Tap Yellowstone's geothermal. See if we can't get greedy enough for energy extraction that we end up preventing a supervolcano.
Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
41–50 of 83 posts
Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Burn 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 fle…
Low-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).
If I were to have free access to the flaring output, I'd implement this myself out of my own pocket.
Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
#43For 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). Auto…
Outer space clouds and/or nebulas would have extremely low density I think. Imagine the vastness of sail collectors (or similar) needed to yield significant amounts!
It's not clear the magnetic ramscoop arrangement is particularly viable from the calculations, nor particularly efficient.
Given the absurd amounts of power available from stars when you start thinking about building such a ship, a lot of other options start to make more sense.
Antimatter synthesis isn't so unreasonable then you can magnetically divert the solar window to setup the brightest luminosity particle accelerator ever to make anti-hydrogen.
Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
#44For 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). Auto…
Stars 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…
We could just hide in one of the lukewarm stars? Brown dwarf stars would be perfect to live inside.
Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stars 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…
I 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 ) than the caravels ( http://en.wikipedia.org/w…
Um. What exactly are you suggesting.
Oceans are capable of being crossed by little more than someone clinging to or sitting on a log (not with a particularly high survival rate, mind). Or bundles of papyrus reeds or balsawood rafts, as Thor Heyerdahl demonstrated. I personally know several people who've rowed across oceans. Some of them multiple times and/or multiple oceans.
The odds of rowing to Ceres or Alpha Centauri, let alone the Andromeda Galaxy, on a log raft, are rather slim.
Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
#46About 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-... http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/business/energy-environmen...
I seem to be one of the few persons commenting so far who actually lives in the region and regularly reads local reporting on issues in North Dakota (a state neighboring my state). Western North Dakota, where the Bakken Shale oil boom is occurring, is very sparsely populated and historically had minimal infrastructure. It takes TIME to build pipelines to move the natural gas brought up by oil drilling operations to n…
I don't get it. If you don't have the capacity to transport what you are producing, you can't be producing. Or put very simply: you can not be allowed to burn off unwanted gas. The cost is certainly not zero, it is an enormous sum that dwarfs whatever profit they could hope to get from selling it, and it is failed states only that would allow this massive negative externality.
There seems to be no learning in the American midwest. Every other time some novel way of destroying the environment comes along, disenfranchised states quickly clear out all regulatory law to make place for the new boom, and when it's over they are left with unemployed single men with a bunch of new trucks and a wrecked environment while the companies made off with the profit.
Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of Iceland's power comes from hydro, not geothermal.
Electric power, yes, but a significant proportion of Iceland's total energy usage is heating, which is about 90% geothermal.
Agreed.
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.
Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
#48About 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-... http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/business/energy-environmen...
I seem to be one of the few persons commenting so far who actually lives in the region and regularly reads local reporting on issues in North Dakota (a state neighboring my state). Western North Dakota, where the Bakken Shale oil boom is occurring, is very sparsely populated and historically had minimal infrastructure. It takes TIME to build pipelines to move the natural gas brought up by oil drilling operations to n…
> a shortage of single women
I don't get this. Wouldn't single women also want to move to North Dakota to get a good job?
Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
#49Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
#50The 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.
There is, however, access in a number of regions where geothermal can be quite useful. Iceland doesn't have a large population (332,000), but it's relatively close to Europe (or at least Ireland), and there have been proposals to link it via undersea transmission cables to the European grid. Other significant resources exist around much of the Pacific Rim, including in Hawaii (limited population and a long way from n…
> there have been proposals to link it via undersea transmission cables to the European grid
A transmission cable is sometimes discussed, but so far Iceland has been taking advantage of the fact that aluminum smelting is a workable way to congeal cheap power into transportable money. Aluminum smelting is typically by electrolysis [1], and aluminum is light and compact relative to its value so easy to ship, so smelting aluminum and exporting it essentially allows you to "export electricity". Not at the same rates as you could sell actual electricity, but with easier transport/storage characteristics that makes it still attractive. The largest power plant in Iceland (a hydro one) is entirely purpose-built solely to power a smelter [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall%E2%80%93H%C3%A9roult_proc...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rahnj%C3%BAkar_Hydropow...