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"If heat could be bled off of the magma chambers, cooling and solidifying them, not only would that stop the volcano from erupting..." Where does the confidenc

• SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
  Betteridge's law of headlines aside. I feel like the scale of the topic is almost completely human inconceivable when trying to tie it to a realistic engineering task. It seems like a fun what-if, but when you do that you are using making giant hand waving excuses, and not anything that looks like a factual claim.
  • m348e912 3y ago
    Agreed. Geothermal energy can be cheap and awesome, but there are reasons why it's only practical in certain parts of the world.
    • anecdotal1 3y ago
      We should be able to use the latest horizontal drilling tech from fracking to tap Yellowstone from miles away
    • Clamchop 3y ago
      The article states that the JPL plan only considers the energy generation to be a useful byproduct. If the risk were truly imminent and quantifiable, I assume it would be pursued however absurdly exotic and fanciful it seemed on its face. On the other hand, defusing a volcano on a timeline of a thousand years or longer would be politically challenging. That might see the dissolution and construction of multiple states (here, electric power generation may help assure survival). Add in that civilization can't seem to get its head on straight about comparatively faster-acting climate change, for example, and can barely prepare for an earthquake. At least imagining an exploding apocalyptic supervolcano may elicit more visceral emotions. Still, it doesn't appear there's much cause for worry so it's only a brainstorm.
  • deleted 3y ago
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  • rcoveson 3y ago
    > Betteridge's law of headlines aside. Godwin-Bettridge-Graham law: Any headline that ends in a question mark which is posted to HN will have Bettridge's law of headlines mentioned at least once in its first dozen comments.
    • its_ethan 3y ago
      What's the law for when someone has to point this out too, I wonder?
      • xh-dude 3y ago
        The “Why?” Combinator
  • deleted 3y ago
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• erulabs 3y ago
  Yeah not to mention the construction of the plant itself! I wouldn’t want to be operating the drill that punctures the magma chambers! I’m optimistic. If we spent less time engineering society and more time engineering the earth, I think we’d all be a lot happier.
  • bcrosby95 3y ago
    The JPL plan doesn't actually puncture the magma chambers.
    • erulabs 3y ago
      I felt the ignorance in my fingers even as I typed it. That's awesome!
  • deleted 3y ago
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  • hellcow 3y ago
    > I wouldn’t want to be operating the drill that punctures the magma chambers! Years of Dwarf Fortress have prepared me for this moment.
  • theandrewbailey 3y ago
    > I wouldn’t want to be operating the drill that punctures the magma chambers! Even if that happens, I wonder if the hole would be so deep, that the magma cools and solidifies in the borehole before it reaches the surface. Similar to how pristine sub-glacial Antarctic lakes are sampled by drilling straight into them (!) and letting the water flow up into the hole, where it freezes. https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-just-drilled-into-an-antarctic-lost-lake-for-the-second-time-in-history https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-just-drilled-in...
  • dylan604 3y ago
    >I wouldn’t want to be operating the drill This is where AI applications could actually be of benefit. Also, instead of sending Harry Stamper and a bunch of misfit roughnecks to some asteroid of doom, we could just train AI on Harry's knowledge of deep well drilling. It'll be fine.
• version_five 3y ago
  > I can imagine that the consequence of this might actually just be strengthening the "barrier" the magma has to erupt through, and when it finally builds up enough energy to do that, it'll be stronger in proportion to how strong the newly cooled down barrier had become? Certainly the movie version has the one rogue scientist working late into the night redoing the calculations and realizing that as soon as the plant goes live it will trigger the volcano. In real life, I have no idea how this kind of thing gets analyzed, and what kind of uncertainty is involved. It feels a bit like those "put a bunch of reflectors in space to stop climate change" ideas. On the other hand, removing energy from a system seems like a good way to make it safer...
  • macintux 3y ago
    > Certainly the movie version has the one rogue scientist working late into the night redoing the calculations and realizing that as soon as the plant goes live it will trigger the volcano. Jor El in any number of them.
  • its_ethan 3y ago
    > In real life, I have no idea how this kind of thing gets analyzed, and what kind of uncertainty is involved. This is similar to what I was trying to get across -- how do we know something this complicated will have only the intended effect that the author is describing? The comparison to reflectors in space to address climate concerns is a great one - something where a first pass/ back of the envelope makes it seem interesting, but any amount of detail added reveals that we'd have no clue what would happen
  • marcosdumay 3y ago
    > On the other hand, removing energy from a system seems like a good way to make it safer... Nope, that one rule of thumb can't help you. There is way too much energy for that to make any difference. Just notice how the timescale of an active disaster is completely different from the ones estimated for success.
• elil17 3y ago
  I have a lot of skepticism about anything I read from constructionphysics.substack.com. I'm a mechanical engineer, not a civil engineer, so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but it reads like it's written by someone who does not have a solid understanding of engineering fundamentals. For example, they suggested in their "How to design a house to last for 1,000 years" series that you'd want to build such a house out of stainless steel because it "has extremely high corrosion resistance." Even my introductory courses in materials science it is very clear that stainless steel might last for 1,000 years, but it would depend entirely on the environmental conditions and the type of stainless used.
