wind and solar, which has had a hard learning curve. Renewables, so far, have required expensive backup replacement energy (quick-start gas turbines), to fill in for the variability of wind and solar. (On a minute by minute basis renewables could swing hundreds of megawatts if the “farms” are large enough, which they are when these resources are scaled to utility levels .)

Hearing about this tech being developed (or atleast being reapplied), its extremely reassuring to know that there is a possibility for renewable energy to become the norm in the foreseeable future. This can probably even help to speed up the development of fusion energy (not sure how tbh, might have something to do with the consumption of energy to fabricate and develope technologies atpleast in my mind)

Sounds like oil drilling just got much cheaper as well

This reminds me of the drilling system in the hilariously bad movie: "The Core", only it's orders of magnitude more realistic. Having your heat-ray not be blocked by the vaporized material is another really important aspect of this, since that's actually one of the big technical hurdles in creating Giant Death lasers.

I love your extensive caption list. I love discussing tech stuff with my father but he doesn't speak English so having arabic captions became the bridge for us to watch your videos together. Thank you!

Being a somewhat drop-in solution to existing power plants could be such a game-changer. I hope this succedes.

this is really, really cool. If they work out the technical problems this could be the holy grail of renewables. I mean it fixes the largest issue with them - the unpredictability of when it shines and/or blows. Huge thing. Hope they'll make it work someday

As a big Subnautica fan, Im a believer in geothermal. In that game (SPOILERS), long-gone Aliens left behind massive geothermal plants that powered all their needs. It’s not just a smart use of the infrastructure and energy we already have available around the ground- it’s just downright awe-inspiring. I believe this will be our main source of energy before we ever hit anything like massive solar panel arrays around the sun

I haven't heard anyone from Quasie talk about hove they are going to connect the down and up bore holes. The need for an ultra straight waveguide eliminates directional drilling, and I doubt you can frack at those pressures.

I recently did a presentation on the geothermal topic for Uni looking at types of power production. One of the MAIN aspects besides location dependence was the initial cost of digging down. Talking with a Geology professor it can be usually upwards of 1 mill per km for a bore hole and Geothermal needs to be AT LEAST 5 km deep and usually 3 bores so the costs can get large very quickly.

Thanks Matt, Excellent presentation (with puns)! Also learned some about the gyrotron! So many promising things about this tech. The speakers were very well spoken and didn't spew Sales! Retrofitting current plants and the ability to put these in Non Unstable areas is the most appealing. The other big thing to me is not having to use Nasty slurry's with normal drilling techniques other than through the sedimentary layers. Probably the biggest benefit to me is recycling the steam on both sides of the plant, thereby not destabilizing the well and only having filters to clean/replace on the top end. Can't wait to see how their proto build goes!!

Promising! I would love to look back on this energy crisis and think "never woulda guessed geothermal was the answer". Best of luck to the minds behind this and thanks for the video Matt.

It's so funny that fusion may not come to market in our grandchildren's lifetime but the gyrotrons used to operate fusion reactions might solve our energy needs before the end of the century.

I really respect how you say “Full Transparency:” I do the same thing, although I say “Full Disclosure:” I respect you very much. I went to school for renewable resources, as well as photo and solar thermal panels (or cells that make up panels).

I don’t get the comparison between the cost of electricity to drill the hole vs. the total cost of drilling a hole using traditional methods. It would make much more sense to compare total costs on both sides.

Okay so it’s costs 4x a solar farm that produces the same power output, but what is the square footage required for the solar farm vs geothermal? And I like the benefit of hooking straight into decommissioned power plants to reuse infrastructure rather than build new infrastructure. I would think that would be the best for the environment and land usage.

The drilling method described sounds a alot like The Core (2003) movie about drilling to the core of the earth with high powered light beams that vaporize the rock out of the way of the craft to reach the Earth's core to like save the world and stuff. This is cool!

Excellent vid, and I'm a fan of this technology. The beauty of it is that it can allow us to take advantage of the already built infrastructure of coal/gas plants to repurpose them for green geothermal energy. Not to mention it could be used for millions of years and has none of the negatives that nuclear energy does...just fantastic, I don't know why more people aren't jumping on this technology. Plus you can set up some plants inside cities to provide cheap district heating/hot water as well as power.

