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We May Yet Lose Tokyo… Not to Mention Alaska… and Now Georgia, Too
As the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approves a construction/operating license for two new reactors in Georgia, alarming reports from Japan indicate the Fukushima catastrophe is far from over. 
Reactor pushers have welcomed the NRC's approval of the new Westinghouse AP-1000 design for Georgia's Vogtle. Two reactors operate there now, and the two newly approved ones are being funded with $8.3 billion in federally guaranteed loans and state-based rate hikes levied in advance of the reactors' being completed. (Photo: Georgia Power Co.)
Thousands of tons of intensely radioactive spent fuel are still in serious jeopardy. Radioactive trash and water are spewing into the environment. And nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen reports that during the string of disasters following March 11, 2011's earthquake and tsunami, Fukushima 1's containment cap may actually have lifted off its base, releasing dangerously radioactive gasses and opening a gap for an ensuing hydrogen explosion.
There are some two dozen of these Mark I-style containments currently in place in the US.
Newly released secret email from the NRC also shows its Commissioners were in the dark about much of what was happening during the early hours of the Fukushima disaster. They worried that Tokyo might have to be evacuated, and that airborne radiation spewing across the Pacific could seriously contaminate Alaska.
Reactor pushers have welcomed the NRC's approval of the new Westinghouse AP-1000 design for Georgia's Vogtle. Two reactors operate there now, and the two newly approved ones are being funded with $8.3 billion in federally guaranteed loans and state-based rate hikes levied in advance of the reactors' being completed.
NRC Chair Gregory Jazcko made the sole no vote on the Vogtle license, warning that the proposed time frame would not allow lessons from Fukushima to be incorporated into the reactors' design.
The four Commissioners voting to approve have attacked Jaszco in front of Congress for his "management style," but this vote indicates the problem is certainly more rooted in attitudes toward reactor safety.
The approval is the first for a new construction project since 1978. The debate leading up to it stretched out for years. Among other things, the Commission raised questions about whether the AP1000 can withstand earthquakes and other natural disasters. Even now the final plans are not entirely complete. Only two other US reactors---in neighboring South Carolina---are even in the pre-construction phase. As in Georgia, South Carolina consumers are being forced to pay for the reactors as they are being built. Should they not be completed, or suffer disaster once they are, the state's ratepayers will be on the hook.
The industry is heralding the Vogtle approval as a major boon to the "Nuclear Renaissance." But it comes alongside the announcement that all 17 reactors owned by the Tokyo Electric Company are shut, as are all but two of Japan's 50-plus nukes.
Germany has decided to shut all its nukes by 2022. New reactor financing in Great Britain is under legal attack, as it is in Florida. India has announced that in 2011 it led the world in new green energy projects. China has yet to make its future nuclear commitments clear in the wake of the Fukushima disaster. And no American utility is readily available to follow in Vogtle's path, with operating reactors in Vermont and New York's Indian Point under fierce governmental attack. Florida's Crystal River is beset by huge bills for faulty repair work, and may be headed for permanent shutdown. Both currently licensed reactors at California's San Onofre are closed following radioactive leaks, and a disturbing pattern of tube holes in newly installed steam generators has surfaced at a number of reactors across the US.
But the biggest shock waves this week were caused by Tama University Professor Hiroshi Tasaka, a key advisor to Prime Minister Naoto Kan during the Fukushima disaster.
Warning that Fukushima is "far from over," Tasaka said official assurances of the complex's alleged safety were based on "groundless optimism." Tasaka cited more than 1500 fuel rods dangerously exposed to the open atmosphere at Unit Four alone. The waste problem has gone nationwide, he said in a newly published book, as "the storage capacities of the spent fuel pools at the nation's nuclear power plants are reaching their limits,"
Tasaka's statements came as a new temperature spike unexpectedly stuck Fukushina Unit Two. For reasons not yet clear, heat releases in excess of 158 degrees Farenheit spewed from the core, prompting Tokyo Electric to pump in more water and boric acid meant to damp down an apparently on-going chain reaction. Prof. Tasaka and others warn that this in turn will contribute to spreading still more radiation into the water table and oceans.
With bitter debate raging in Japan, the US and elsewhere over the killing power of Fukushima's emissions, the certification of a new US reactor design may someday be remembered as a bizarre epitaph for the 20th century's most expensive failed technology.
