As a child, I'd fantasize about digging a hole so deep it would reach the center of the Earth.
Yeah, I know, kid-think. Yet betcha I wasn't alone.
So today, fellow adults, let's imagine a hole sunk so deeply into the Earth that the heat from its geothermal wells could effectively repurpose shuttered coal and gas power plants as clean energy that could fuel the planet from now on.
Don't strain your brain too hard. One MIT spinout company called Quaise Energy of Cambridge, Mass., is already planning that very thing.
Paul Woskov, a research engineer with MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center and the mind behind this sci-fi concept, has invested 14 years exploring the idea at an abandoned coal plant in upstate New York, and he thinks he could bring it online within a decade.
Zach Winn of the MIT News Office reported that Quaise Energy plans to vaporize rock to dig the planet's deepest holes, and capture enough geothermal energy to meet human energy needs for millions of years.
Woskov says the turbine at the New York power plant is still intact and its electric lines run to the grid as they always have. If this retrofit goes as planned (and many believe it will), Quaise, which is commercializing Woskov's work, contends the same process will work on virtually every coal and gas power plant in the world.
"The plan would be easier to dismiss as unrealistic if it were based on new and unproven technology," Winn wrote. "But Quaise's drilling systems center around a microwave-emitting device called a gyrotron that has been used in research and manufacturing for decades."
Woskov, who serves as an adviser to Quaise but isn't formally affiliated with it, said, "This will happen quickly once we solve the immediate engineering problems of transmitting a clean beam and having it operate at a high energy density without breakdown. It'll go fast because the underlying technology, gyrotrons, are commercially available. You could place an order with a company and have a system delivered right now.
"Granted, these beam sources have never been used 24/7, but they are engineered to be operational for long time periods. In five or six years, I think we'll have a plant running if we solve these engineering problems. I'm very optimistic."
Gyrotrons have been used to heat material in nuclear fusion experiments for a long time, Winn reported, but "it wasn't until 2008, however, after the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) published a request for proposals on new geothermal drilling technologies, that Woskov thought of using gyrotrons for a new application."
Woskov told Winn gyrotrons "haven't been well-publicized in the general science community, but those of us in fusion research understood they were very powerful beam sources--like lasers, but in a different frequency range. ... I thought, why not direct these high-power beams, instead of into fusion plasma, down into rock and vaporize the hole?"
Winn wrote that while power from other renewable energy sources has exploded recently, geothermal energy plateaued, primarily because geothermal plants only exist in places where natural conditions allow for energy extraction at relatively shallow depths. "At a certain point, conventional drilling becomes impractical because deeper crust is both hotter and harder, which wears down mechanical drill bits."
Woskov, with funding from MITEI, began running tests using gyrotron beams from a small gyrotron in MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center. Soon his office was filled with small rock formations he'd blasted with millimeter waves.
Woskov stands today on what soon could prove to be one of the most astounding and beneficial pieces of advanced technology in the history of humankind.
I asked our resident industrial engineer at the coffee group last week (really bright fella) what he thought of the idea. He said he hadn't heard of it, but would be surprised if Woskov can pull it off.
Sounds like we'll get that answer before too long.
Red Ryders
If you were anything like me as a boy, among your prize possessions was a BB gun from Daisy Manufacturing in Rogers.
Mine happened to be one of those pump-action rifles (rather than a lever-action version) that spring-loaded through a tube filled with the little copper balls of ammunition.
Friends and I would spend hours each week plinking at targets, bottle and cans usually salvaged from the trash.
So it naturally brought back fond memories to read the story about the Daisy National BB Gun Championship Match held for kids ages 8 to 15 in Rogers last week after being canceled for two years due to covid.
Champion teams and individuals were named after shooting from four different positions, and I assume every child had a great time.
I voluntarily surrendered my BB gun at 12 after mindlessly stalking and shooting a woodpecker I watched die in my hand as I wept.
Mike Masterson is a longtime Arkansas journalist, was editor of three Arkansas dailies and headed the master's journalism program at Ohio State University. Email him at mmasterson@arkansasonline.com.