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Could we stop Yellowstone from erupting with a geothermal power plant?
- hutzlibu 3y ago"Regardless of the specifics of the details, in the abstract, such a scheme is in some sense, possible. How should we consider it? 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)
- jeffbee 3y agoI don't even see why you'd need transmission lines. Just use the enormous quantity of free energy for direct carbon capture, at that site.
- zdragnar 3y agoAt ~400 parts per million CO2 concentration, that would be wildly wasteful. We could more easily take the money that would go into building the plant and put direct capture on existing fossil fuel power plants. 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.
- salawat 3y agoWhat are you going to do? Pipeline air/build giant fans to mix carbon rich air from elsewhere to the One Carbon Capture Plant You Spent Way Too Much making?
- c0pium 3y agoThat is very much not how the atmosphere works. The jet stream as one example moves over the US at hundreds of miles per hour, and more generally speaking gases disperse through the atmosphere very quickly.
- modo_mario 3y agoWhilst we're increasing our CO2 output as a whole still for a good few more years we're going to go for a industrial open air carbon capture? 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.
- jeffbee 3y agoIf you don't care for capture it's also practical to colocate any other big energy consumer like metal refining, drying battery materials, etc. Shipping energy 2000 miles to charge some Tesla in Poughkeepsie doesn't sound like the best application.
- toolz 3y agoEven more realistically, crypto mining farms would quickly move in to use that energy and it wouldn't be hard, once you've established a stable footing to then give cheaper electricity to carbon capture types of ventures. 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.
- fbdab103 3y agoGiven what would likely be billions of dollars to build such a plant, I am not sure why the transmission infrastructure is more than a footnote on the project. There is a lot of engineering know-how on moving electricity large distances. Less so on building the world's largest power plant in the efforts to avoid a global catastrophe.
- 7thaccount 3y agoTransmission is crazy expensive and hard to permit for. Something like this could easily be in the billions depending on how much would need to be built and the associated upgrades.
- coryrc 3y ago> hard to permit for 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.
- hutzlibu 3y agoDepends. Because transmission lines usually cross over private property. And that can get very, very complicated. (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)
- gambiting 3y agoDoes US not have compulsory purchase process for infrastructure projects? Here in UK if there is a need to run transmision lines or whatever, the government will just compulsory purchase the land needed, you will be paid the market price for the land but you have to sell it.
- pohl 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain
- roenxi 3y agoOne option would be to set up a big industrial district. Call it Shenzhen II. Cheap power and some industrialist-friendly tax laws and maybe the US could keep pace with the Chinese. People'd start building and finding uses for that power extremely quickly. 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.
- habinero 3y agoIt's not a case of "would they rather", that's ridiculous. 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".
- roenxi 3y ago> The scale and forces are far too massive for us to do anything about it. 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.
- toss1 3y agoAs the article mentioned, the Yellowstone risk is more future than current, and is being extensively monitored, and "A much bigger risk is likely large eruptions from volcanoes that we aren’t tracking and have no data for.". 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-most-dangerous-supervolcano-could-be-creeping-toward-eruption-scientists-warn https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/volcanos/europes-mo...
- calamari4065 3y agoIt'd be so cool if someone threw a ridiculous amount of money at doing this. The science seems at least plausible and there's some hypothetical benefits, but mostly it'd be a really fucking cool engineering project. Probably completely impractical, but the kind of massive "just to say we can" project I think we really need
- juniperus 3y ago[dead]
- chongli 3y agoIt’s a shame this was written earlier this year. In Iceland there’s an ongoing magma intrusion event near (and under) the town of Grindavik. There also happens to be a geothermal power plant not far from the town. 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.
- senectus1 3y agoI suspect the SCALE required to ease the pressures would be absurd. Warhammer 40k sort of absurd. Having said that, It should be considered to take advantages of clean energy.
- ehnto 3y agoI don't have a sense of the scale you are talking, but I would love to see more megaprojects. Truly mega. When we aren't getting in our own way, humans do some pretty awesome stuff.
- jacquesm 3y agoI don't. The reason is that even though we are probably capable of doing so we lack the responsibility required to do this without the chance of massive negative side effects. Every time we've upped the scale in our abilities it has only resulted in more damage, not quite balanced out by more progress. This is a real problem: we can get ourselves into the kind of trouble that we don't seem to be able to get ourselves out of. We never stop and say 'this is enough', we always take the next step, create a new level of problems that then requires yet another level of innovation to control it and so on. 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.
- RagnarD 3y agoWhat could possibly go wrong?
- saqadri 3y agoResearch like this really gives me cause for optimism about our ability to find creative solutions to the biggest issues facing humanity. It can’t lull us into complacency that “someone will figure it out”, but if we can mitigate volcanic eruptions while generating gigawatts of energy (albeit hypothetical), I hope we can also find ways to mitigate the effects of climate change.
- fooker 3y agoCould we trigger an eruption by extensive drilling in/around the magma chamber?
- jtriangle 3y agoNo, it's not like a balloon, an eruption isn't the earth popping, it's an upheaval from the mantle eventually surfacing through a weak spot that causes it.
- fooker 3y agoUpheaval is the load bearing word in your sentence. This is what causes the extreme pressures. Anything to relieve the pressure can, by definition, cause an eruption if there is an inadvertent feedback loop.
- habinero 3y agoI've seen several professional geologists answer this question, and no, really, volcanos don't work that way. 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.
- Someone 3y agoBut in this case, we want the elephant to (significantly) bleed out, so won’t we need a BIG needle? 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.
