3 ms·

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 f

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.
  - jdmichal 3y ago
    TFA gives this number as ~1.5GW per year -- I believe calculated by the JPL proposal.
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yellowapple 3y ago
> Look under your feet -- no volcanoes! What if whoever built this McDonald's/Chevron amalgamation did so atop a volcano? How would I know?
pl90087 3y ago
That's not how this works. Plate tectonics won't stop if you cool down things a little bit. The amount of cooling you'd need to do amount to have that stuff stop is comparable to creating forests and oceans on mars. Not gonna happen, we'll kill off humankind before that.

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.
- jdmichal 3y ago
  TFA gives this number as ~1.5GW per year -- I believe calculated by the JPL proposal.

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yellowapple 3y ago

> Look under your feet -- no volcanoes! What if whoever built this McDonald's/Chevron amalgamation did so atop a volcano? How would I know?

pl90087 3y ago

That's not how this works. Plate tectonics won't stop if you cool down things a little bit. The amount of cooling you'd need to do amount to have that stuff stop is comparable to creating forests and oceans on mars. Not gonna happen, we'll kill off humankind before that.