4 ms·

Ideally we should be mining Yellowstone completely for its geothermal power, starting at its periphery, then digging inward gradually. If we don't, the only oth

Ideally we should be mining Yellowstone completely for its geothermal power, starting at its periphery, then digging inward gradually. If we don't, the only other eventual outcome is destruction of North America from its supervolcano eruption. Mining it kills two problems with one stone, the energy problem and the supervolcano problem. Of course no fracking chemicals should be used.

notaustinpowers 2y ago
National Parks (and the ADA) are some of the few great things that America has going for it and turning Yellowstone National Park into a power plant would not be one of them.
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  You are not even trying to understand. Aesthetics is not more important than existence. If Yellowstone is not mined, then when it blows, there will be no Americans left to appreciate it. Secondly, the mining stations will be limited. Yellowstone is a vast land. There is expected to be no diminishing of the forest.
  - tomrod 2y ago
    Supervolcanoes in the area have blown many times and recovered. I was surprised to learn this from PBS Eons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ofNufZVcMU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ofNufZVcMU
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  Norway doesn't seem to have a problem with it.
  - dboreham 2y ago
    Iceland.
    - SoftTalker 2y ago
      Indeed, thank you for the correction.
      - iSnow 2y ago
        In Iceland, they don't drill into the geysir park, they have some hydrothermal plants, but in other areas.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
thagerty 2y ago
[flagged]
altgoogler 2y ago
Mining yellowstone for its geothermal power in order to prevent a volcanic eruption would be a Kardashev Scale Type I accomplishment. In other words, such a thing is completely infeasible given our current understanding of science and technology. The time required to develop such a capability would span so many lifetimes that is it effectively science fiction.
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  It is not that big a deal. It is in fact a lot easier than mining deeper geothermal which we can also do, but at much greater expense. Yellowstone aside, exploitation of resources is one thing America is profoundly good at. If we start now, we can finish it in say one thousand years and fully eliminate the supervolcano risk, also enjoying much green energy in the process.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  Extracting geothermal power for its own sake would not be, and probably should be done.
  - akira2501 2y ago
    And you're going to transmit it.. where?
cossatot 2y ago
I wrote about this in a previous HN thread a few years back. Not clear that it's a great idea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28593452#28599027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28593452#28599027
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  The answer to your concern is right there for you, both by YokoZar, and also in my comment above. It is that we start at the periphery, very gradually going inward over a thousand year period. We should have enough data of the effects of our peripheral perturbations in the first few hundred years. It should provide a testable model for how to proceed safely as we go inward.
dredmorbius 2y ago
I've made this suggestion myself in the past. Via a flagged comment, a counterargument is deep geothermal, accessed via boreholes, and not strictly limited to extant surface geothermal fields: <https://www.quaise.energy/ https://www.quaise.energy/> Thomas Homer-Dixon is also an advocate that I'm aware of: <https://homerdixon.com/a-big-bet-on-geothermal-could-help-prevent-a-climate-catastrophe/ https://homerdixon.com/a-big-bet-on-geothermal-could-help-pr...> I'm not sold on this (deep geothermal pilots such as the Geothermal Habanero project in Australia have proved expensive busts, and the productive lifespan of a given borehole is limited to a few decades). But it's worth consideration. I've written on Habanero previously. The project consistently overran time and cost estimates, and delivered far less power than initially planned. That's not to say that the concept is fatally flawed, but it's also not the panacea first projected. By contrast, surface geothermal fields have been and are developed at commercial scale worldwide, and have been for years: The Geysers in California, in Iceland, Japan, the Philippines, New Zealand, and elsewhere. In fact most viable fields have already been tapped, with the largely untapped resources now existing in the African Rift Valley (largely within Kenya, where it could hugely bolster the country's fairly anemic generating capacity), and of course Yellowstone in the US, where there are significant environmental and political barriers. A USGS survey getting on two decades ago of US geothermal resources conspicuously excludes Yellowstone from any consideration at all. From 2007: <https://www.usgs.gov/publications/usgs-national-geothermal-resource-assessment-update https://www.usgs.gov/publications/usgs-national-geothermal-r...> See: "Habanero Geothermal Project Field Development Plan". A largely sober summary of the project, noting that it's been concluded rather than expanded. <https://arena.gov.au/knowledge-bank/habanero-geothermal-project-field-development-plan/ https://arena.gov.au/knowledge-bank/habanero-geothermal-proj...> My own 2014 summary: <https://web.archive.org/web/20230601073717/https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1wpa90/how_not_to_write_about_renewable_energy_the/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230601073717/https://old.reddi...>
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  In Yellowstone, if I am not mistaken, the energy is extractable at its land surface, or quite close to it. Drilling 4 km does not seem necessary at Yellowstone. Is this incorrect? Secondly, there exist efficiencies of scale that come with drilling at ten or a hundred sites rather than just one or a few.
FergusArgyll 2y ago
I am probably one of the most free-market leaning ppl on HN. National Parks are a very good place to curb the free market. It's a classic Tragedy of the commons, the value is huge and would not exist without the government. There is no incentive structure where privatization would leave millions of acres open for a token fee. I quite often think how people should be encouraged more to go to the natl. parks, they really take your breath away and are something to cherish. Buffalo running wild, Grey wolves if you're lucky, crazy weird geysers, go!
dboreham 2y ago
I live about 40 miles from the edge of the caldera. I've wondered about drilling down to get heat. Nobody else has done it though, with the exception of the various hot springs around here. There is a hot-ish spring on our property, in that it stays snow free through the winter. That said, if there was a bunch of heat near the surface presumably our well water would be hot. It isn't.

notaustinpowers 2y ago

National Parks (and the ADA) are some of the few great things that America has going for it and turning Yellowstone National Park into a power plant would not be one of them.

