A problem is the clay surrounding the tunnels insulates them - it traps heat because heat flows through it very slowly. So you drill down and put a heat exchanger pipe down there, you pump heat from 3cm of clay around the pipe and now no heat flows through the clay to your pipe even though there’s a lot of heat still down there.
Your pipe becomes a tiny worm of cold pipe in a big lump of hot clay and you’ve done very little to cool the underground or warm your water. That is, if heat moved easily through the stuff then the problem of heat buildup would be easy to solve but in that case heat wouldn't build up so there wouldn't be a problem; and vice-versa.
Yes but the only places we care about extracting heat are the tunnels, so you'd just run pipes through the tunnels themselves to extract heat. I think the bigger issue is the amount of energy needed to get the water down there and back up just means it doesn't make much sense on its own.
Your pipe becomes a tiny worm of cold pipe in a big lump of hot clay and you’ve done very little to cool the underground or warm your water. That is, if heat moved easily through the stuff then the problem of heat buildup would be easy to solve but in that case heat wouldn't build up so there wouldn't be a problem; and vice-versa.