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Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- civilian 13y agoHow would you rank the danger of all our energy sources? edit:// The parent comment was saying that as someone who doesn't know much about it, geothermal sounded potentially more dangerous than nuclear. I was hoping to make the point that nuclear is pretty safe, even when you include recent disasters.
- ginko 13y agoI guess large-scale geothermal power plants are an unproven concept, but isn't the risk of volcanic eruptions completely independent of whether we tap it for energy or not? Perhaps there could be a scenario where the sudden cooling of a region in the magma pocket could lead to clogging and local overpressure. OTOH releasing magma in a controlled manner could just as well decrease overall pressure.
- masklinn 13y ago> I guess large-scale geothermal power plants are an unproven concept Depends on the definition of large-scale, the biggest plant in the world is the 300MWe Hellisheiði power station in Iceland, and the largest geothermal field (a single "location" hosting multiple plants) is The Geysers in California, with 1500MWe over 22 plants.
- coryfklein 13y agoIt sounds like they didn't intend to drill into magma, but is it possible to survey the land and intentionally find magma near the surface to exploit in this manner? If not, isn't the question of whether you can effectively harness the energy or not moot?
- jug6ernaut 13y agoNot going to say its easy. But you can pretty accurately map magma under the surface using seismology. I believe it requires an earthquake and having the correct equipment in place, so its far from ideal. But it does work well.
- tomrod 13y agoIt's been awhile since I've sat in on geology, but I seem to recall that they can use short-range seismic signals (by firing a shotgun shell into the ground). I'm not sure as to the resolution -- one could imagine getting better resolution firing multiple shells simultaneously over a certain area. My $.02
- VladRussian2 13y ago30 years ago remember USSR used underground nukes at least once specifically for exploration of oil/gas in Siberia.
- Crito 13y ago"39 explosions for the purpose of geological exploration (trying to find new natural gas deposits by studying seismic waves produced by small nuclear explosions)" (As well as several other interesting tests/uses) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_National_Economy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_Nati...
- batbomb 13y agoBefore that, the US did it in New Mexico in 1967 with project gasbuggy. It was nuclear fracking basically.
- nivloc 13y agoIt's really easy! Seismic surveys are key to the oil & gas industry, and can be used for other resources as well. We use thumper trucks instead of waiting for earthquakes.
- ck2 13y agoAbout about using the $1 Billion in natural gas they burn off every year in North Dakota for electricity instead of just heating the atmosphere. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2269517/The-picture-space-shows-U-S-oil-field-burning-gas-power-Chicago-AND-Washington-cheaper-selling-it.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2269517/The-picture-... http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/business/energy-environment/in-north-dakota-wasted-natural-gas-flickers-against-the-sky.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/business/energy-environmen...
- dredmorbius 13y agoThe challenge with natural gas is capture and transport. Gas is, well, a gas. It doesn't stay put, and it takes considerable infrastructure to convert it to a more manageable form (compressed or liquified). Both of which are states it doesn't particularly seem inclined to remain in. There've been enough issues transporting oil from new drilling zones. Transporting gas (by truck, rail, or pipeline) is even more complex. That's among the reasons oil (and coal) are so useful as fuels sources: they're very convenient. Oil most especially, though even coal can be moved in pipelines (as slurry). Mind: for both environmental (AGW) and resource limitations (peak oil/gas) reasons we'll have to shift off of them. But the practicality of both coal and oil means that that transition will carry with it immense costs.
- toomuchtodo 13y agoBurn it on site for electricity. Imagine it like distributed solar, just with natgas as the power source. Power lines, even low voltage (120-480V), are everywhere. Worried about cost? Sell carbon credits for the destruction of the greenhouse gas, and use the funds to pay for the generation equipment. Want someone to manage this huge distributed system of generators? Call SolarCity. They already manage an enormous fleet for distributed solar generation installations.
- dredmorbius 13y agoLow-voltage power lines have high transmission losses (though I'd have to look up just what that is). The reason for high-voltage lines is that it reduces the total current transmitted, which reduces transmission losses. Building out T&D infrastructure is expensive and a concern for distributed generation methods (solar, wind).