Geothermal like this is interesting, because it isn't even just always on, it will behave like storage. You are limited by the rate heat can diffuse into your borehole, so you can get extra power out of it for a few weeks by pumping more water down if you then reduce the power draw later to wait for it to warm up again. So it is complementary to conventional renewables.

He compares the total cost of physical drilling $30m to 'just' the cost of electricity ($500k) This new system will have MASSIVE costs other than just the electricity, the total cost would probably be more than conventional drilling & definitely more expensive in the beginning. I don't like the fact that he falsified the pricing, it makes it stink of scam.

Well explained, and I like that you didn't cover it in fluff, but even talk of drawbacks or obstacles. I contacted someone from DOE years ago to posit an idea of storing waste heat, from some solar projects, underground to build a kind of artificial and lower temp geothermal source and use either motors that operated on temperature differential (like stirling), or low pressure steam generators to augment the electricity from the solar project. The answer was short, and essentially "we have been looking into geothermal, and it has some obstacles'.

This could be the silver bullet of renewables. Geothermal is constant, renewable and and has tons of side benefits like mineral extraction. The problem was always the cost of drilling in places that don't already have shallow geothermal vents. This might just make that a non issue. Crossing my fingers as hard as I can the first demonstration plants are a success.

I am thinking that geo thermal boreing induced earthquakes could be a good thing. Inducing an earthquake prior to high buildup of techtonic stresses in theory would induce a lot of non critcal small earthquakes instead of a few catastrophic ones. After an area experiences a big quake, it might be a good area to start a tectonic stress relief project.

This is definitely a topic I'd like you to keep us up to date on, its so interesting. This was an excellent and informative piece!!! Thank you!

I listened to QUAISE Carlos on the Insiders Guide to Energy podcast. I hope this works out. It could be a big clean large scale portion of the solution to our worlds clean energy transition. Thanks for bringing this forward Matt Ferrel.

I invested in geothermal exploration in the Cooper Basin in Australia some 14 years ago. The bore was 4500m deep and the proof of concept was established until embrittlement of the steel bore lining caused failure. I lost my money but I still see geothermal power as the nearest thing to a perpetual motion machine we will find. If those Cooper Basin bores had been drilled by this method the metalurgical issues would not have occurred and we might now be enjoying the fruits of clean baseload energy, and I would be enjoying the fruits of my investment. I was just too soon with it.

It always bothers me how the costs per kw of wind and solar energy don’t include all of the batteries, peaker plants and excess capacity needed to actually run these systems consistently. It seems like a clever lie that these industries use. I’m excited for Geothermal energy as it can be consistent and reliable without much added infrastructure

Hi Matt, thank you for the brilliant video yet again. In all my experience in drilling allow me to humbly state that the glass barrier tube that’s formed by the laser would do little in the event of a blowback or fracture. Any fluctuation at super deep levels releases ungodly levels of energy, forces that even make even tungsten carbide brittle. I’m still pretty sure you’d need drilling mud.

Great Content always! Please dont Stop! I have been craving and searching for a channel that talks about exactly the content you share. ABSOLUTLEY LOVE YUR CHANNEL! THANKYOU SO MUCH.

You briefly mention pumping the toxic water back down. Iceland has just recently had to start pumping the water back down into the ground which has resulted in sizable (but perfectly safe) earthquakes. The point is that the wastewater is a problem everywhere, Iceland is just far ahead working on these problems. A bit more than just baking bread in geysers (a word you got from Icelandic, we are working on licensing the word so people have to pay 1 iskr. each time it is used)

Really hopeful technology, cant wait to hear how its progressing.

The problems that I see with this drilling technique are purely related to maintenance and upkeep costs. Glass may have a strong factor against compression, but it is horrible against sheering. A single minor quake and *crack* goes your mining tube. Following that, what if your fluid line needs replacing, either through normal wear and tear or damage like said minor quake? This is promising, but all this is is a new way to drill. There are still a LOT of functional problems geothermal will need to combat.

i love it how sponsored videos these days have "most replayed" just after the sponsor message. this doesn't say anything about your content Matt, you make great videos.

