Proceedings World Geothermal Congress 2005 Antalya, Turkey, 24-29 April 2005 Prospects of Geothermal Energy Use in the Kuril Islands S.N. Rychagov 1, V.I. Belousov 1, A.I. Postnikov 2, V.M. Sugrobov 1 and Yu.P. Alekseev2 1 Institute of Volcanology, FED RAS, 9 Piip Avenue, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, 683006, Russia; E-mail:
[email protected] 2 “Science” joint-stock company, Моscow, Russia; bldg. 1, 9, Krasnokazarmennaya str., Moscow, 111250, Russia E-mail:
[email protected] Keywords: geothermal, geothermal resources, energy, 1. INTRODUCTION capacity, model, hydrothermal-magmatic, systems, deposit On the basis of practical studies, new geological objects have been found in volcanoes, also found were ABSTRACT hydrothermal systems of recent and ancient insular arches. The Kuril Islands have unique natural complexities that are These activities were done within the last years. These are of great importance for geopolitics and social economics of long-living ore-forming hydrothermal-magmatic convective Russia (Fig. 1). In Kuril Islands, power engineering suffers systems in the area of transition from the oceanic crust to great difficulties operating due to challenges in fuel the continental earth’s crust (Rychagov et al., 1999). Under deliveries. At the same time, there are well-known insular arch conditions characterised as subareal ones, the geothermal manifestations and deposits in this area which upper parts of hydrothermal-magmatic systems are located might help solve the problem. The potential electric at the boundary of interaction of three geospheres: capacity is estimated to be 295 MW through 100 years of atmosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere. This fact allows exploitation; explorations were done in all large islands of processes such as interaction of hydrothermae with cold the Kuril ridge near the main built-up areas (Strategy…, meteoric waters, subterranean boiling and steam and gas 2001).