Could we stop Yellowstone from erupting with a geothermal power plant?(construction-physics.com) |
Could we stop Yellowstone from erupting with a geothermal power plant?(construction-physics.com) |
The progression of this magma intrusion, particularly beneath the power plant itself, seems like it should provide a valuable case study to test the idea presented by this article. If there ends up being an eruption under that power plant we might learn something about the advantages and potential pitfalls of this proposal.
Iceland's event is much smaller, but we're not talking about the sort of thing that you can implement in a year.
Warhammer 40k sort of absurd.
Having said that, It should be considered to take advantages of clean energy.
>The size of volcanic eruptions can be expressed by the volume or mass of magma released (table 1), with super-eruptions yielding in excess of 450 km3, or more than 1×10^15 kg, of magma (Sparks et al. 2005).
Wikipedia says the Empire State Building has a volume of 1e6 m3 or 0.001 km3. So the eruption would be equivalent to at least 450,000 Empire State Buildings worth of magma. Mt Everest is some 90km3, so only 5 Mt Everest equivalents.
These amounts are too big for me to comprehend, but yeah. Going to need a bigger boat.
[0] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsta.200...
Also remember it takes time for heat to transfer through so much rock, so a plant would have to continuously remove energy for a very long time to reach the places where it actually matters.
On the one hand, building a huge geothermal power station at Yellowstone would generate a large amount of (potentially cheap) electric power while simultaneously reducing a catastrophic risk. "
"On the other hand, in many ways Yellowstone is a particularly bad place to try to build such a plant. The harsh, corrosive conditions in and around the magma chamber would make drilling the wells especially difficult, and its location in the middle of nowhere would require the construction of enormous transmission lines"
"In any case, the debate is likely to remain academic for the foreseeable future. Using Yellowstone for geothermal power was made illegal by the Geothermal Steam Act of 1970"
So the answer is likely yes, in theory. But there are lots of other places, where it makes more sense to build geothermal plants. (for energy, but also security, there are lots of other potential super vulcanos that are not as activly monitored like Yellowstone is)
Looking it up, we're of course already on top of harnessing the geothermal there https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Valley_Geothermal_Pro....
One that is being tracked, and showing a present threat is the Vesuvius complex (which did in Pompeii), and is showing markedly increased activity [0]. I'd be more interested in proposals that might mitigate that.
Or more generally, studies finding out how late such a project could start and still be successful, i.e., able to extract sufficient heat from the system before it erupts, thus preventing the eruption.
[0] https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/volcanos/europes-mo...
Switzerland had two larger projects to dig deep enough for a geothermal power plant and both got cancled due to the triggered earth quakes. [1]
There may be another attempt but it's risky and I think doing this at Yellowstone maybe a lot more risky.
[1] https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/strom-aus-erdwaerme-trotz-sc...
Maybe learning more with simulations or theory is a good way forward, or maybe small scale experiments. If we do nothing and eventually notice that a giant eruption is about to happen, I suppose it would be too late. There seem to be many similarities in long term risk and possible prevention of asteroid impacts. I think these problems are worth exploring even though there is probably no direct benefit within a human lifetime.
That sounds overly simplistic. Volcanic eruptions aren't caused by energy accumulation alone (otherwise every eruption would have the same magnitude), and AFAIK it's mostly the accumulation of gas that triggers eruptions, and in many cases the gas is in fact steam…
Anything to relieve the pressure can, by definition, cause an eruption if there is an inadvertent feedback loop.
Doesn't this say that the heat bleed is already at least 300% of what's necessary to stop energy from accumulating?
“Bush Vows To Remove Toxic Petroleum From National Parks”
https://www.theonion.com/bush-vows-to-remove-toxic-petroleum...
Both of these proposals require political stability we're unlikely to see over 600 or 50,000 years. You have to be thinking some kind of self-sustaining and monumental Pyramids-type project.
I think you will have trouble finding many places that haven't been touched by conflict in 800 years, given anyone lives there. If there's humans, there will be war.
Huge infra structure projects like this are no longer feasible in terms of cost and political/collective will in the US.
It's almost a 99% guarantee this will never get built ever. At least not by the US. Any time you see speculative stuff about big projects in the US that aren't related to the military it's a pretty much a guarantied pipe dream.
The only way I see it getting built if they angle it as some kind of military thing to stay competitive with China. But that's really a stretch.
Any discussion on the topic has to begin with assuming the usual red tape has been cut (however much I agree with the impossibility of that happening aside).
