doug
Active Member
"Fracking" can cause earthquakes, but that's not the same as geothermal energy recovery.
No, there is no proof that fracking can cause earthquakes. There is a fear that fracking can cause earthquakes.
Just goggle up 'geothermal seismic activity' or read the wiki article on 'Induced seismicity' (they have references). There's a fair amount of information out there on this phenomena. Most of the resulting earthquakes associated with it are small although there are a few instances of more powerful quakes which also happened in previously stable geological regions. Researchers are pretty confident though, that in the future they will be ably to largely eliminate or mitigate such events.
I'm not mixing the two up as I was specifically referring to geothermal power stations as was Paleo.