geothermal and energy securiy, page-2

Hi osr,

I hadn't really thought about that aspect. My first reaction is that we don't really want get to that situation (a bit like owning gold in a financial meltdown).

National security is an issue for a country's power generation however - with aspects like security of supply (eg. currently US concerns with oil) as well as how easy it is to protect strategic areas. I would guess geothermal ranks high on the former (as does coal fired power generation in this country) and it's probably easier to protect than a nuclear plant. Maybe not much critical difference to solar and wave though although it might be easier to protect?

Wave technology (like CWE) which is submerged would be less exposed to natural disasters than surface models and in this regard the geothermal wells and plant structures would probably be less exposed than solar towers and horizontal arrays I would expect (I'm thinking hurricanes etc). Could be an issue with flooding in some geothermal areas though. I believe recent floods did delay some projects recently. In this regard I thing NE Tassie could be preferable to the Cooper Basin, etc (?), but I believe it might have been more of a truck/rig access issue. I'm not sure what the general designs of wellheads/sites and ancillary equipment allow for flooding. I would expect similar to oil industry???

Cheers.