Month: Mar 2022

Feel the Heat: Paul Woskov of MIT holds water-cooling lines leading to a test chamber, and a sample of rock with a hole made by a beam from a gyrotron. Photo: Paul Rivenberg/MIT

In just 2 years the first Deep-Geo wells will be drilled. With new millimeter technology rocks can be vaporized in a self sealing borehole up to 20kms deep.

It’s not toxic, reaches only the hot rocks well before magma, and doesn’t fracture or poison ground water like fracking.

And you can do it almost anywhere.. that is: right next to redundant coal, oil and gas power stations, supplying the super heated steam to power their turbines, without oil, gas coal or nuclear.. 100% CO2 free! (unless we include CO2 released in the manufacture of the drilling equipment)

We live on a piece that fell off the sun. Just 20kms down the rocks are at 500 C. All we need to do is drill down, pump in water and use superheated steam for free electricity lasting millions of years.

Problems:

• Deep-Geo is not fully demonstrated yet.
• It’s happening in the US where the oil/gas lobby may try to stop it.
• It won’t end capitalism, though if it goes viral worldwide it could slow down the Climate Catastrophe, though ecocide would continue.

The challenge for Activists against Climate Meltdown is to evaluate the reality of the Deep-Geo promise and, if it really works as promised, to support and demand it, while continuing to campaign against ongoing Capitalist Ecocide and Biosphere collapse.

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The Perfect Energy Source Is Already Here – Endless Geothermal Is Poised for Release From Deep in the Earth

By Andy Corbley at goodnewsnetwork Mar 15, 2022

The base of the new drilling method was discovered ‘accidentally’ by Paul Woskov and his team and developed for 10 years at the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center before various companies began trials.

As physicists work in the nuclear fusion sector, they inadvertently invented a tool that could allow geothermal plants to deliver limitless clean energy by harnessing the power of the Earth.

That tool is a large millimeter-wave laser drill that will allow engineers to bore down more than 12.4 miles (20 km) into the Earth’s crust to harness the heat from the planet’s core.

This laser drilling technology is being pioneered by a spin-off company called Quaise from MIT .

The bottom line is that this idea is not science fiction, and Quaise has the money to put several full-scale demonstration machines into action by 2024, and hopes to have a 100- megawatt supercritical geothermal plant in operation by 2026.

At 12.4 miles into the Earth’s crust, temperatures soar to 500°C, a sector-redefining level compared to traditional drill bit borehole temperatures of around 200°C. At this stage and depth, water under the ground becomes “supercritical,” a state of matter where it’s neither a gas nor a liquid.

“A power plant that uses supercritical water as the working fluid can extract up to 10 times more useful energy from each drop when compared to non-supercritical plants,” a spokesperson from Quaise told New Atlas. “Aiming for supercritical conditions is key to attaining power densities consistent with fossil fuels.”

A recycling masterclass

It’s perhaps ironic that humans would seek to harness the energy of the sun and stars in a nuclear fusion reactor when there is 20 billion times more heat under our feet than the entire world’s energy consumption. Merely 0.03% of global energy is delivered from geothermal despite this richness.

A virtually limitless supply of energy exists in the form of this supercritical fluid snaking its way through the crust and mantle of the planet, and just 0.01% of it would provide far more wattage than the world uses.

In order to reach it though, we need better drilling technology, and Quaise is taking advantage of the work put into a 1970s piece of technology called a gyrotron.

When needing to heat water into a plasma at the heart of a nuclear fusion reactor, scientists need to generate between 90-150 million degrees Celsius of heat. This has been done by both lasers and super magnets.

The gyrotron is one of those lasers, and it generates electromagnetic waves in the millimeter-wave spectrum, shorter than microwaves and longer than infrared or visible light. Designed, invented, and tested in the USSR, the device is excellent at rapidly heating up a plasma without substantial energy usage.

So, accessing already existing energy with already existing technology, Quaise has proved itself remarkably efficient. They’ve raised $63 million in funding and they’re looking to cut out fossil fuels in a real way before the end of the decade.

Their next planned step may be the greatest recycling trick in the industry.