- habinero 3y agoIn this analogy, the needle is as big as we can make it. 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.
- thingsilearned 3y agoThe article really focused on doing this in Yellowstone, and all the problems we'd have there. I noticed the second hottest spot on the map is Southern California - which has the benefits of being a desert and close to major population that'd use the power. Looking it up, we're of course already on top of harnessing the geothermal there https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Valley_Geothermal_Project#:~:text=Imperial%20Valley%20Geothermal%20Project%20is,The%20Geysers%20in%20Northern%20California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Valley_Geothermal_Pro....
- corethree 3y agoProbably could. I doubt the US has the ability to do it. CA can't even finish the bart and they can't even finish the high speed rail. 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.
- zdragnar 3y agoThere's already federal laws against setting up geothermal power generation in Yellowstone. 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).
- shiroiuma 3y agoA federal law can easily be changed by simply passing another federal law. It's not like a constitutional change. 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.
- corethree 3y agoIt's never this simple. There are multitudes of interested parties in either direction not just at the federal level, but below it from state, to county, to city and more.
- shiroiuma 3y agoThis is a National Park. There is no county or city involved; it's federal land. Even the state it's in has pretty much zero say.
- alephnerd 3y agoWe should take Montana and push it somewhere else.
- firebones 3y agoStrong "I drink your milkshake!" vibes from these proposals. 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.
- quickthrower2 3y agoCapitalism wise they should be safe. Unless there is a war why wouldn’t the plants keep running?
- chmod775 3y ago> Unless there is a war 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.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> given the size of past Yellowstone eruptions, and the span of time between them, the rate that energy builds below the volcano is only around 1.5 gigawatts - less heat than a typical power plant sheds. Yellowstone currently bleeds heat at a rate of about 4.5 to 6 gigawatts, mostly through heated water moving below the surface. You'd thus (theoretically) only need to increase the heat bleed by around 35% to stop energy accumulating and stop future eruptions. Doesn't this say that the heat bleed is already at least 300% of what's necessary to stop energy from accumulating?
- sp332 3y agoNo, it says that energy is bleeding at 4.5 GW and accumulating at 1.5GW. To get accumulation to 0, you need to boost bleeding by that amount.
- cratermoon 3y agoI suspect it would work as well as building a giant system of dykes protected New Orleans from flooding in a hurricane.
- sschueller 3y agoDepending on the depth this can be risky. 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-schlechtem-ruf-luzern-will-geothermie-vorantreiben https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/strom-aus-erdwaerme-trotz-sc...
- isthatafact 3y agoI inferred from the article that the risks are very poorly understood. If it just triggers a bunch of very minor earthquakes, that would be insignificant compared to potentially preventing a civilization-ending eruption. 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.
- Modified3019 3y agoI can't help but wonder if the yellowstone caldera going off would also trigger the cascadian subduction zone into doing it's thing sympathetically.
- littlestymaar 3y ago> The authors note that given the size of past Yellowstone eruptions, and the span of time between them, the rate that energy builds below the volcano is only around 1.5 gigawatts - less heat than a typical power plant sheds. Yellowstone currently bleeds heat at a rate of about 4.5 to 6 gigawatts, mostly through heated water moving below the surface. You'd thus (theoretically) only need to increase the heat bleed by around 35% to stop energy accumulating and stop future eruptions. 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…
- stsquad 3y agoIsn't this basically the background to HZD: Frozen Wastes? A failing geoengineering project to keep Yellowstone stable.
- klysm 3y agoI love questions like this that feel like an XKCD
- dwighttk 3y agoWould pulling that much heat out of the ground help or hurt global warming?
- mcv 3y agoGlobal warming doesn't come from heat from the ground, but from the atmosphere absorbing extra heat from the sun due to the increased amount of CO2 in it. If this geothermal energy generates enough power so we burn less fossil fuels put less CO2 into the atmosphere, it will slow global warming. The amount of heat we'd get from the ground would be comparable to the amount of heat we get from burning fossil fuels, and both would be negligible compared to the amount of additional heat we get from the sun.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoSurely it would have to increase global warming unless there were effects such as a nuclear winter caused by a sudden uncontrolled release of the heat. 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.
- mminer237 3y agoMy understanding is that it can't really affect it. To the extent we extract heat beyond what the greenhouse effect can warm the earth to, it will radiate out into space. The only real way to heat up the planet long-term is to prevent heat from radiating out by increasing greenhouse gasses.
- gcanyon 3y agotl;dr -- likely yes, by building geothermal power plants. This would cost billions (not trillions) of dollars. It would generate a fair bit of power, but not an extraordinary amount. They would run for (depending on how many we build) anywhere from a thousand to a hundred thousand years. And if we're not careful there's a slight chance we could trigger an eruption instead of preventing one.
- wforus39 3y ago[flagged]
- cainxinth 3y agoWhy is this at the top? It's clearly a low effort, AI-generated response. From a user account created literally 20 minutes ago that says it's working for one of those stupid celeb net worth sites... and they even promoted it in their answer!
- SilasX 3y agoVibes of this Onion parody: “Bush Vows To Remove Toxic Petroleum From National Parks” https://www.theonion.com/bush-vows-to-remove-toxic-petroleum-from-national-parks-1819566089 https://www.theonion.com/bush-vows-to-remove-toxic-petroleum...
- AniseAbyss 3y ago[dead]
- llamaInSouth 3y agoWhat would it take to convert the Earth into a star?
- andrewflnr 3y agoSeveral thousand Earth masses of hydrogen, with the unfortunate side effect of ending all life here.