Of course, once you have one dug and generating electricity, power from that can be used to dig others nearby. But definitely need to see the test work. There are probably plenty of things that they don't even know can go wrong

This sounds like one of the best option for renewable energy. Gonna be great if this comes to light ✨️

Technology and engineering are mindblowing Good video Matt!

The 2 miles deep gold mines in South Africa have a problem called rock bursts where the mine tunnels suddenly slam shut compressing the air so it becomes white hot and comes out at supersonic speeds and buildings two miles up on the surface are thrown up in the air by the shock wave. The walls of the tunnels slowly creep inward because the rock is under about 10,000 pounds of pressure and it is hot. The pressure is about one psi per foot of depth and the rock flows more readily as it gets hotter with increasing debth.

I can’t put into words how cool this is! Thanks for bringing this technology to our attention! I still think molten salt reactors are underutilized however. You’re right, it’s good to pursue a wide range of clean options, I just don’t think that molten salt is getting the funding that it deserves. It’s super safe and the radioactive waste produced is only Radioactive for 500 years. The technology is already proven. But enough on that, I think this new geothermal technology is extremely deserving of funding.

How deep have they been able to drill with this system? I spent 45 years in Alberta drilling wells as deep as 2,800 meters Your glassy rock is probably also VERY brittle As an experienced Geoscience professional, I hope you are right, but I hope you have a way to circulate the material to the surface. This is more complex than you can imagine. Failures in procedures can kill people, ask me how I know. 😔

We've seen plenty of technology come and go but it never makes it out of the lab, this sounds like one has all the characteristics of a technology that should. I'm cautiously optimistic

One of the thing that caught m you attention in this video was Matt's recited explanation of the heat that is in the Earth's core as being from residual planet formation heat along with nuclear decay. And often amazed at how the concept that the Earth could be inductively heated from the Sun is never considered.

Don't stop with this information flow, ever. Even if it means you have upset those Hydra chaps that would rather burn the world than change course to a truly intelligent future. Thank you for your efforts Sir

Rocket drills have been a known technology for decades and haven't taken off anywhere, so I'm not convinced that this will get picked up either. Still, interesting idea.

I would ask a number of questions. 1) How far has the drill done so far, what depth? 2) How could you work out the cost before you have some idea of the cost per depth? So many of these new ideas are turning out to be totally impossible. Too good to be true.

great to see so much applied tech on this channel....looking forward to seeing you hut 1m subs - you deserve it.

Thanks Matt. One potential future topic: I would be interested to learn about geothermal electricity generation off-grid for a small remote community. Even if the costs do not seem all that feasible at the moment, it would be interesting to see where the available technology is currently. Maybe, pretend you have 500+ acres and truly want to be off-grid. I really appreciate learning about your new home project.

Theoretically, this sounds good. It does need testing, one item that needs to be ruled out … would reduce stabilizing stress due to depth yielding unwanted results.

Thanks for always being a dose of positivity Matt.

Now you have done it! After seeing this production it is impossible to hope to begin to catch up. This mind is permanently blown. It will be taken to somewhere it can rest in peace; and there I will wait with it to see what finally ends up shaking out.

Matt, Some time ago - long enough for my memory to not serve me accurately, I saw your take on where nuclear fission fits in your vision of our energy future. The demand for abundant, cheap energy will expand exponentially very soon. My memory tells me that your thoughts were guided by the current nuclear reactor design, which employs a solid fuel and uses water as a controlling medium. (Light Water Reactor LWR) A few years ago, a tested and operating liquid salt fuel with reaction control methods compatible with the melted salts was resurrected from Oak Ridge Laboratory work done in the nineteen forties. The result was a breeder reactor that used Thorium as a radiation shield/blanket. Neutron flux from the shielded fission reaction converts the fertile Thorium through a sequence that ultimately becomes fissile U233. Since this relatively recent upsurge in activity, more straightforward interim configurations of liquid fuel nuclear fission have been brought forward, which have the worthy objective of 'burning' the waste of our present nuclear light water reactors and other nuclear waste. The reason LWRs produce large amounts of waste is because the solid fuel pellets are very poor conductors of heat. Thermal stressing of the fuel pellets makes it necessary (because of mechanical integrity issues) to remove the fuel from the reactor well before it has released one percent of the potential heat implied in the fissionable load within it. Recovering the fissile uranium from that waste stream allows the production of Uranium salts to be used as liquids with no structural limitation associated with heat transfer. Once orders of magnitude more fissile heat from more efficient nuclear power plants, waste disposal is easier to manage than waste streams produced by obsolete PV and wind power technologies. Other fissile waste streams can be solved by subtle modification of this fissile reactor design. LWRs have been forced up our nation as an inviolable design choice. The original reason for that design choice is that processing of the waste stream readily produced fissionable plutonium. A liquid salt plutonium burner removes weapons-grade plutonium as soon as the preparation of the burner salt is completed. LWRs are accidents waiting to happen. Liquid salt reactors yield the necessary process temperatures (1000+ degrees) at ambient pressures. These temperatures are higher than LWRs produce, making the heat to mechanical energy conversion much more efficient. Accidents with Liquid salt reactors produce solidified crystalline fragments, not radioactive gasses. To state briefly - Liquid salt fission reactors are NOT "not in my backyard" (NIMBY) innovations.