Of course, this requires political will too, but unlike various other issues, I doubt that some old law protecting national parks is going to be held as sacrosanct as the second amendment. The GOP certainly doesn't care about protecting NP resources, and the Dems will agree too as long as enough scientists tell them it's a good idea.
If you consider that that heat is stored underground where it doesn't affect weather patterns, then moving it to the surface is bound to involve the use of energy to move it and that energy will contribute to global warming as well as the heat released by the whole project.
And if we're not careful there's a slight chance we could trigger an eruption instead of preventing one.
Better yet would be to put up short transmission lines out of the park, and set up a dirt cheap energy district for energy intensive manufacturing- smelting, data centers, that sort of thing.
The magma chamber stays cool, there's a nice new tax base, good potential for reducing emissions, everyone wins except for the people who want Yellowstone to be untouched wilderness.
I wonder when people are going to realise it'll never ever make more sense to filter co2 out of the air at 400-500ppm to deposit deep underground like that compared to not pumping it up and emitting it in the first place. It's always going to be vastly more difficult and a big net loss in the end.
All the carbon capture projects like that are funded in large part by the fossil fuel industries as a cover to reduce the pressure on their backs. Not as something they believe will work long term.
The ones that do make more sense at first glance like the recent increase in direct capture in the US started to get more subsidised by the previous administration but not to benefit the environment however but to reduce the cost of CO2 for enhanced oil recovery. Because without there wasn't even enough incentive to do it right at major carbon sources when there was an industry willing to pay for the CO2.
Love or hate crypto, it is uniquely capable of quickly moving in and making remote energy production facilities valuable. Which could then provide the infrastructure for things like carbon capture plants to exist remotely.
I find it very much laugh-or-you'd-cry that the US would rather have Yellowstone winding up for a big one than allow geothermal power projects near a national park. Talk about catastrophically bureaucratic priorities.
It's flat out not feasible to do and wouldn't work even if we did. The scale and forces are far too massive for us to do anything about it.
It's like saying "why don't they stop earthquakes by removing earthquake faults".
The scale and forces behind fossil fuels are both larger and it looks like we'll have managed to run through all the easily available stuff in about a century. "The scale is really big!" isn't an argument that something can't be done. Modern humans have done a bunch of stuff that was on an unimaginable scale 500 years ago. You'd have been arguing the moon landing was impossible a century ago because the forces involved are too large.
We're not going to overcome technical challenges by banning attempts to overcome them.
> It's like saying "why don't they stop earthquakes by removing earthquake faults".
That should be an option that gets explored. I doubt the economics will work out, but if we figure out a way to extract the energy building up in fault-lines that would be a win-win-win scenario for everyone involved.
So to get it down to 100 years you'd need 160^2 = 25,600 geothermal plants.
Perfectly reasonable, let's do it.
Most people want cheap power. Anything over around 20 cents a kWh makes it uncompetitive to fossile equivalents (e.g. wood / oil / gas heating).
For one, the scale is way, way too big. It's like stabbing an elephant with a needle and expecting it to bleed out.
Also, the dangerous type of magma is extremely viscous and gas-rich. It doesn't flow like Hawaiian lava does.
If you want to move lots of heat away fast, you either need a big pipe or a very high flow rate.
“Gas-rich”, to me, also sounds as if it would be more dangerous.
Gas-rich is where the danger is, as I understand it. Those gasses expand as they get closer to the surface, and if they're trapped in viscous magma that doesn't flow easily and puts a lot of stress on the rocks above.
The fluid basaltic lavas of Hawaii don't explode, they flow out and make shield volcanos.
Check out geologist Shawn Wilsey's videos.
Extend to downtown San Jose? Maybe a goal for 20 years from now. Add additional transbay tubes? Sure, if the tooth fairy pays for it. The electorate emphatically does not want to pay for more BART, much as I’d like it to be otherwise.
Even worse. They're so self aware of their own incompetence they know it's pure luck if they can pull it off. My overall point still stands they can barely ring it around the bay they definitely won't be able to build a single geothermal plant in Yellowstone.
How come in other countries you get a much nicer train and you don't need the tooth fairy to pay for it? Rhetorical question.
It's not going to be some scientists making a statement and then the federal government putting their hammer down. In china I can see this happening, but in the US it's a democracy.
There'd be some interesting technical challenges tearing down Everest, but it is conceivable. The part that requires creative thinking is why it would be worth it spending that much money.
