Geothermal has a similar issue to coal or nuclear - it's baseload power - not power when customers need it, but 24.7 power, all the time, giving you the problem of what to do with the power when you're making it during the low-demand 2am to 5am period.

Tapping into live volcanoes also has some severe engineering problems, notably firstly that hot, liquid magma is hot enough to be a problem, and secondly that cooled magma is tough to drill through.

That said, if you've got a geothermal hot spot near where customers want the power - and Yellowstone aint that - it's a valid option.

Regarding salty water disposal, the oil industry routinely disposes of many megatons of salty waste water each day ... find a suitably permiable and ideally porous layer of rock, and inject it in there under pressure.

Regarding the amount of energy you'd need to tame the Yellowstone Caldera, it really is too much to be a credible solution ... 

On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 9:36 AM, Greg Chalik <mrg3105@gmail.com> wrote:
Phil, my reply was referenced to the potential development of non-nuclear, sustainable, cheap and safe energy sources.

While having a very occasional game in a very small group while at uni in 1996 we hit on the idea of 'magma milking'.
How it works is that one finds a volcano and sinks a shaft to tap the magma.
Salt water is then pumped in to produce steam and of course salt.
Salt is extracted and used for other needs, while steam powers the turbines.
There was a LOT of steam, so eventual condensation also produces large amounts of desalinated water, which in that particular adventure was the shortage on a recently opened planet, and out contract was to provide the recently established colony with water. 'Trucking' the water in proved expensive.
The planet was somewhat Earthlike (somewhat less water as I remember), but geography was such that habitable areas were relatively lacking in consumable water (including irrigation)

On Earth there are several regions with volcanic activity reasonably close to surface.
In fact in the United States such a project would be in the interests of national security because if the Yellowstone Caldera ever blew, the West Coast and large parts of the Mid-West can be written off for habitability for about a century.
Siphoning off energy from that magma 'ball' would comfortably power everything in North and South Americas for several thousand years without need for other sources of power production.
In Russia the Kamchatka region could power Russia and all of East Asia for a similar period.

The principal problems are water and salt recycling back into the echo-sphere and availability of superconductors to actually transmit the power into the power grids efficiently.

Greg

On 22 October 2014 08:34, Phil Pugliese (via tml list) <nobody@simplelists.com> wrote:
This email was sent from yahoo.com which does not allow forwarding of emails via email lists. Therefore the sender's email address (philpugliese@yahoo.com) has been replaced with a dummy one. The original message follows:

I would say Russia & China, along w/ France, for sure.
(Hey, maybe, France could sell power to the rest of the EU & get RICH?)
Japan?, well depends on how long the 'hangover' from their recent 'trauma' lasts
I would say 'probably' for India but they have been having some trouble recently w/ anti-nuke activists
I'd very much *like* to say at least 'maybe' for the USA but history has made me skeptical.

--------------------------------------------
On Tue, 10/21/14, Greg Chalik <mrg3105@gmail.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [TML] Fusion by 2025?
 To: tml@simplelists.com
 Date: Tuesday, October 21, 2014, 2:22 PM

 We, as in 'the
 World' cannot, but some countries like the USA, Russia
 and perhaps Japan can
 Greg
 On 19/10/2014 2:31 PM,
 "Craig Berry" <cdberry@gmail.com>
 wrote:
 If we had a means of generating effectively
 unlimited power at minimal cost, I think we could get past
 the misunderstandings.
 On Sat, Oct 18, 2014 at
 5:32 PM, Phil Pugliese (via tml list) <nobody@simplelists.com>
 wrote:
 This
 email was sent from yahoo.com which
 does not allow forwarding of emails via email lists.
 Therefore the sender's email address (philpugliese@yahoo.com)
 has been replaced with a dummy one. The original message
 follows:





 --------------------------------------------

 On Sat, 10/18/14, Kelly St. Clair <kellys@efn.org>
 wrote:



  Subject: Re: [TML] Fusion by 2025?

  To: tml@simplelists.com

  Date: Saturday, October 18, 2014, 10:16 AM



  Fusion, like

  "true" AI, has been ten years away since I was
 a

  kid.



  --

  ---------------



 And, on top of that, to most folks "fusion power
 plant" is the same thing as "nuclear power
 plants".

 And 'nuke' plants, with a few exceptions like France
 etc, are just too 'politically incorrect' (what
 would Al Gore say?) to really take hold.

 Sad, but true...

  =================================================================================

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 --

 Craig Berry (http://google.com/+CraigBerry)
 "Eternity is in love with the productions
 of time." - William Blake


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