I've always wondered, why Yellowstone isn't used as a GIANT thermal powerplant, While eventually learning and helping to release its potential excess pressure.

Very good video, well presented. Like that you included interviews.

There is a startup called Eavor-Loop which is able to generate electricity from drilling really deep, in any location. Please cover them!

Excellent video as always. I've always found your videos on power production interesting.

very interesting, and I always love it when we develop some super crazy lab hardware for some very esoteric reason, but once we have it, find a bunch of other neat things to do with it once it becomes cheap and easy. 2 things from this family of tech are magnetrons (super secret through WW2, but now used to casually reheat your lunch in a $100 microwave) and lasers (which were a pure science invention, no practical intent, but serve humanity in the highest level, the best cat toy ever. fibreoptics are overrated). I particularly like with this that its main consumable is electricity, and its main resulting product is electricity. In my part of the world, about 50% of our power comes from ~6 coal power stations within about 30km of each other, but wire all that power a good 300km to where 80% of the populations power is used. there is alot of infrastructure built over 200 years to support that. the town has little other industry other than coal. would be nice if we could use surplus power (we are rolling out wind and solar elsewhere, but will keep the coal plants alive because we need the base load) to drill bores to convert at least part of the infrastructure, gradually, over to something like this. looks like a triple win to me.

I hope that this technology will be able to be licensed for use by other geothermal energy companies for use in their projects as well. We need as many companies as possible producing these power generating plants.

I like the sound of it and I think for high temperature and deep drilling this is an amazing case for a better cheaper alternative... however I feel like the comparison between a $30M drilling project and $500k electricity demand for this technique is slightly unfair. Traditional drilling has plenty of known quantities, staff wages, tools, consumables, overheads etc. Whereas this does not. I have no doubt that this system may dig a deeper hole cheaper, but there will be more to the costs than just a 500k electricity bill. Either way, geothermal is a free and fairly safe energy source we should be investing in like this 👍

Drilling that deep seems like it could be rather dangerous, and have a significant environmental impact when done on a large, global scale. I imagine we will see more of it as they test it out, before scaling up to something global. Earthquakes were one of my first thoughts, followed by the risk of sink holes in certain areas. Definitely skeptical, but the millimeter wave gyrotron is fascinating, and I'm interested in seeing how it's used in the future.

I've always had geothermal energy on my mind as a renewable source of energy. Back then, I thought going down 200m into the ground would have been enough. I was so wrong by a magnitude. But this new drilling method sounds promising. Can't wait to see their POC project. Did they get the idea from "Dr Braz"?

My fear is, if this tech works, the oil and gas industry will just use it to get cheaper access to fossil fuels, then we'll be right back where we started.

One other advantage of fusion geothermal is that you can ( at least in theory, if it works ) put new plants close to the cities that need the energy without the financial and environmental costs of running long transmission lines like you do with conventional geothermal.

Amazing. I love it when we as people get a step futher thanks to people like in your video. Amazing

So the movie "The Core" was actually quite on spot haha

Geothermal (Ground-source heat pump) owner here - it’s spectacular not having an A/C unit or a “furnace” - even in my under-freezing-for-months home.

