Swiss Geologist On Trial For Causing Earthquakes 258
Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that Markus Haering's company had been working with the authorities in Basel, Switzerland to try to convert the heat in deep-seated rocks into electricity, but the project was suspended in 2006 when drilling triggered earthquakes, one of them with a magnitude of 3.4, leading Haering's company to pay out $9M in damages. Haering's team planned to drill a series of holes penetrating up to 3 miles (4.8 km) underground with water being pumped onto rocks with a temperature of more than 195C. Basel's location on top of a fault line – the upper Rhine trench – had been deliberately chosen because the heat was closer to the Earth's surface. A risk assessment has since shown that the prospect of further quakes is too high to continue drilling in the city. Haering faces up to five years in prison if the judge finds he intentionally damaged property. Haering has admitted the 3.4 magnitude earthquake was stronger than he had expected and that his team 'had very little knowledge of seismicity' before starting to drill, but called the quakes 'a learning process for everyone involved.' Despite Haering's trial, the Swiss appetite for geothermal projects has not diminished. Engineers are beginning preliminary drilling in Zurich to see whether that area was suitable for a similar scheme, and St. Gallen, in eastern Switzerland, plans to start work on its own geothermal project next year. Drilling efforts are being closely watched in the US, where the energy department is sponsoring more than 120 geothermal energy projects in several states."
US project shut down (Score:5, Informative)
Thankfully a project by the same company just north of San Francisco has been shut down. The last thing CA needs is more earthquakes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/12/science/earth/12quake.html [nytimes.com]
Eggshell defense (Score:4, Informative)
These villagers were scamming the poor guy. $9 million in damages from a *3.4* quake? Cripes, a bus crossing in front of my house is close to 3.4... either their houses are made from eggshells, or this is the scam of the century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggshell_skull
Translation/application: if you demonstrate negligence and cause an earthquake, even if everyone's houses are made of chewing gum and paper- you're responsible for the damage, because had you not done what you did, the damage wouldn't have happened.
Re:Damages? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Blahgh (Score:5, Informative)
Basel is EGS's "Altamont Pass". Altamont Pass was a wind farm that gave wind turbines their (undeserved) reputation as being bird killers. They built a wind farm right in the middle of a bird flyway, using low, fast-spinning turbines. It was a learning experience; nobody would be stupid enough to do that again.
It's the same thing with EGS and earthquakes. In Basel, they deliberately fractured an active fault that had previously destroyed the city. Nobody is going to be dumb enough to do that again.
Re:Damages? (Score:3, Informative)
This is a different tech than most of Iceland's geothermal: EGS. Most of Iceland's geothermal is from natural reservoirs (although Iceland is starting to move in the direction of EGS, too).
In Iceland.... (Score:3, Informative)
Here in Iceland they have been pumping down Co2 for testing. That is down with water, but the result is the same, it has created earthquakes. The largest one was about ML2.0 before they stopped the experiment.
I don't know why it was stopped. But it is quite oblivious that pressure changes create earthquakes faster then one might think.
However, in Iceland they where pumping down that water within a active volcano with a lot of fault lines.
Hell... (Score:3, Informative)
Hell, here's a map [usgs.gov] of the earthquakes that happened this week in California.
http://quake.usgs.gov/recenteqs/ [usgs.gov]
Re:Damages? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Blahgh (Score:3, Informative)
I can say with some authority that any structure built in a tectonically active region that cannot safely handle a 3.4 magnitude earthquake was built improperly.
Well, it depends on how deep the quake is. If it's of any depth at all, you're not going to notice a 3.4 quake even if you're standing on the epicentre. But if a 3.4 quake were to happen, say, 20 km underfoot, you might have issues. In many ways the perceptual scale is a more useful human measure.
Re:Blahgh (Score:1, Informative)
It is not only the magnitude that matters when considering potential to cause damage, but also the depth and proximity to built structures, amongst various other factors. In this case water was pumped into rock at high pressure, causing the rock to fracture - the goal was to heat the water and pump it back out. The company who did this said that at worst this process could case "microquakes", a term given to a type of earthquakes that do not exceed about 2.2 on the Richter scale. The fact that counter to these predictions there was a sequence of many quakes over a short period of time, many of which surpassed this limit, with three greater than magnitude 3.4 in as many days, clearly indicates that the people involved did NOT understand the tectonic effects and hence the risks involved. Remember, it is a logarithmic scale ...
If you make a prediction and are proved wrong, by more than an order of magnitude, you did not know what you were talking about in the first place.
PS: I saw the damage first hand. No injuries, but plenty of damage to facades, etc. I'm told it sounded like a bomb.
Re:impossible (Score:1, Informative)
Basel is slightly above village sized. Though I agree, even England has had a few 4.x earthquakes in the past 10 years with little consequence.