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

construction-physics.com

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

#101

Post by chmod775 »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #71
firebones wrote: post #28

Strong "I drink your milkshake!" vibes from these proposals. Both of these proposals require political stability we're unlikely to see over 600 or 50,000 years. You have to be thinking some kind of self-sustaining and monumental Pyramids-type project.

Capitalism wise they should be safe. Unless there is a war why wouldn’t the plants keep running?

> Unless there is a war

I think you will have trouble finding many places that haven't been touched by conflict in 800 years, given anyone lives there. If there's humans, there will be war.

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

#102

Post by mcv »

dwighttk wrote: post #96

Would pulling that much heat out of the ground help or hurt global warming?

Global warming doesn't come from heat from the ground, but from the atmosphere absorbing extra heat from the sun due to the increased amount of CO2 in it. If this geothermal energy generates enough power so we burn less fossil fuels put less CO2 into the atmosphere, it will slow global warming. The amount of heat we'd get from the ground would be comparable to the amount of heat we get from burning fossil fuels, and both would be negligible compared to the amount of additional heat we get from the sun.

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

#103

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

dwighttk wrote: post #96

Would pulling that much heat out of the ground help or hurt global warming?

Surely it would have to increase global warming unless there were effects such as a nuclear winter caused by a sudden uncontrolled release of the heat.

If you consider that that heat is stored underground where it doesn't affect weather patterns, then moving it to the surface is bound to involve the use of energy to move it and that energy will contribute to global warming as well as the heat released by the whole project.

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

#104

Post by toolz »

jeffbee wrote: post #14
hutzlibu wrote: post #2

"Regardless of the specifics of the details, in the abstract, such a scheme is in some sense, possible. How should we consider it? On the one hand, building a huge geothermal power station at Yellowstone would generate a large amount of (potentially cheap) electric power while simultaneously reducing a catastrophic risk. " "On the other hand, in many ways Yellowstone is a particularly bad place to try to build such a…

I don't even see why you'd need transmission lines. Just use the enormous quantity of free energy for direct carbon capture, at that site.

Even more realistically, crypto mining farms would quickly move in to use that energy and it wouldn't be hard, once you've established a stable footing to then give cheaper electricity to carbon capture types of ventures.

Love or hate crypto, it is uniquely capable of quickly moving in and making remote energy production facilities valuable. Which could then provide the infrastructure for things like carbon capture plants to exist remotely.

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

#105

Post by nathancahill »

AdamN wrote: post #79
ben_w wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only does it already exist, it's cheap enough that Kenya has some and wants more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power_in_Kenya Judging by the price tag of 9.1 Ksh/kWh listed on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Kenya (and looking up historical exchange rates because of the date of the link and their persistent inflation), that's about 0.085-0.090 USD/kWh.

iirc it works well in Kenya because the thermal gradient is really steep and the heat is right near the surface. I don't think that's common around the world. Local expenses (labor, etc...) are also cheaper than in many parts of the world. Geothermal is however one of the electricity sources with the fewest negative externalities so definitely should be pursued where possible.

Touring the geothermal at Hell's Gate Park in Kenya is wild. If you've seen The Lion King, it's the inspiration for "the shadowy place over there" where the hyenas live.

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

#108

Post by cainxinth »

wforus39 wrote: post #106

[flagged]

Why is this at the top? It's clearly a low effort, AI-generated response. From a user account created literally 20 minutes ago that says it's working for one of those stupid celeb net worth sites... and they even promoted it in their answer!

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

#109

Post by jeffbee »

modo_mario wrote: post #94
jeffbee wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even see why you'd need transmission lines. Just use the enormous quantity of free energy for direct carbon capture, at that site.

Whilst we're increasing our CO2 output as a whole still for a good few more years we're going to go for a industrial open air carbon capture? I wonder when people are going to realise it'll never ever make more sense to filter co2 out of the air at 400-500ppm to deposit deep underground like that compared to not pumping it up and emitting it in the first place. It's always going to be vastly more difficult and a big…

If you don't care for capture it's also practical to colocate any other big energy consumer like metal refining, drying battery materials, etc. Shipping energy 2000 miles to charge some Tesla in Poughkeepsie doesn't sound like the best application.

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

#110

Post by anticensor »

ceejayoz wrote: post #12
chongli wrote: post #5

It’s a shame this was written earlier this year. In Iceland there’s an ongoing magma intrusion event near (and under) the town of Grindavik. There also happens to be a geothermal power plant not far from the town. The progression of this magma intrusion, particularly beneath the power plant itself, seems like it should provide a valuable case study to test the idea presented by this article. If there ends up being an…

> At this rate, the energy of the next eruption would be drained after about 16,000 years, and in less than 50,000 years the magma chamber would be cooled completely. Iceland's event is much smaller, but we're not talking about the sort of thing that you can implement in a year.

If plate tectonics stops, ocean life is over, then the following year, land life will also be also be over.
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