- DanWaterworth 13y agoAccording to the International Geothermal Association, 10,700MW of geothermal electricity was generated worldwide in 2010 I doubt they said that.
- pygy_ 13y agoWhy?
- eitland 13y agoMaybe because it doesn't specify if it is continuus power, peak power etc?
- InclinedPlane 13y agoPower is a measure of... power, not energy. MW/year is a silly unit. In the US energy production on an annual basis is given in BTUs, or Joules (usually quadrillions of BTUs, depending on the scale). Perhaps the article meant 10.7 GW of installed production capacity. Regardless, that's about 0.3 quadrillion BTUs per year, which is a blip compared to the world's energy consumption.
- masklinn 13y ago> Perhaps the article meant 10.7 GW of installed production capacity. The original report does indeed, the article misquoted (and possibly misunderstood) it. Here is the exact quote and its surrounding paragraph: > In 2005, there were 8,933 MW of installed power capacity in 24 countries, generating 55,709 GWh per year of green power, according to the International Geothermal Association. IGA reports in 2010 that 10,715 MW is on line generating 67,246 GWh. This represents a 20% increase in geothermal power on line between 2005 and 2010. IGA projects this will grow to 18,500 MW by 2015, which based upon the large number of projects under consideration appears reasonable if not conservative. > Regardless, that's about 0.3 quadrillion BTUs per year, which is a blip compared to the world's energy consumption. note that the quote is about electricity generation, not power consumption in general. Still a blip though, in 2008 global electricity generation was estimated at 20261 TWh, geothermal production thus accounting for ~0.3% of global production. A few select countries have fairly high geo ratios though: Iceland's at 30% geothermal, the Philippines at 27%, El Salvador 25%, Costa Rica at 14% and Kenya at 11.2% (2010 numbers). The US are the biggest producer of geothermal electricity (29% of global production, #2 is the philippines at 18%) but the ratio matches global, geothermal is 0.3% of the US's electricity production.
- squigs25 13y agoThe problem with geothermal power is access. It's the reason why Iceland is almost entirely powered by renewables, and why the rest of the world isn't. So if Iceland finds pockets of magma at 5km, it's only really a breakthrough if you can access magma at shallow depths in other regions.
- evandena 13y agoMost of Iceland's power comes from hydro, not geothermal.
- _delirium 13y agoElectric power, yes, but a significant proportion of Iceland's total energy usage is heating, which is about 90% geothermal.
- dredmorbius 13y agoAgreed. Looking at per-capita energy utilization, you'll find that Nordic countries have markedly high consumption. Another high per-capita energy-use country is Trinidad and Tobago, which puzzled me until I discovered it's a huge exporter of ammonia fertilizer -- the manufacturing process is hugely energy intensive.
- evandena 13y agoYes, good point, thanks.
- lostlogin 13y agoI was intending to show you how New Zealand was shutting down its geothermal programmes, however I think I was wrong and it looks like it's growing. An interesting PDF (but 24mb!) http://www.geothermalnewzealand.com/NZTE_Geothermal_Booklet_and_Profiles.pdf http://www.geothermalnewzealand.com/NZTE_Geothermal_Booklet_... And http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power_in_New_Zealand http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power_in_New_Zealand
- dredmorbius 13y ago
- pm90 13y agoFor many years I imagined that space faring future humans would depend on hydrogen gas clouds as the source of their energy. Think: intergalactic highways with gas-stations at such formations. But this brings another resource to mind: In the future, we might view planets, not merely for their mineral resources, but also for the heat that may be trapped within them (AFAIK not all planets have a hot, molten core). Autonomous planetary settlement bots; colonizers of planets. Harnessing the energy trapped within the planet to refine minerals on the surface or terraform the surface.
