Isn’t politics vile?

This is a fun and good idea.

But inside is a shiny new mini power station and lithium extraction plant that is once again accessing rich underground resources in the far south-west of Britain.

From Thursday, the Geothermal Engineering Ltd (GEL) plant near Redruth will feed electricity created by tapping into hot granite rocks to the National Grid and extract lithium from the mineral-rich water used in the process.

One of us knows this field of weird metals rather well. Yes, lithium is soluble in hot water - explosively so for the metal in fact - so geothermal waters that run through lithium bearing rocks - like Cornish granite - will contain lithium. This can be extracted. One of us is so involved in weird metals that a few years ago the people who proved that this was and is possible contacted to see if the technology could be adapted, usefully, to other metals. So we’re really very confident it is technically possible. Another proof would be that this is already being done to geothermal waters from under the Salton Sea in California and being tried out at similar such plants along the Rhine.

Yep, grand idea, heat/electricity and also lithium, what’s not to like?

Well:

Once the lithium is taken out, the water is re-injected into the fault line

Ah, that’s a problem.

A few people have raised concerns about earthquakes. The company accepts that the testing and development of geothermal reservoirs in Cornwall is likely to cause some minor seismicity but there have been no issues so far.

Fracking for gas is not allowed because of that very problem. As the company says:

The testing and development of geothermal reservoirs in Cornwall is likely to cause some minor seismicity. Most of these induced events are so small that they’re not felt at the surface, but sometimes a slight rumbling sound or momentary ‘shiver’ can be detected in the local area. This is not dangerous, and no damage can be caused to local infrastructure at these low levels. Once the power plant is online and the geothermal system is in operation, it is extremely unlikely that any seismicity will be felt.

There will be some but not very much. Which is true of fracking for gas too, of course. The Telegraph tells us the secret here:

In Britain, ministers effectively outlawed fracking for oil and gas when they limited operations that create tremors of more than a 0.5 magnitude.

There are no such rules for geothermal, even though it has caused mini-tremors that were three times more powerful than this, with the industry instead regulated based on its surface vibrations. Law argues that this is more sensible because it measures the actual effects above ground.

Nevertheless, the results can still be scary. For two days in 2020, GEL induced 15 mini-quakes of magnitudes up to 1.5 as it was carrying out drilling at United Downs. Residents reported their windows rattled while some likened it to heavy thunderstorms.

Because geothermal and lithium are green and good those quakes which will murder us all in our beds are allowed, because fracking for gas is capitalist and fossil then those quakes which will murder us all in our beds are not to be allowed. This trick performed by changing the standards used to measure the geothermal murder us in our beds quakes as opposed to the bad fracking quakes which will murder us in our beds.

Our own opinion is that the quakes from either are minor and so both should be allowed. We can see the logic of insisting that being murdered in our beds by quakes is such a terror that neither should be allowed. But only politics gets to fiddle the rules as they are being fiddled.

And thus the vileness, vility, of politics. As ever, all we need to test government is to observe what it actually does. When we do so that grand and whole truth is always revealed. Use politics and government only when we absolutely must for look what happens when we allow it to expand.

Minarchy Rulz!

Tim Worstall