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Can you drill into a supervolcano to relieve pressure? (2016)

askageologist.blogspot.com

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Re: Can you drill into a supervolcano to relieve pressure? (2016)

#11

Post by q1w2 »

I think the answer is good, but misses one important point - it is not like there is a thin barrier where there's a sharp pressure gradient, such that you can "pop" the volcano, or allow it to fizz like a shaken coke can with a tiny hole.

When you drill down into the volcano, the hole just collapses on itself and plugs itself back up. The closer you get to the caldera, the rock become viscous and hot. Not only does your drill bit melt, but it's like trying to a hole into warming ice-cream - you don't accomplish anything.

Geothermal energy plants function by drilling holes near magma chambers, and allowing some heat to radiate into the bore hole, and then up the shaft. ...and while this process extracts some heat, the energy withdrawn is orders of magnitude smaller than what is present.

Re: Can you drill into a supervolcano to relieve pressure? (2016)

#12

Post by jjk166 »

[0] https://scienceandtechnology.jpl.nasa.gov/sites/default/file...

You wouldn't want to drill into the magma chamber to relieve pressure, instead you would drill next to the magma chamber to cool the rocks on the edge, shrinking the chamber. Every few decades after the chamber had shrunk, you'd drill a new set of boreholes closer. The expense would be substantial, but well within the range of major government projects, and if you use the heat for power generation you can recover some of that cost - indeed if you subsidize the initial logistical setup, the long term operation can likely be fiscally self sustaining.

Re: Can you drill into a supervolcano to relieve pressure? (2016)

#13

Post by toss1 »

pstuart wrote: post #2

On a related note: why not seriously tap these geothermal hot spots for energy? Doesn't stop at night or when the wind dies down.

It's a great idea and they do it, particularly in Iceland and Hawaii, iirc.

My recollection is that the big issue with geothermal is the minerals leaching out of the drilled rocks and fairly rapidly fouling the near/above-round equipment or depositing on the tubes/pipes closing them down. I understand that progress had been made; if anyone has more details handy, could you post links?

Re: Can you drill into a supervolcano to relieve pressure? (2016)

#14

Post by gambiting »

zoe4883 wrote: post #4

Would not that have massive CO2 footprint? It would be very expensive to pay for it. Vulcanic eruption is natural and does not count, but man-made emmisions require permit.

>>Vulcanic eruption is natural and does not count,

I'm pretty sure the Earth's atmoshphere is physically incapable of differentiating between man-released CO2 and naturally released CO2.

>> man-made emmisions require permit

Whose permit? On what authority? Even if such permit would be required, who would deny it if the alternative was literally the destruction of a large portion of the United States(if we are talking about Yellowstone exploding)?

Re: Can you drill into a supervolcano to relieve pressure? (2016)

#15

Post by pcmaffey »

pstuart wrote: post #2

On a related note: why not seriously tap these geothermal hot spots for energy? Doesn't stop at night or when the wind dies down.

Here's a good "state of the art of geothermal drilling" article - https://austinvernon.site/blog/drillingplan.html

Re: Can you drill into a supervolcano to relieve pressure? (2016)

#16

Post by Supermancho »

gambiting wrote: post #14
zoe4883 wrote: post #4

Would not that have massive CO2 footprint? It would be very expensive to pay for it. Vulcanic eruption is natural and does not count, but man-made emmisions require permit.

>>Vulcanic eruption is natural and does not count, I'm pretty sure the Earth's atmoshphere is physically incapable of differentiating between man-released CO2 and naturally released CO2. >> man-made emmisions require permit Whose permit? On what authority? Even if such permit would be required, who would deny it if the alternative was literally the destruction of a large portion of the United States(if we are talking…

This would be an issue of national security. I would not want to be the person who spends money to set up drilling toward the Yellowstone Supervolcano without alerting the US Department of the Interior of the plans.

Re: Can you drill into a supervolcano to relieve pressure? (2016)

#17

Post by jjk166 »

ortusdux wrote: post #8

Re: the first paragraph's reference to nuking the Deepwater horizon's oil leak, Soviet engineers demonstrated that this was a viable technique back in the 60's. Plenty of wild non-war applications have been proposed for nuclear bombs over the years, but this is the only one I can think of that is actually somewhat of a good idea. Any fallout is minor and contained under 1km+ of bedrock, and the harm prevented is wort…

The author's logic is that only things comparable in scale to a volcano can cancel out the volcano by brute force, and nuclear detonations are thousands to millions of times smaller than volcanic eruptions. Proposals for things like this involve using nuclear detonations to make small but critical disruptions to systems, so the logic doesn't apply, but without actually digging into it you generally wouldn't know that's what the plan entails. Admittedly, it's unintuitive to think of nuclear detonations as a precise scalpel instead of a blunt cudgel. It also doesn't help that the well thought out proposals often get crudely parroted, so "collapse the well 1 km down to choke off the flow of oil" becomes "blow up the well".

Re: Can you drill into a supervolcano to relieve pressure? (2016)

#18

Post by gambiting »

Supermancho wrote: post #16
gambiting wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Vulcanic eruption is natural and does not count, I'm pretty sure the Earth's atmoshphere is physically incapable of differentiating between man-released CO2 and naturally released CO2. >> man-made emmisions require permit Whose permit? On what authority? Even if such permit would be required, who would deny it if the alternative was literally the destruction of a large portion of the United States(if we are talking…

This would be an issue of national security. I would not want to be the person who spends money to set up drilling toward the Yellowstone Supervolcano without alerting the US Department of the Interior of the plans.

I can only imagine that such a massive enterprise would be entirely conducted by the US Government, probably any of the military branches(is Engineers Corps still a thing?)

Re: Can you drill into a supervolcano to relieve pressure? (2016)

#19

Post by zoe4883 »

gambiting wrote: post #14
zoe4883 wrote: post #4

Would not that have massive CO2 footprint? It would be very expensive to pay for it. Vulcanic eruption is natural and does not count, but man-made emmisions require permit.

>>Vulcanic eruption is natural and does not count, I'm pretty sure the Earth's atmoshphere is physically incapable of differentiating between man-released CO2 and naturally released CO2. >> man-made emmisions require permit Whose permit? On what authority? Even if such permit would be required, who would deny it if the alternative was literally the destruction of a large portion of the United States(if we are talking…

There is Paris Agreement, most countries signed including Italy and US. Detonating nukes and releasing several gigatons of CO2 is more dangerous than supervulcano.

Naturally released CO2 is harmless. There is a difference!

Re: Can you drill into a supervolcano to relieve pressure? (2016)

#20

Post by ryanmercer »

ortusdux wrote: post #8

Re: the first paragraph's reference to nuking the Deepwater horizon's oil leak, Soviet engineers demonstrated that this was a viable technique back in the 60's. Plenty of wild non-war applications have been proposed for nuclear bombs over the years, but this is the only one I can think of that is actually somewhat of a good idea. Any fallout is minor and contained under 1km+ of bedrock, and the harm prevented is wort…

>Plenty of wild non-war applications have been proposed for nuclear bombs over the years

Yup, Project Plowshare (US) and Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy (USSR) looked a lot of interesting/crazy ideas for non-military applications for nuclear weapons.

Some of the ideas were just nuts for use on earth (like making bays) but if we ever do start setting up shop on another planet, like Mars, nuclear detonations could probably be used for construction efforts early on to get some serious work done quickly - Project Orion, especially if done with materials mined from the asteroid belt, could be an extremely viable option for interstellar travel even if just for probes.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Project_Plowshare

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_Natio...

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsio...

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