Saturday, October 10, 2009

More geothermal quakes

I almost missed this one: more "minor" quakes around a geothermal site, this time a few hours' drive north of Freiburg. The New York Times covered it (without too many mistakes this time) a month ago, when I was on the road.

Up to now, such quakes have been reported in Staufen and Basel, roughly a half an hour from here, so this news puts geothermal in a really bad light. Will we have to fear tremors every time we plan such a project?

Correction: I am told that the event in Staufen is not an earthquake, properly speaking. While the earth did move, it basically did so because an underground layer of porous rock began soaking up underground water and growing like a sponge.

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