"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.
Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
61–70 of 83 posts
Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
#62I'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.
I just submitted a question on "running out" of renewable energy that included this scenario, so fingers crossed!
Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Why would converting deliquefication terminals make sense? By the time we convert them, wouldn't you expect technology transfer of fracking to have spread internationally (AND be much cheaper), making exporting less economically feasible?
The technology has spread but to date no other shale formation has been identified that has the same advantages of those in the US, namely a government friendly to drilling. France has some promising formations but they've banned the tech. There are other possibilities in Poland and Ukraine but there have been difficulties bringing them online.
It's not just about the technology, above-ground risk is in many ways the bigger problem.
But sure, it's a risk inherent in this sort of project. Cheniere Energy was building its Sabine Pass LNG facility in Louisiana to import gas until advances in fracking and horizontal drilling led to a glut of gas in the US market and importing ceased to make sense. Cheniere had to pull off a multi-billion dollar pivot to export instead, scrambling to raise billions and get approval to build the liquefaction trains required to export gas.
(OT: if anyone in Silicon Valley thinks theirs is the only industry ripe with crazy schemes, insane pivots and huge disruptions, read up on energy. The Prize by Daniel Yergin, Private Empire by Steve Coll and The Frackers by Gregory Zuckerman are the places to start)
Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 smeltin…
Right. Much as food production is an alternative to exporting water, aluminum (or fertilizer) productions are alternatives to exporting energy.
You'll typically find aluminium smelters where electricity is cheap. E.g., the Pacific Northwest / Western Canada, where ample hydroelectric resources exist.
Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 Am…
If methane is being released, it should be burned. Methane is a more potent green house gas than CO2.
As a pinko commie treehugger (aka realist), I'm unenthusiastic about adding any more CO2 to our atmosphere.
Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
#66Besides 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
Then 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.
Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
#67Would mining too much geothermal energy hurt the earths dynamo like in the movie The Core :)?
Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
#68Would mining too much geothermal energy hurt the earths dynamo like in the movie The Core :)?
The 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.
Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Oil and gas production requires a lot of hard physical labour.
Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
You will need a deep pocket. I suspect the cash flow hole between turning a flare into feedstock for electricity generation or any other potentially productive use and getting paid for that product is wide and deep.
Wouldn't have suggested it unless I had deep pockets.
J. Random HN commenter hereby gives you permission to begin disruption.