This is the way to go! Turn all those steam driven coal/gas burning power stations into nice friendly geothermal powered stations and you get maximal use from your initial investment, then after the setup costs have disbursed, free electricity apart from the maintenance costs!! So I hope they get round to sorting out all the wrinkles soon. Great series of informative and interesting videos. Keep up the good work!

I love that "we" are fumbling our way into the future and discovering better, faster, cheaper ways of solving problems. I didn't hear anything about hitting water, oil, or gas during drilling. I would assume that a very hot laser & a large pocket of gas will not be friends. Water might cause problems but I think a standard drill setup with encasement through to the bedrock might be a solution. BTW, if you want a side hustle, I suggest narrating books for Audible. You have a wonderfully soothing velvety voice. Also, your channel selfie makes you look like an old man. You're obviously not.

Man, I love this channel!!! I get to learn about so much cool stuff. Thanks for the hard work, Matt.

Here's a thing about the cost per kW compared to solar. It's 4x more expensive per kW, but 1 kW of installed solar produces about 4 kWh of energy per day, while 1 kW of geothermal can produce 24 kWh per day. Of course it'll be a bit less due to stoppages due to maintenance and such, but the point is, the sun doesn't shine all day, but you'll always have the heat from the ground.

How resilient is the "glass" casing? It is important to avoid contaminating overlying aquifers with geothermal liquids. I am a big fan of geothermal and this might cure two additional problems beyond drilling cost. First, as you mention, geothermal explorations costs are very high for most new facilities because near surface geothermal resources are rare. But if you can drill cheaply enough, deeper lying resources that are more widespread become available. Second, in near surface resources, depletion of the heat resource is a problem. Higher temperature resources with better recharge characteristics are more available at deeper levels. Due to the way geothermal projects are financed, it is better to have a very reliable project that is only slightly cheaper than alternative energy sources than it is to have a chancy project that would be much cheaper than alternatives if it pans out. Drilling deeper will add cost, but reduce risk.

how would something like this handle an aquifer? Or are those typically only in the sedimentary rock layer that would be done with conventional drilling before inserting the heat ray?

Thanks for this penetrating video, Matt! Awesome prospect! I'm not convinced the rock-glass walls could sustain the high pressures though. We're talking LOTS of pressure. How thick do the walls have to be? Can the gyrotron melt walls to that thickness (without the liquid pooling inconveniently)? Lots of questions.

If you could plant a geothermal generator almost anywhere, this would be great for energy production that relies heavily on coal and natural gas. It would be expensive upfront, but over time it would be better than a solar farm as most of the parts needed are mechanical and repairable verse solar's whole panel replacement without ability to recycle the panels pulled. It could offset the need for wind farms as well, where the downside there is birds killed. I don't think it would replace those technologies, just offset the need for them a bit.

Geothermal is another step in replacing coal and oil as a way to generate electricity. I support this effort. Thank you for your article.

Very curious to see if the drilling truly can be implemented anywhere and everywhere. Being able to plug a geothermal steam source into existing turbine systems currently running off coal is huge: by retrofitting, you get to focus all resources on the primary source of energy as opposed to reinventing the wheel for power generation. Same principle with using hydrogen instead of natural gas: all existing gas transport infrastructure can be adapted/converted, as opposed to being torn down wholesale for something brand new. The more cynical part of me can't help seeing that implementing these conversions would unlock a power source far less inconsistent than the more mainstream renewables - and therefore less at the mercy of high-capacity batteries. Just like how efficient wireless power transmission - should anyone ever invent it - would suddenly make every copper mine in the world far less in-demand.

I feel like everything has side effects, what would the side effects be from geothermal being commonly used? I assume it would be the core of the earth cooling quicker. What impact would this make? Is there a limit to how many geothermal plants we could have before causing more catastrophic impacts. I'm not against geothermal. I just would like to see more discussion about the potential side effects of some of the ideas produced in the channel. What my last house taught me more than anything is when you change something that is in a stable state there will be consequences. I just hope that as we move toward renewable energy that we distribute the source of the renewable energy across multiple methods as the more we pull from the same source the more the side effect from that source will be felt.

There's also the earthquakes problem that comes from drilling down. And then there's the part where this drilling type will be used by countries to attack each other

Similar concept to GA Drilling plasma Drill bit, but GA drilling does it differently, and seem to be further along in the engineering of it. You might well give it a look.