Without state ratepayers and federal taxpayers being forced to foot the bill, new reactor construction in the US is going nowhere.
And without a final resolution to the on-going horrors at Fukushima, the entire planet, from Tokyo to Alaska to Georgia and beyond, remains at serious radioactive risk.
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158 Comments so far
Show AllHere is the late, great Gil Scott Heron singing about nuclear power. "We Almost Lost Detroit".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b54rB64fXY4
But we DID lose Detroit, due to economic and housing racism, automobile-driven suburbanization, and the unsustainability of a large city without a public transpotation syatem.
With the dismantling of public transit in Pittsburgh - a city once so well transit-served that many middle class people didn't bother to own a car (including Fred Rogers) - it wil soon become jsut a hilly version of Detroit.
And the Beaver Valley nuclear plant humming away about 15 miles to the west, will have nothing to do with it.
It has everything to do with it. We built the nuclear boiler with the money we should have spent on the train and trolley system. It is exactly because we DID fund the Nuclear Power Plant that we DID NOT fund the light rail, heavy rail, and electric trolley for urban areas. You are mistaken, again. What are you left with? And, when the beaver valley plant boils over and catches fire you won't even have that. It is connected.
Forget the rails, all they needed is ordinary buses. White people need to get over riding the bus.
And I have no worry about the Beaver Valley plant. Tsunamis are not known to occur on the Ohio River, and the emergency diesel generators are in a flood proof location. The plant could always be hit with a large meteor, though.
Ever hear of the Johnstown flood? not too far away. And the Titanic was unsinkable, and how many times have I heard in the last 20 years forget Three Mile Island, MODERN nukes are safe. How do you say "OOPS" in Japanese? Forest fires are increasing because of climate change. Earthquakes are very unlikely there but not impossible, especially since Pennsylvania has not banned Fracking (as far as I've heard). And then there's simple human error. And machine malfunction. And sabotage...
Spoken by a former and always Pennsylvanian who watched TMI unravel from an uncomfortably close position.
This is a perfect snapshot of your obfuscation- first you dislocate the topic with a bullshit premise ( nuclear is safe; it is really some other issue that is important-public transport/stopping coal; anything besides reality) but in responses it is revealed you do not care about the environment (buses /DIESEL versus rail / NON COMBUSTION), you never cared about the community you are a part of (defend nuclear AND support Coal- You PJD.412 WORK for the Coal Industry- but pretend to be opposed to it), and AGAIN dislocate the topic: The topic is about the way in which WE are ALL forced to pay for these elaborate wealth transfers to the Financial Oligarchy through nuclear boilers. Your online persona is all myth: I am an engineer and have a position of authority and understanding which cannot be impeached- A Lie; I am a labor activist and anti coal- A Lie; I am opposed to Luddite rantings- A lie. You ACTUALLY support and ACTIVELY defend COAL,NUCLEAR,CAPITALISM, the OLIGARCHY, Wealth transfer from us to the corporations. Do you support the state coordinated transfer of wealth to the ruling oligarchy through these Nuclear Boilers?
The technology is failed, discredited, and a lie- a lot like your comments here; but both nuclear boilers and you continue as long as we allow them to. Just where are you getting your funding? That is the real issue, how are we forced to fund this obscenity, and how do you fund your obscenities? The solution is in discussing how to DEFUND, and then we can FUND renewables. That is the point to this thread- they are CONNECTED- just like you are to earth, and what happens in one area of the system affects everything else. I almost forgot to respond to your racism- who is a white person? Where do they come from? You are vey mixed up, are you a human being?
And, for want of a nail, the kingdom was lost.
Much more succinct than I put it, much more effective as well.
No, you did very good Ana.... Great actually.
Btw, have you noticed who has been missing for the past four days?
Thank you-I have forgone thanking you for your posts here, partly because it would be fawning appreciation of your contributions and partly because it is clear you need no encouragement to do what is right, but I would like to explicitly acknowledge your leadership here. In response to the many agitators, your optimism and integrity are a beacon of light, and very necessary- they are here because it is effective- we must fight them every time. If we do not bring truth to the lies, many people would be harmed, and discouraged from fighting back. I-Thank-You- Wayne, sincerely. Whom are you referring to being missing?