OutOfHere 2y ago
You are not even trying to understand. Aesthetics is not more important than existence. If Yellowstone is not mined, then when it blows, there will be no Americans left to appreciate it. Secondly, the mining stations will be limited. Yellowstone is a vast land. There is expected to be no diminishing of the forest.
- tomrod 2y ago
  Supervolcanoes in the area have blown many times and recovered. I was surprised to learn this from PBS Eons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ofNufZVcMU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ofNufZVcMU
SoftTalker 2y ago
Norway doesn't seem to have a problem with it.
- dboreham 2y ago
  Iceland.
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    Indeed, thank you for the correction.
    - iSnow 2y ago
      In Iceland, they don't drill into the geysir park, they have some hydrothermal plants, but in other areas.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

thagerty 2y ago

[flagged]

altgoogler 2y ago

Mining yellowstone for its geothermal power in order to prevent a volcanic eruption would be a Kardashev Scale Type I accomplishment. In other words, such a thing is completely infeasible given our current understanding of science and technology. The time required to develop such a capability would span so many lifetimes that is it effectively science fiction.

OutOfHere 2y ago
It is not that big a deal. It is in fact a lot easier than mining deeper geothermal which we can also do, but at much greater expense. Yellowstone aside, exploitation of resources is one thing America is profoundly good at. If we start now, we can finish it in say one thousand years and fully eliminate the supervolcano risk, also enjoying much green energy in the process.
SoftTalker 2y ago
Extracting geothermal power for its own sake would not be, and probably should be done.
- akira2501 2y ago
  And you're going to transmit it.. where?

cossatot 2y ago

I wrote about this in a previous HN thread a few years back. Not clear that it's a great idea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28593452#28599027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28593452#28599027

OutOfHere 2y ago
The answer to your concern is right there for you, both by YokoZar, and also in my comment above. It is that we start at the periphery, very gradually going inward over a thousand year period. We should have enough data of the effects of our peripheral perturbations in the first few hundred years. It should provide a testable model for how to proceed safely as we go inward.

dredmorbius 2y ago

I've made this suggestion myself in the past. Via a flagged comment, a counterargument is deep geothermal, accessed via boreholes, and not strictly limited to extant surface geothermal fields: <https://www.quaise.energy/ https://www.quaise.energy/> Thomas Homer-Dixon is also an advocate that I'm aware of: <https://homerdixon.com/a-big-bet-on-geothermal-could-help-prevent-a-climate-catastrophe/ https://homerdixon.com/a-big-bet-on-geothermal-could-help-pr...> I'm not sold on this (deep geothermal pilots such as the Geothermal Habanero project in Australia have proved expensive busts, and the productive lifespan of a given borehole is limited to a few decades). But it's worth consideration. I've written on Habanero previously. The project consistently overran time and cost estimates, and delivered far less power than initially planned. That's not to say that the concept is fatally flawed, but it's also not the panacea first projected. By contrast, surface geothermal fields have been and are developed at commercial scale worldwide, and have been for years: The Geysers in California, in Iceland, Japan, the Philippines, New Zealand, and elsewhere. In fact most viable fields have already been tapped, with the largely untapped resources now existing in the African Rift Valley (largely within Kenya, where it could hugely bolster the country's fairly anemic generating capacity), and of course Yellowstone in the US, where there are significant environmental and political barriers. A USGS survey getting on two decades ago of US geothermal resources conspicuously excludes Yellowstone from any consideration at all. From 2007: <https://www.usgs.gov/publications/usgs-national-geothermal-resource-assessment-update https://www.usgs.gov/publications/usgs-national-geothermal-r...> See: "Habanero Geothermal Project Field Development Plan". A largely sober summary of the project, noting that it's been concluded rather than expanded. <https://arena.gov.au/knowledge-bank/habanero-geothermal-project-field-development-plan/ https://arena.gov.au/knowledge-bank/habanero-geothermal-proj...> My own 2014 summary: <https://web.archive.org/web/20230601073717/https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1wpa90/how_not_to_write_about_renewable_energy_the/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230601073717/https://old.reddi...>

OutOfHere 2y ago
In Yellowstone, if I am not mistaken, the energy is extractable at its land surface, or quite close to it. Drilling 4 km does not seem necessary at Yellowstone. Is this incorrect? Secondly, there exist efficiencies of scale that come with drilling at ten or a hundred sites rather than just one or a few.

FergusArgyll 2y ago

I am probably one of the most free-market leaning ppl on HN. National Parks are a very good place to curb the free market. It's a classic Tragedy of the commons, the value is huge and would not exist without the government. There is no incentive structure where privatization would leave millions of acres open for a token fee. I quite often think how people should be encouraged more to go to the natl. parks, they really take your breath away and are something to cherish. Buffalo running wild, Grey wolves if you're lucky, crazy weird geysers, go!

dboreham 2y ago

I live about 40 miles from the edge of the caldera. I've wondered about drilling down to get heat. Nobody else has done it though, with the exception of the various hot springs around here. There is a hot-ish spring on our property, in that it stays snow free through the winter. That said, if there was a bunch of heat near the surface presumably our well water would be hot. It isn't.