Churchill County Commissioners heard at their regularly scheduled meeting Thursday that a decision could be made by June 2018 if Fallon will be named the top location for an underground laboratory to conduct research on enhanced geothermal systems.
Douglas Blankenship, manager of Geothermal Research and Development at Sandia National Laboratories, said research also is being conducted at a site near Milford, Utah.
In his presentation of phase 3 of the Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy (FORGE), Blankenship said the Department of Energy will be selecting a location for a National Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) field laboratory. Once the site is selected, the field laboratory, which is funded by DOE, will begin a five-year research project to further study EGS, the means by which resources are accessed from deep beneath the surface of the earth where there are hot rocks ideal for geothermal wells but little naturally occurring liquid to generate steam.