PostScarcityAna,
Well, it's sorta like that movie Beatlejuice, if you say his name three times, all hell will break loose when he demands the moderator delete the whole leg of a post that makes him or the nuke industry look bad. So we cannot use the reply button since that puts our post after one of his with an intentional CD terms of service violation. He can't get your post deleted when he loses the argument, but one of his sock puppets will report himself. This zaps all posts ("children") as CD calls them coming after his. (which is what he wants, imho. )
Three odd things about the newby:
1) The trick of making the web pages miniaturize
2) The insta-delete of all those embarrassing posts
3) I was replying to one of her/his posts and (s)he changed the post while I was replying to it. I thought someone replying to your post prevented you from changing it.
I wonder if we haven't got shill version 2.0 here - someone able to hack the site software.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is another case of regulatory capture by the industry. The necrophiliac ghouls who push these reactors should have to visit Fukishima close up. In Vermont we are told questions about our health and safety are not for us to decide only the ghouls can make this decision. Under the UN Declaration of Human Rights we have the right to security of person but the Federal government through the NRC denies it to Vermont in favor of corporate interests. These corporate interests are all the more vicious for being connected to the military.
Washington, the people running the country at the national level have lost ALL touch with reality. They as little dick Cheney said, THINK they can make their own reality.
There have been two huge nuclear disasters, one in Russia, the other still playing out in Japan. As the article said this has made rational countries rethink their stance on Nukes. But in the reality free zone, the USA it is damn the torpedos, full steam ahead.
I'm glad I'm in my last third of my life. I can't imagine what the US will be like in the later part of the 21st century. Im glad to say I wont be around to see it.
Speaking of almost losing Detroit, back in the late 70's and early 80's a combination of local grassroots anti-nuclear power protests, technological fuckups, and skyrocketing construction cost overruns eventually killed construction of a nuke plant in Midland, Michigan that was a joint venture of Dow Chemical, Consumers Power, and Bechtel.
The technical homework and licensing challenges were tenaciously spear headed by a wonderful local woman named Mrs. Mary Sinclair. One of the anti-nuke mass picketing demonstrations outside the partly finished construction site included a temporarily scandalous incident in which a then-little known Flint native named Michael Moore mooned the Dow security team from a helicoptor while hovering over the crowd.
Georgia residents and rate payers should take heart from the history of the eventual defeat of the Midland Cogeneration Project. Had that nuke plant ever gone online and suffered a Fukushima-style meltdown or leakage from spent fuel rod storage ponds, the downstream radioactive effluent was within spitting distance of Lake Huron, one of the largest natural reservoirs of fresh water on the planet. A combination of design flaws (the ground was unexpectedly settling underneath the plant as it went up, among other things), massive cost overruns, and persistent public opposition eventually killed the project.
The ensuing legal fight over who got stuck with the tab for this boondoggle was unusually fractious. Consumers Power, Dow, Bechtel, some major banks, and the Michigan Public Service Commission represented by the state Attorney General on behalf of Michigan tax and utility rate payers formed a multi-sided firing squad, lobbing lots of heavy artillery at one another over who was most egregiously at fault, and whose books ultimately would wind up eating the economic loss. If you savored the spectacle of stakes corporate litigational theatre, it was quite a show. The debacle quietly was settled in a back room compromise with appropriate judicial approval and predictable ambiguity.
Keep the faith, Georgia residents. Your struggle is just beginning. Never forget, you are still on the right side of history.
Bill from Saginaw
I always enjoy your posts. Thanks for the stories about nuclear power opposition. Wish I had seen the moon, I guess.
Nuclear power plants are bad enough but there is also an H-bomb just off the coast of Georgia.
The Tybee Island B-47 crash was an incident on February 5, 1958, in which the United States Air Force lost a 7,600-pound (3,400 kg) Mark 15 hydrogen bomb in the waters off Tybee Island near Savannah, Georgia, USA. During a practice exercise the B-47 bomber carrying it collided in midair with an F-86 fighter plane. To protect the aircrew from a possible detonation in the event of a crash, the bomb was jettisoned. Following several unsuccessful searches, the bomb was presumed lost somewhere in Wassaw Sound off the shores of Tybee Island. The H-bomb is still there.
You mean we HOPE it is still there. ;)
IF it is still there it must at least be intact or it would have been located from the radiation it would have been releasing. IF it was not intact it was probably found due to the radiation it would have been releasing. IF it was found due to the radiation it was releasing it may or may not have been recovered -- it may have been too dangerous to attempt recovery, so if it was located but is still there but it is still releasing radiation. Lots and lots of IF's.