The legislative of any state can basically write a law saying "this project is exempt from review". This isn't a complicated problem like interstate water rights with American Indian treaty obligations.
(Unless of course you are a fan of the chinese modell and want to implement that - but even they fear people revolting over unpopular big decisions)
You're like a walking, talking poster child for Dunning-Kruger.
From experience they try to pay far below market rate, so then people challenge it (possibly in court?). This delays things, adds expense, etc.
It's the sorcerers apprentice, but a weird variation on it. Just supposed that what the GP says is possible and doable: what guarantees do we have that we fully understand the system we are messing with? How much risk are we willing to take? Who are the stakeholders in these risks?
Without answers to all of these questions we run the real risk of biting off more than we can collectively chew and if and when we do there won't be an 'undo' button to press. Well, technically will have pressed it, but quite possible on a time-scale that we didn't quite envision.
I've seen the most stupid proposals of the kind that you are suggesting: PNE's ('Peaceful Nuclear Explosions') on a scale never dreamed of before to remake the face of the Earth, create new watersheds and so on. And to incidentally put an amount of radiation into the atmosphere that would be absolutely unparalleled. The fact that we can do these things doesn't mean that we automatically have to do these things.
I keep thinking about the discovery of nuclear power: what if we hadn't? Would that be such a huge problem or would we simply have found other, better ways of providing ourselves with power? And if we did, what would be the short term, mid term and long term consequences of doing so? Because the energy stored in the core of the Earth is the ultimate form of fossil energy: between gravity and plate tectonics life had a way of escaping the oceans and without that we'd be fish, mammals in the ocean at best. Good luck with that electronics project you were working on in that environment.
It's tricky: we have one Earth. Any decision that irrevocably removes something from that Earth carries a price tag the value of which may not be visible for a long time to come, so caution would seem to be the best way forward, even if that isn't our nature. Our nature is just to act and then to pass the buck to the next generation.
"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."
Some time ago scientists were concerned that the Earth was headed into another ice age. Then we started burning all of this carbon, so that's not happening anymore. Great, catastrophe averted. Now we're burning way too much and going hard the other way.
Damn it.
Okay, so the status quo is no good, maybe we should build a whole bunch of nuclear plants so we can stop burning coal. What could possibly go wrong?
Or we could do this geothermal thing.
Indolence is fatal. Pick your poison.
Two things come into the conversation though, while some of us have probably hit peak comfort it is not exactly universal. The second is we still haven't solved the energy problem, and it is us getting in our own way that is doing it. A megaproject of some kind can kind of sublime the status quo and make grand leaps forward in spite of ourselves. Maybe not a geothermal plant harnessing the earths's subterranean magma, but truly massive renewables installations or just actually doing nuclear power at last.
I hear what you are saying though. I would love to see some kind of utopian near future megaprojects solve the energy problem, but that is with the assumption that we did our homework, and our current track record is pretty bleak in that regard.
And your point that comfort (and even food) isn't universal is also well taken, if anything that should be our first order of battle: to establish some stable and sustainable quality of life and then to go about ensuring that everybody has access to that level. Of course our political and financial institutions are not well geared towards such solutions and that is where most of the challenge will come from. On a technical level I don't think that's unsolvable if you focus on quality and sustainability.
We keep getting in to trouble and getting away with it. What if whoever didn’t get into trouble also didn’t survive.
The ultimate survivorship bias.
Judging by the price tag of 9.1 Ksh/kWh listed on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Kenya (and looking up historical exchange rates because of the date of the link and their persistent inflation), that's about 0.085-0.090 USD/kWh.
Geothermal is however one of the electricity sources with the fewest negative externalities so definitely should be pursued where possible.
Not theoretical at all:
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/geothermal/americas-fir...
The U.S. is an extremely productive economy with at least one enormous cyclical natural catastrophe attached to it. If this natural catastrophe is preventable, and the costs of prevention are outweighed by the costs of losing the US economy, then it's probably worth doing.
I just assumed that it was one of those things that isn't economically or technically feasible.
Cries in European
LADWP switched to time of use scheduling, so my rates are anywhere from 0.16/kwh to 0.21/kwh ( https://www.ladwp.com/ladwp/faces/ladwp/residential/r-custom... )
SCE is a little more expensive with their tiered plans ranging from 0.32/kwh to 0.42/kwh
For context, downtown LA should be all on LADWP