South Korea accepts geothermal plant probably caused destructive quake
---- From the article:<p>A South Korean government panel has concluded that a magnitude-5.4 earthquake that struck the city of Pohang on 15 November 2017 was probably caused by an experimental geothermal power plant....<p>Unlike conventional geothermal plants, which extract energy directly from hot underground water or rock, the Pohang power plant injected fluid at high pressure into the ground to fracture the rock and release heat — a technology known as an enhanced geothermal system....<p>---<p>This is both horrifying and incredible. They managed to fracture enough rock to generate energy contained in a mag-5.4 earthquake.<p>That's around 200 KT of TNT [0].
That's a lot of useful energy if contained. I wonder what the efficiency of the plant would be then.<p>South Korea already has 23 nuclear plants though [1], I wonder why they decided to go this route, perhaps easier setup and lower associated costs ?<p>[0] <a href="https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/energy/energy-hurricane-volcano-earthquake3.htm" rel="nofollow">https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/energy/energ...</a><p>[1] <a href="http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-o-s/south-korea.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pro...</a>