"8.3 billion in federal guaranteed loans" ie, super-low interest rate, no collateral.
Is our government telling us those loans couldn't produce the same power if used for green energy projects? really? !!
They are telling you that the Corporations could NOT raise these loans in the Private Marketplace.
GwNorth -
Precisely. Sometimes the invisible hand of the marketplace points the fickle finger of fate in the politically correct direction.
The smart money knows building more nuke plants, unless the problem of nuclear waste disposal and other safety issues have been solved, is a fool's long term investment. Similarly, the smart insurance liability risk calculating gurus know that without Price Anderson Act protections, catastrophic loss insurance would be exhorbitantly expensive when your business model essentially consists of making steam in order to generate electricity for sale to the domestic grid by means of perpetual, constantly monitored, inherently unstable "controlled" nuclear fission.
Would you boil water for a pot of tea this way, knowing that a single inadvertant mishap could blow up not only your kitchen, but your entire home and most of the surrounding city and countryside as well?
Bill from Saginaw
I built my own wind turbine and converted my Jeep to electric drive. The payback on my investment is less then 20 months, never having to pay for energy again is priceless.
The system of centralized energy distribution is highly flawed, and ensures a monopoly for the 1%. The grid losses are substantial as is the waste of building and maintaing a grid/energy distribution system.
The sheeple have been brainwashed into accepting dependency, while they clamour for freedom, oh the hypocracy of the imbeciles.
The other side of the coin in re the grid is solving the problem of local availability.
Somewhere on the continent, there is enough wind, or solar, or geothermal, or biomass, or hydro potential to provide all of our real needs electricity (and process heat) -wise. But this potential is not evenly distributed.
So the two basic directions are:
1. Develop where the potential is. Just like with water or anything else.
2. Have a decent, up-to-date, transmission grid to move electricity from where it is generated, to where it is needed, as efficiently as possible.
Personally, I would like to see major, society-wide efforts towards BOTH.
We could have Eastern cities lit by Southwestern solar until 10:00 or 11:00PM, at the same time we have millions of residential and commercial users in those cities powered by home- or neighborhood-scale generators of a hundred types and configurations. City waste Biomass and coal-derived methanol burners could contribute as well.
Household wind turbines are completely impractical except in rural area, and then only areas with adequate wind. Living in the city in an energy efficient shared-wall condo or townhouse, using public transportation, and keeping one's food and other consumtion local (easier to do in the city with it's farmers and public market spaces), yeilds a smaller carbon footprint than most move-out-to-the-sticks-and-off the-grid schemes.
How much electricity do you use? To get a 20 month payback on my electric usage, the whole off-the-grid system would have to cost only $900 dollars - and I am an EV owner too - his and her's electric motor scooters.
I rather like the convienience of simply paying a cheap electric bill from a renewable electric provider. I dont use AC, so it is never more than $45 - $50/month.
You are coming at this with an either/or, right/wrong, approach that is inappropriate and counterproductive. :)
Grid for some, local generation for others, that's the way forward.
I agree, but off-the-grid will never be practical for very many people, and the whole excesively individualisitic ideology behind the off-the-grid movement has the smell of anti-community and anti-solidarity about it.
Me I prefer the convienience of paying an electric bill to provide good, almost always unionized jobs for utility workers. I feel no "dependence" other than the dependence (AKA "solidarity") that everyone should feel toward their community and fellow worker.
Agreed as well.
I just think that keeping to a language of mutual understanding and respect is the best way to move people away from individualism toward solidarity.
With any luck some of these modern no-nothings will go so far of the grid as to abandon the internet... Ahhh the peace and quiet, they can go out every morning and shake their little fist at that great fusion-reactor in the sky!!! (THE SUN)
Oh and don't use the wind either! as it is derived from nuclear energy (The Sun warming the earth)
>^^< more for me and my cats lol!
pjd,
And as my ancestors once said, that indoor bathroom stuff will never work. What about the smell? Man [sic] will never fly. No one will ever run a mile faster than 4 minutes. Cars are a wonderful answer to pollution. Nuclear power will never work. Oh OK some things they got right. But "meterless power"... how'd that work out? If people supplying their own power (maybe for now, maybe for longer) will help us avoid the extinction of the human race through climate catastrophe, who are you to argue against it?
pjd,
that is an odd reply to someone who just said s/he put a wind generator up and is enjoying its fruits. How deeply in denial do you have to be to deny what you were just told is true, without an electron of evidence to debunk what was said?