As coal-fired power plants continue to be shuttered around the world, their giant, already established infrastructure for converting steam into electricity, large electricity distribution equipment, and talented workforce could simply be taken over by Quaise, who could merely replace the coal-fired components with those meant for harnessing supercritical water.

Pure futurism

“There are somewhere upwards of 8,500 coal-fired power plants around the world, totaling over 2,000 gigawatts of capacity, and they’ll all have to find something else to do by 2050,” writes Loz Blain at New Atlas.

Blain argues this is more revolutionary than nuclear fusion, and the beauty of the design, if it works, is that the technology originally made for fusion reactors could end up putting them out of a job.

At 12-15 miles below the Earth’s surface, it doesn’t matter where the drill or ex-coal plant is located, the heat will be pretty much the same.

In fact, the world would be set for a paradigm shift.

Since unlimited clean energy could be obtained within most nations, it would untether them from geo-political concerns about oil-rich countries like the US and their human rights abuses.

On land and sea, birds and wildlife would be untouched by any massive polluting oil spills that would become a thing of the past.

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The challenge for activists against Climate Meltdown is to evaluate the reality of the Deep-Geo promise and if it really works to support and demand it, while continuing to campaign against ongoing Capitalist Ecocide and Biosphere collapse.

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The world needs to find more environmentally friendly resources. Geothermal energy could be the solution

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Company Plans To Drill 20 Kilometers Into Earth To Tap …

Reaching underground resources | MIT Energy Initiative

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from Crimethinc // interview Support Us Current Events Languages

An Interview

Since 2001, the collectively-run website Antijob.net has provided a “blacklist of employers,” offering a space for laborers in Russia to report on their negative experiences at work.

As Russian media and labor organizing have come under increasing pressure, Antijob continues to provide a crucial resource for ordinary employees, even in an extremely repressive environment.

Russian corporations and government agencies have repeatedly attempted to bribe the publishers or suppress the site, without success.

The so-called “Great Resignation” and a popular Antiwork Reddit site have recently made waves in the United States; we conducted the following interview with Antijob to learn what anti-work agitation looks like in Russia.

Antijob has also played a role in supporting protests against the invasion of Ukraine, informing Russian workers of their legal rights on the job if they arrested while protesting.

As appendixes, we’ve included the Antijob manifesto, the Antijob statement against the invasion of Ukraine, and some examples of the reports workers publish on the site.

“Remember and tell others: your interests are opposed to the interests of the employer. This is a struggle that has been going on for centuries. The struggle between those who are trying to make a living and those who want to buy a new yacht.”

-Antijob, “No loyalty to the employer!”

Traducción Artículo, Noticias 24 de marzo de 2022autor: Caitlin Johnstone March 24, 2022 by Caitlin Johnstone 17 Comments

Escucha una lectura de este artículo en inglés:Listen to a reading

Es tan surrealista cómo estamos más cerca de la guerra nuclear de lo que hemos estado desde la Crisis de los Misiles Cubanos, y solo continúa aumentando, y sin embargo, casi nadie parece darse cuenta y casi todos siguen con sus vidas pensando en sus pensamientos habituales y teniendo sus conversaciones habituales.

Vladimir Putin ha puesto a las fuerzas nucleares de Rusia en alerta máxima y ha emitido amenazas de represalias nucleares si las potencias occidentales intentan intervenir en las operaciones militares rusas en Ucrania. La primera Revisión de la postura nuclear de la administración Biden saldrá pronto y probablemente reflejará los cambios en la postura nuclear de Rusia de alguna manera. La probabilidad se dispara de un evento de extinción masiva que fácilmente podría bloquear el sol durante años y matar de hambre a todos los que no tienen la suerte de ser asesinados rápidamente en el infierno inicial.

Un artículo reciente del New York Times titulado “Las bombas más pequeñas que podrían convertir a Ucrania en una zona de guerra nuclear” analiza el peligro de que Rusia use una bomba nuclear llamada “táctica” o “de bajo rendimiento” si la guerra no va bien para Moscú, haciendo el cálculo de que el uso de una de sus armas nucleares mucho menos destructivas podría lograr intimidar a sus enemigos para que retrocedan sin resultar en una guerra nuclear en toda regla.

