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Could we stop Yellowstone from erupting with a giant geothermal power plant?

constructionphysics.substack.com

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Re: Could we stop Yellowstone from erupting with a giant geothermal power plant?

#121

Post by dylan604 »

lelanthran wrote: post #103
dylan604 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

It doesn't matter whether a human or a robot drills into Yellowstone, the resulting eruption will kill off all humans on earth anyway.

which is exactly what the AI is attempting to achieve

Re: Could we stop Yellowstone from erupting with a giant geothermal power plant?

#122

Post by jdmichal »

hristov wrote: post #116
RhodesianHunter wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 addi…

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

Re: Could we stop Yellowstone from erupting with a giant geothermal power plant?

#123

Post by XorNot »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #110
gnfargbl wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Concrete, bricks and granite can also work pretty well... as the Pantheon in Rome proves.

We don't make concrete like the Romans did though.

We do actually, it's just not as useful and used in more demanding applications.

The biggest problem is rebar spalling though, not the concrete.

Re: Could we stop Yellowstone from erupting with a giant geothermal power plant?

#124

Post by lisper »

its_ethan wrote: post #2

"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 confidence to make this claim come from? 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 t…

> 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/

Re: Could we stop Yellowstone from erupting with a giant geothermal power plant?

#125

Post by hef19898 »

elil17 wrote: post #36
its_ethan wrote: post #2

"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 confidence to make this claim come from? 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 t…

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 o…

I reached a point where I treat anything from substack the same way I treat I links from medium; assume the content is crap and / or useless and move on. Which is a pity, I know, but I simply don't have time to find the rare gems in all the useless "content".

Re: Could we stop Yellowstone from erupting with a giant geothermal power plant?

#126

Post by ghaff »

breischl wrote: post #111
roywiggins wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stone and adobe, in the right conditions. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancestral_Puebloan_dwellings

In those conditions even plain, untreated wood lasts a long time. Many of those structures still have wood beams in pretty good condition. ie, the durability of those structures is more due to where they are, than what they are made of.

Although (at least the right) stone is almost certainly a pretty good answer in general. There are plenty of historical examples and I'm skeptical that anything else exposed to the elements would do better. And if not exposed to the elements that feels like cheating.

Re: Could we stop Yellowstone from erupting with a giant geothermal power plant?

#127

Post by fooker »

jdblair wrote: post #22

The article makes the common (and grating) error of conflating power (1.5 gigawatts) and energy (power over time). Put another way, "1.5 gigawatts" does not in any way describe a rate. Do they mean 1.5 gigawatts per hour? or per day? or per year? I'm referring to this section: ...the rate that energy builds below the volcano is only around 1.5 gigawatts - less heat than a typical power plant sheds. Yellowstone curren…

The best part of this comment is the confidence!

Is it any surprise that LLMs trained over internet comments are wrong with a similar confidence?

Re: Could we stop Yellowstone from erupting with a giant geothermal power plant?

#128

Post by [deleted] »

its_ethan wrote: post #2

"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 confidence to make this claim come from? 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 t…

[deleted]

Re: Could we stop Yellowstone from erupting with a giant geothermal power plant?

#129

Post by yellowapple »

sbierwagen wrote: post #55
elil17 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

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.

> How often is your house dunked into seawater?

Hopefully the house ain't in Florida. Or California's Central Valley.

Re: Could we stop Yellowstone from erupting with a giant geothermal power plant?

#130

Post by yellowapple »

hristov wrote: post #102
its_ethan wrote: post #2

"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 confidence to make this claim come from? 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 t…

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 magm…

> Look under your feet -- no volcanoes!

What if whoever built this McDonald's/Chevron amalgamation did so atop a volcano? How would I know?

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