Large farms are completely impractical except in rural areas, and yet we manage somehow to soldier on, with full bellies (some of us do, anyway). Wilderness is hardly practical in cities and yet I've been to more than a few in my life and loved them. Small towns don't do well in the midst of dense urban areas and yet, I believe, yes, I just took a look outside and we still have some.
There is not one answer to avoiding climate cataclysm; there are many, each appropriate to different conditions, combined as needed... And obstructing progress for astoundingly stupid stupid reasons is not helping our situation.
A better response would have to say Congratulations! and thank you for being an example and a pioneer in solving our mutual problems. Or somethin like 'at. Wanna try agin?
The "wisdom of the market" is never invoked when corporations need subsidies or insurance. It is invoked only when people downwind from the corporations' facilities want some form of protective regulation. Then we are told that regulations are inflationary and unnecessary.
About 20 years ago I read an interesting book titled "Normal Accidents." The author contended that when systems are as complex as nuclear power plants, we should expect accidents (they are "normal") because the complexity is such that no one can anticipate every possible way they can fail, so no amount of redundant safety systems can be expected to always prevent disasters.
I guess the panel at the NRC did not read that book.
If it's
Absolutely Inevitable,
Perfectly Foreseeable and
Nothing is Done to Prevent It…
Is it really an Accident ?
How many windmills could be built for $8.3 billion, and how much power would they produce compared to the nuke plant? Yeah, yeah, I know the wind doesn't blow all the time, blah, blah blah.
The south will rise again - in a mushroom cloud.
Charlotte, NC has TWO nuke plants located on its western border, the so called west coast of Lakes Wylie and Norman. Ugh- SSSSsssoooooooo glad to be outta there.
"Both currently licensed reactors at California's San Onofre are closed following radioactive leaks, and a disturbing pattern of tube holes in newly installed steam generators has surfaced at a number of reactors across the US."
Were these "steam generators" made in the U.S. or in China?
Were these "steam generators" made in the U.S. or in China?
----------------
A key question for sure, Gail.
Do you remember how the Bush administration raised the specter of a mushroom cloud every other day in the months leading to the invasion of Iraq?
When it comes to Georgia, however, suddenly all concern with mushroom clouds and other radioactive clouds has vanished.
Now, isn't that so convenient?
Do we ever live in a twisted world!
Harvey Wasserman's very apt description of nukes as 'the 20th century's most expensive failed technology,' barely touches upon what an utter folly they are. Almost everything about them is a disaster of evolutionary proportions, as that is how long the half-life of nuclear radiation is.
The article doesn't say how much electricity the 2 new reactors will produce or how many homes they will provide electricity for, but even at retail prices, $8.3 billion would buy a lot of photovoltaic cells. Or even better, if we spent that money on solar hot water heating, a low cost technology with much higher efficiency than photovoltaics, we could heat most of the houses in the colder climates.
Anti-nuke people in Georgia could screen movies of the wasteland surrounding Fukushima today, like this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn8oGZHCBu8&feature=fvst
One of the reasons nuclear deployment has slowed down is another dirty, environment contaminating technology every bit as bad as nuclear: fracking. Fracking has led to steep decreases in natural gas prices making natural gas cheaper (in the short term anyway) than nuclear. Natural gas is however a finite resource, the prices will eventually begin to go back up again and the huge investment in natural gas plants and the death and cancer illnesses of millions who will be exposed to fracked water due to the hubris and arrogance of the fossil fuel corprorations and their GOP puppet subsidiary. As well, nuclear fission days are numbered as the reserves of the extremely rare uranium decline further.
The only real solution that will last for the energy needs of the future is wind and solar, and effiiciency such as redesign of cities away from the car model to new pedestrian, bike and train based models. The GOP has in fact done its best to keep us away from solar and in fact, urban development has become even less oriented to public and bike transportation with the massive urban sprawl caused by white flight to far flung suburbs. I have seen that first hand in Florida where Floridas rainforests and biodiversity have been swallowed up by cancerous and out of control urban sprawl which has pushed Florida's plant and animal species to the edge of extinction.