Un exerto:

“Se siente horrible hablar de estas cosas”, dijo el Dr. Kühn en una entrevista. “Pero tenemos que considerar que esto se está convirtiendo en una posibilidad”.



Washington espera más movimientos atómicos de Putin en los próximos días. Es probable que Moscú “confíe cada vez más en su disuasión nuclear para señalar a Occidente y proyectar fuerza” a medida que la guerra y sus consecuencias debilitan a Rusia, dijo el teniente general Scott D. Berrier, director de la Agencia de Inteligencia de Defensa, al Comité de Servicios Armados de la Cámara. el jueves.

Una forma de vida verdaderamente sensata leería esos dos párrafos e inmediatamente diría: “Oh, bueno, obviamente ya no podemos continuar por esta trayectoria. Negociemos un alto el fuego por cualquier medio que sea necesario y avancemos hacia la distensión lo más rápido posible”. Pero en lugar de pasar a desescalar, todo lo que estamos viendo es una escalada continua con llamadas cada vez más estridentes para escalar aún más.

Vale la pena señalar aquí que los expertos han estado advirtiendo durante años que estas armas nucleares de “bajo rendimiento” representan una amenaza terrible para nuestra especie debido al riesgo de que alguien haga el cálculo de que podría salirse con la suya usándolas, como vemos en este artículo de 2019 de James Carroll titulado “El arma más peligrosa jamás sale de la línea de montaje nuclear”. Tales advertencias simplemente no recibieron mucha atención antes porque se trataba de que Estados Unidos fabricara esas armas e hicieron poco para amplificar la histeria de Rusia.

Probablemente también valga la pena señalar que EE. UU. ha estado actualizando su arsenal nuclear con avances que hacen que sus rivales con armas nucleares tengan más probabilidades de calcular la necesidad de un primer ataque nuclear a gran escala. Como explicó R Jeffrey Smith el año pasado para The Center for Public Integrity, las mejoras en la capacidad de cronometrar perfectamente la detonación de una bomba nuclear la hacen mucho más destructiva y, por lo tanto, capaz de destruir armas nucleares subterráneas, lo que necesariamente haría que un gobierno como Rusia fuera más propenso a lanzar un ataque preventivo en un momento de tensión para evitar ser desarmado por un ataque estadounidense.

Sin embargo, a otros les preocupa que esos líderes, sabiendo que muchas de sus armas terrestres protegidas y los puestos de mando asociados no podrían escapar de la destrucción, podrían ser más propensos a ordenar su uso al principio de una crisis o conflicto, simplemente para asegurarse de que no sean destruido cuando llegan las ojivas entrantes, promoviendo una política de lanzamiento de gatillo instantáneo que podría convertirse en un cataclismo general.

El físico James Acton, quien codirige el programa de política nuclear en Carnegie Endowment for International Peace y ha escrito extensamente sobre la necesidad de evitar conflictos innecesarios, dijo que los esfuerzos para modernizar el arsenal nuclear deberían centrarse más en garantizar la seguridad de las armas. seguridad y confiabilidad, y menos en mejorar su precisión.

“Si China o Rusia creen en un conflicto o una crisis que vamos a atacar o destruir sus fuerzas nucleares y puestos de mando, eso les da un incentivo para usar armas nucleares primero o amenazar con usarlas. Tienen fuertes incentivos para tomar medidas que escalarían aún más la crisis y crearían nuevos peligros”, dijo Acton.

Los nuevos misiles de crucero lanzados desde el aire y el mar también ponen a Rusia en estado de alerta, escribe Smith:

Los nuevos misiles de crucero lanzados desde el aire y el mar en particular, dijo [el presidente del Consejo de Armas Nucleares, Andrew Weber], no son necesarios y socavarán la disuasión porque son armas sigilosas de ataque sorpresa que pondrán a los oponentes lo suficientemente nerviosos como para adoptar armas de gatillo instantáneo. políticas de lanzamiento. Ya que pueden

ser desplegados con ojivas convencionales y nucleares y es imposible que los oponentes noten la diferencia, su uso podría causar una escalada involuntaria de una guerra convencional a una nuclear.