  • sbierwagen 3y ago
    I mean, it would be exposed to the normal conditions any residential construction is exposed to. How often is your house dunked into seawater? 800 years from now something terrible could happen that turns all the rain into sulfuric acid but then all residential buildings everywhere are screwed.
    • nickff 3y ago
      Not a civil engineer, but I think different areas have very different considerations, and I'm not sure there is a 'normal' residential construction. A beach-side house in Florida probably has very different issues from a house built somewhere like Las Vegas. Salt, humidity, wind, earthquakes, soil, and other considerations vary.
    • MisterTea 3y ago
      > How often is your house dunked into seawater? For people hit by hurricane Sandy the answer is at least once.
    • elil17 3y ago
      Over that long a time period it could be damaged just by rain - it's hard to say because corrosion tests aren't done with respect to a 1000 year operating life in mild conditions. I'm sure an expert could figure that out, but it would require looking at the corrosion rate of the specific steel, the exposure to any kind of forces that could damage the oxide layer (e.g. scratches), and the thickness of the member.
• sp332 3y ago
  The linked JPL proposal is exploratory and, while it has a more serious engineering perspective, it does not have "confidence". https://scienceandtechnology.jpl.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/documents/DefendingCivilizationFromSupervolcanos20151015.pdf https://scienceandtechnology.jpl.nasa.gov/sites/default/file... The USGS is very unconvinced. https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/can-we-drill-yellowstone-stop-it-erupting https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/can-we-drill-yellowstone-stop-it-e...
  • sbierwagen 3y ago
    >Any allowed geothermal extraction would lower the pressure on the existing geysers and hot springs, altering their behavior and, in many cases, causing them to disappear. Oh no. Saving the lives of ten million people might make a geyser stop working. How awful.
    • fahrradflucht 3y ago
      Have you read the whole thing? It says it is not at all clear that this will save lives. It also could cause an eruption.
      • bradwood 3y ago
        This is HN. No-one reads the whole thing. Some don't even read the beginning!
  • MisterTea 3y ago
    From the USGS article: > Scientific research has proven again and again that depressurization is one of the factors that drives magma toward the surface to erupt. The first time I heard of this idea my immediate thought was, "so you want to shove a needle into a massive magma balloon." I know I wouldn't.
• hristov 3y ago
  Well, consider the fact that the vast majority of the earth surface, in fact, almost the entire surface of the earth is entirely volcano-less. Look under your feet -- no volcanoes! Move over a couple of steps and look again -- no volcanoes. So it is safe to say that a certain thickness of rock would serve enough to prevent volcanoes. You just have to provide enough cooling to ensure a sufficiently thick layer of magma solidifies into solid rock.
  • RhodesianHunter 3y ago
    Yeah, but how much? The crust is far deeper than humans are capable of penetrating. It's probably a fair concern that it's also far deeper than humans are capable of cooling.
    • hristov 3y ago
      Well, lets ponder this a little further. Currently there are no volcanoes in Yellowstone. So we know that the rock layer is sufficient. We also know that the rock keeps losing heat with time because it has higher than average temperature. But we also know that the rock keeps gaining heat from magma pushing up from some deep underground crack. What we have to do is measure the net heat gain and calculate how much additional heat a geothermal plant has to extract from the rocks to turn it into net heat loss. Of course the plant will have to extract it from the hotter spots in order to prevent any local maximums from causing volcanoes. But that is the most efficient option for a geothermal plant anyways. As far as measuring the net heat gain -- it should not be that hard. All you need is to sprinkle a couple of hundred sensors in the rock, monitor them for a while to be able to remove surface effects (like the sun and ambient air temperature) and you should be able to get a decent estimate. In fact I would not be surprised if seismologist already have a pretty good estimate of the heat gain. Then, when you build the plant, you can be certain that as long as heat is being drained from the rock, magma will keep solidifying and the rock layer will keep getting thicker, etc. Of course a good earthquake can screw up all of these plans, but an earthquake can destroy any power plant. But then again Yellowstone is one of the most earthquake prone areas of the world, so that perhaps is the biggest danger of this plan.
• lisper 3y ago
  > Where does the confidence to make this claim come from? I have no idea, but I can give you a data point from my personal experience: about ten years ago we visited Rotorua in New Zealand, which promotes its geothermal activity as a tourist attraction [1]. We were told by the locals when we were there that the geothermal activity had reduced noticeably since a geothermal power plant was installed some years prior, resulting in controversy over the wisdom of having built it. Rotorua's geothermal activity area is a lot smaller than Yellowstone, but as an anecdote it indicates that reducing the risk of eruption is not entirely implausible. --- [1] https://www.waiotapu.co.nz/ https://www.waiotapu.co.nz/
• deleted 3y ago
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• tut-urut-utut 3y ago
  Good comment, but had to automatically downvote because of the use of “lol”.
• Apofis 3y ago
  Maybe the earth just burps occasionally and it's not really a gradual buildup of pressure and this would do nothing.