Part of the problem is the long term cost of fossil fuel and cars is not factored into their costs people are paying today, if they were, the cost of natural gas, oil and cars would be hundreds of times higher than wind and solar.
Even solar technology is being done in an unwise way, for instance, we should be installing solar panels on roofs of homes and businesses. where there is plenty of space, adn require power utilities to to do this. We should not be focused on only soalr farms, which require additional environmental space to be consumed for this, when we have a lot of space avaialble on roofs without increasing our footprint on the environment.
The oil gas and nuclear sources will be eventually depleted. the GOPs plans to vastly increase the consumption of oil and gas will only make these resources run out faster and greatly worsen conditions for future generations. the GOP is lying and perhaps advancing and ideology that will lead to devastation,. it is absurd that the GOP would tell such lies that its plans for rapid fossil fuel exhaustion will in any way help future generations when this fossil fuel binge they want will consume this remaining resource which is also needed for making plastic and other items even more quickly and reducing that which will be available for future generations.
One of the reasons the GOP so avoids solar and other renewables is they also knew that oil prices and gas prices will go up, and oil companies know they can vastly enrich themselves, but only if they can keep people away from renewable technology. If we move to renewables now, this will reduce demand for oil and oil company profits will dry up, as a result they cannot enrich themselves off the shortage. However it is a deathly policy as the coming peak oil and peak gas scenario will lead to devastation, include increased starvation adn economic collapse.
The GOP ideology of increased binge of gas andf oil is a threat to our future and to all, it must be stopped. We need to get away from nuclear, oil and gas and start to look towards the renewables.
You mean hydro-fracking, not nuclear frackking. Nuclear fracking was tried twice - once in 1969 in New Mexico and once in 1970 in Colorado. In both cases, plenty of hydrocarbons were obtained by using nuclear "devices" (the euphemism used by the Atomic Energy Comission for bombs), but they were radioactive so they had to be diluted with so much gas obtained elsewhere that the projects were not economical.
The problem was that natural gas contains hydrogen, and the bombs release tritium, the heavy form of hydrogen, and the tritium replaced some of the lighter form of hydrogen in the gas molecules. Why the geniuses who dreamed up the project did not anticipate that is a mystery.
But the real mystery is why, knowing that the first project did not work, did they go ahead with the second one.
no, the real mystery, (knowing how our political system functions) is: knowing that neither of the first 2 projects worked, why did they not continue with more?
The lack of basic science education has made the general public unable to appreciate the inherent dangers of everything involved in nuclear power. From mining, to refining, manufacture, use, and ultimate disposal. There is no safe dosage level; there is no safe disposal method.
Perhaps if those who approve of using nuclear power are required to "volunteer" in case of emergency to let their behinds cash the check their mouths wrote.
You support it, you better be willing to get in there in case there is a problem, otherwise your just blowing hot air.
"China has yet to make its future nuclear commitments clear in the wake of the Fukushima disaster."
The monopolist from MicroSoft, Bill Gates, is using his monopoly profits to push for nuclear reactors in China.
Add the 2 plus billion already spent just preparig the ground work for the two reactors to the 8 plus billion and they could have built a lot of geothermal power plants with two steam turbines each.
Probably at lest 5 geo-thermal power plants and 10 gnerators which produce electrical power for less than 2 cents a KwH and no costs to "safely" store radioactive waste for a 1,000 or more years after the two reactors have outlived their 20, ten 40, then 60 allowed years of deadly dangeros life.
Geothermal plants are feasible only in volcanic areas. Georgia is not one of them. Second, geothermal plants have a fairly short lifetime, as they peter out when the heat is removed from the ground.
sheepherder sez: "geothermal plants have a fairly short lifetime, as they peter out when the heat is removed from the ground."
OMG! Billions of years in the future geothermal might stop working because the heat's been removed from the ground. Better go nuclear.
"Sometime billions of years in the future, he predicts, the core and mantle could cool and solidify enough to meet the crust. If that happens, Earth will become a cold, dead planet like the moon."
http://www.physorg.com/news62952904.html
sheepherder, with characteristic accuracy, also sed: "Geothermal plants are feasible only in volcanic areas."
"Geothermal power is cost effective, reliable, sustainable, and environmentally friendly,[4] but has historically been limited to areas near tectonic plate boundaries. Recent technological advances have dramatically expanded the range and size of viable resources, especially for applications such as home heating, opening a potential for widespread exploitation."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_energy