- dredmorbius 13y agoStars are fusion plants. Sufficiently large planets are dual gravitational + fission plants. There's pretty good reason to believe there may be active natural sustained chain reaction fission reactors within the Earth's inner mantel / outer core (for reasons the geologists / geophysicists are better able to explain, apparently not in the core itself). There's also considerable latent heat from formation -- even after 4.5 billion years (rock is a good insulator). But not all planets have molten interiors (Mars doesn't). And many aren't particularly accessible: Venus has that little atmosphere problem, Mercury's a tad toasty, and gas giants don't give your legs a leg to stand on. Plus gravity. Visions of spacefaring humans are, I suspect, mostly strongly fantastical: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high_frontier_redux.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high... http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/11/the_myth_of_the_starship.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/11/the_myth... http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/why-not-space/ http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/why-not-space/
- ep103 13y agoI don't buy it. Those articles just make it sound like any truly future craft needs to include a biome and fission reactor; in short, an aircraft carrier with Wisconsin fast plants. But sci-fi has been pointing us in this direction for ages. The Apollo missions were amazing, Space-X is amazing, but they are very much more like knarrs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knarr http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knarr) than the caravels (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravel) that came later and found the new world.
- Aardwolf 13y agoWhat could possibly go wrong :)
- truelson 13y agoI am not sure if it's a good thing that I saw this headline and immediately thought of Dwarf Fortress.
- shmerl 13y agoIt's good that it wasn't a balrog.
- logfromblammo 13y agoJust so long as they steer cleer of the hollow adamantite veins, we ought to be fine.
- ommunist 13y agoOld trick. The USSR built geothermal power plants since 1966. But this tech is only available in very specific geological conditions. What is more energetically interesting in Scandinavia is their experimental thorium reactor.
- JulianMorrison 13y agoTap Yellowstone's geothermal. See if we can't get greedy enough for energy extraction that we end up preventing a supervolcano.
- YokoZar 13y agoI do wonder to what extent we can mitigate potential future volcanic activity by preemptively pulling energy out of hot spots like this. The odds are low, but a supervolcanic detonation in Yellowstone would be one of the most serious threats to the United States (or even the planet), so if we can mitigate it slightly while actually profiting from the process that seems worth pursuing.
- politician 13y agoI'd love to see an xkcd "What if" follow up to this article exploring the idea of pin-holing the planet with these vents, the peak PW output, and the effects of the resulting cooling.
- XaspR8d 13y agoI just submitted a question on "running out" of renewable energy that included this scenario, so fingers crossed!
- csense 13y agoBesides creating electricity, there are many potential industrial uses of magma: "Magma serves as a heat source, replacing fuel in magma smelters, magma forges, magma glass furnaces, and magma kilns...Other uses for magma include obsidian farming, trap design, melting ice, igniting fires, and even garbage disposal." [1] [1] http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Magma http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Magma
- DrStalker 13y agoThen one day someone leaves a sock on the ground starting a series of events that ends with everyone in Iceland being either dead or insane.
- shaggyfrog 13y agoUrist Björnsson cancels Pickup Item: on fire
- philsnow 13y ago"Drilling opens door to volcano-powered surprise" Sounds like somebody's hit the Happy Fun Stuff. Everybody watch out, FPS is about to hit the floor.
- cromwellian 13y agoWould mining too much geothermal energy hurt the earths dynamo like in the movie The Core :)?
- secstate 13y agoThe short answer is, we don't know. The longer answer involves a lot of evidence that we can't hurt it that much. But then again, in the 1900's farmers were forced by law to dump their waste ag chemicals into the Atlantic ocean, so wait 100 years and we'll see. More importantly are the subtle differences to ground water temperature when wells are drilled close together in densely populated areas. This is a bit off-topic for the OP, but I went to an alt-energy talk where someone was all jazzed about geo-thermal. I asked if anyone's done any research about what the cold water pumped into the well does to the water table, or whether you could trigger fungal blooms underground and render otherwise potable water undrinkable. They, as you can guess, didn't have an answer. Alt-energy is all exciting and holds such potential until you realize that bituminous coal was once the miracle solution to having everyone burn wood.
- InclinedPlane 13y agoOnly so long as the neutrinos don't mutate.
- marshray 13y agoWhy is it so much harder to drill a hole 10-20 km deep (where the mantle is predictable) than 2 km deep?