rpg and qanda, could you stop the personal sniping? By all means argue the points but no more name calling please or I will start deleting posts, which would be a pity because the substantive parts make interesting reading.

Unsurprising that GDY has hit problems. These sorts of projects generally do. I see I'm probably an indirect shareholder in it because Sunsuper, which has my super funds, has bought in. And it appears to have a JV with Origin. Could be an interesting punt to buy in now, given its share price is close to an all-time low. You must have done a bit of dough in this one qanda. Time to double up?

BTW, what's the source of the heat? Radioactive decay?

A little more lateral thinking may assist Pericles.

China and India’s ecocidal journey started many decades ago. Twenty new reactors for China and 5 for India will merely hasten the journey.

China is aggressively acquiring uranium resources in countries like Niger, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Namibia thereby merely transferring the environmental carnage they’ve perpetrated in their own country, onto poor nations.

And similar to Australia, China is building heaps more coal-fired plants and in 2006, India’s coal-fired power plants consumed 5.9 quadrillion Btu of coal.

The US has around 290 million people with 104 nuclear reactors which have been in operation decades and they’ve been an abject failure in mitigating pollution and currently, a minimum of 27 of America's nuclear reactors are known to be leaking radioactive tritium.

A “stop gap measure of 50 to 200 years” indicates to me a certain naiveté and denial of the urgent situation which prevails. Construction of one reactor = 5 - 7 years!

Meanwhile who do you suggest should pay for the perpetual cleanup of radioactive tailings from uranium mining which is polluting the planet? Who paid/pays for the care of miners and community members afflicted by cancer from this radiation? Who paid for the 40% of underground workers at the Radium Hill mine in South Australia who died a lingering death from lung cancer? How much money is lost to the community from the shortened work-life of these cancer victims, and of their family carers? The loss of valuable land for agriculture? The wildlife, the loss of fresh water, now polluted?

Who will pay the 76 billion pounds for cleaning up Britain’s nuclear waste or the $96 billion required to clean up the appalling atomic mess in the US while Obama fills the coffers of the nuclear industry?

“Some day the Earth will weep, she will beg for her life, she will cry with tears of blood. You will make a choice, if you will help her or let her die, and when she dies, you too, will die.” - John Hollow Horn, Oglala Lakota, 1932

Graham, before I retire for the night - personal sniping on this site is a matter of course, but I’m glad you’re moderating, even if it’s on ‘hobby horse’ threads :)

Ok, off topic – I am perplexed that you say “it (Geodynamics) APPEARS to have a JV with Origin” given that your super fund “has bought in”. Don’t you monitor your Superannuation; don’t you know about the joint venture, or the changes in major shareholding?

And why do you think it unsurprising Geodynamics “hit problems”? Or why “these sorts of projects generally do”? You could explain.

On a personal note (seeing you think I “have done a bit of dough”) ... I bought 2 blocks of GDY in mid ’06 for about 70 cents per share. The 1st block I gifted between my children, the 2nd block ‘willed’ and divided amongst their children (my grandchildren not yet born) turning 21.

As it turned out, one of kids wanted to ‘cash in’ for a substantive house deposit and keep it with the bank for about a year - fortuitous or just astute, you tell me. Anyway, they did and they made a motzza - traded at about $2 per share in ’07 ... almost 300% profit in just over 1 year. Were they to know about the casing collapse last year? No, they were lucky ... but we were aware of the GFC on the horizon - were you?

Nevertheless, I originally bought the shares as a long term ‘blue chip’ investment, primarily for my grandchildren – stipulated in my will not to be traded for at least another 30 years. Time to double up? You betcha!

>> BTW, what's the source of the heat? Radioactive decay? <<
And your point is?

qanda, my understanding is that everywhere else in the world, GeoThermal energy tapping is done on the edges of tectonic plates, is this one a particularly high risk not being on the edge of a plate? (well Hawaii is not, but it has a point source)

Where is this particular drill site?

Do they need to go as deep on the edge of a tectonic plate as they do in this particular instance?

Off topic but interesting.

If everyone is investing in renewables and no longer in coal fired power stations, and the renewables do not deliver - will we be in trouble?

Seems quite high risk to remove all our eggs at once from the basket they have been in for many years - I know there are lots of promises and hype about renewables, but so far nothing seems remotely successful.

Your own figures for GDY see them going online with a 500MW plant in 2018 and since I'm not an investor, and you have the data - how likely do you think it is they will deliver? I don't mean to hold you to it or anything like that, I just have no data.

I think we should still continue to invest in coal fired plants otherwise we may get into a shortfall which would be disastrous for our economy.

Perhaps we should be planning some nuclear power plants instead of new coal plants, unless the environmentalists insist that we continue to produce CO2 instead of radioactive waste which we can sore, but we cannot store CO2 - what's the lessor of 2 problems?

The environmentalists can't have everything their way, eventually they will have to compromise, which should be interesting as from what I see of them, they can barely get along with each other, and we have literally hundreds of eco groups in Australia, all "independent".

qanda, no-one that I know of monitors the shares in their statutory superfund unless they manage it themselves. Sunsuper doesn't publish any reports that I am aware of showing how their portfolio has changed, and even if they did there's be little point in second guessing them. So reading this thread is the first time I've paid any attention to this company, as distinct from the technology.

Why do I think it unsurprising? Because I have a long history of following companies trying to make money with new technologies and frequently technologies fail to scale up. Why would this company be any different? It's a high risk punt. That doesn't mean it's going to fail, or that its technology is bad, just that there will most likely be a whole lot of unforeseen difficulties.

I should have known that you would have bought at the lowest price in the last 6 years. Congratulations on your market timing. But it must test your faith in the stock to have such good timing and still be down on your investment, so I just wondered whether if it was a good buy at 70 cents you thought it worth going back in at 63 and averaging your price down a bit.

So, what _is_ the source of the heat?

Amicus

They are not my figures, they are contained within a Geodynamics' report.
Geodynamics incorporate a geothermal system which is different to what you are probably familiar with. You could look at their website http://www.geodynamics.com.au/IRM/content/home.html or CSIRO http://www.csiro.au/science/Geothermal-energy.html in answer to some of your queries.

We won’t be shutting down coal fired power stations without something taking their place; we (humanity) are building more. A smart investor would be hedging their bets between renewables and non-renewables. However, a smart government (imo) would find a way to put a price on carbon, gradually withdraw the subsidies given to the fossils, increase them to renewables, and soften the blow as much as possible – sooner rather than later. Caveat, no one government can do it alone.

______

Graham

I manage my own, but you’re right – most people don’t, or can’t.

>> Why do I think it unsurprising? Because I have a long history of following companies trying to make money with new technologies and frequently technologies fail to scale up. Why would this company be any different? It's a high risk punt. That doesn't mean it's going to fail, or that its technology is bad, just that there will most likely be a whole lot of unforeseen difficulties. <<

I agree. But it’s a risk we (humanity) have to pursue – a point I failed to make with rpg. Regardless whether you/anyone believe in AGW, we have to find more sustainable ways of producing energy. It’s a quirk of this “climate change debate” that the clock somehow stops at 2100 – what happens after then?

>> BTW, what's the source of the heat? Radioactive decay? <<

Yes, otherwise known as "hot rocks" :)