Also if you apply hydraulic equations to the lave through such a small diameter borehole, you quickly find that you would NOT be in control of anything and you'd probably do more to trigger a large eruption - the velocity of lava out of such a borehole would be hypersonic at least and quickly open the borehole to form a new vent equal to an actual eruption.
Can you drill into a supervolcano to relieve pressure? (2016)
21–30 of 125 posts
Re: Can you drill into a supervolcano to relieve pressure? (2016)
#22Earlier 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…
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!
>>Detonating nukes and releasing several gigatons of CO2 is more dangerous than supervulcano.
Eh? You are aware that if Yellowstone were to erupt it would literally mean the destruction of the United States. How is "defusing" the vulcano by detonating nukes "more dangerous" exactly?
>>Naturally released CO2 is harmless.
Again, atmosphere doesn't care - CO2 is CO2. Yes it doesn't count towards calculations that we currently do to model climate predictions, but it's not harmless, and a supervulcano event will fuck everything up, it doesn't magically stop having an effect just because it's natural.
Re: Can you drill into a supervolcano to relieve pressure? (2016)
#23Also if you apply hydraulic equations to the lave through such a small diameter borehole, you quickly find that you would NOT be in control of anything and you'd probably do more to trigger a large eruption - the velocity of lava out of such a borehole would be hypersonic at least and quickly open the borehole to form a new vent equal to an actual eruption.
Hypersonic lava sounds AWESOME!
Re: Can you drill into a supervolcano to relieve pressure? (2016)
#24With volcanos, the more viscous the magma, the more energy gets stored before an eruption. Supervolcanos are the most viscous type, hence the massive explosion.
Think boiling water vs thick oatmeal vs boiling a pressure cooker until it explodes, but obviously worse.
So "relieve pressure" in this case isn't like a pressure release valve on a water heater.
You'd need to either cool the mass, remove the overburden, or create some sort of massive voids for expansion.
The US nuclear test done in Mississippi resulted in vaporizing the rock and soil and creating a large underground void, for whatever that's worth as a sort of proof of concept.
Re: Can you drill into a supervolcano to relieve pressure? (2016)
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
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!
>>Detonating nukes and releasing several gigatons of CO2 is more dangerous than supervulcano. Eh? You are aware that if Yellowstone were to erupt it would literally mean the destruction of the United States. How is "defusing" the vulcano by detonating nukes "more dangerous" exactly? >>Naturally released CO2 is harmless. Again, atmosphere doesn't care - CO2 is CO2. Yes it doesn't count towards calculations that we cur…
How is that not positive? Drilling means gigatons of new CO2 emmisions.
Natural eruption would considerably reduce man made CO2 emmisions in near future. And nuclear winter from dust could stop global warming!
Re: Can you drill into a supervolcano to relieve pressure? (2016)
#26Lol. Yeah that totally sounds like a great idea that is going to end super well and not backfire at all!
Re: Can you drill into a supervolcano to relieve pressure? (2016)
#27With volcanos, the more viscous the magma, the more energy gets stored before an eruption. Supervolcanos are the most viscous type, hence the massive explosion. Think boiling water vs thick oatmeal vs boiling a pressure cooker until it explodes, but obviously worse. So "relieve pressure" in this case isn't like a pressure release valve on a water heater. You'd need to either cool the mass, remove the overburden, or c…
> The US nuclear test done in Mississippi resulted in vaporizing the rock and soil and creating a large underground void, for whatever that's worth as a sort of proof of concept.
Where did the vaporized rock and soil go?
Re: Can you drill into a supervolcano to relieve pressure? (2016)
#28With volcanos, the more viscous the magma, the more energy gets stored before an eruption. Supervolcanos are the most viscous type, hence the massive explosion. Think boiling water vs thick oatmeal vs boiling a pressure cooker until it explodes, but obviously worse. So "relieve pressure" in this case isn't like a pressure release valve on a water heater. You'd need to either cool the mass, remove the overburden, or c…
> The US nuclear test done in Mississippi resulted in vaporizing the rock and soil and creating a large underground void, for whatever that's worth as a sort of proof of concept. Where did the vaporized rock and soil go?
I imagine it escaped as a gas.
Re: Can you drill into a supervolcano to relieve pressure? (2016)
#29Also if you apply hydraulic equations to the lave through such a small diameter borehole, you quickly find that you would NOT be in control of anything and you'd probably do more to trigger a large eruption - the velocity of lava out of such a borehole would be hypersonic at least and quickly open the borehole to form a new vent equal to an actual eruption.
This could be used as an assist to space maybe :) sustainable Earth based lava launches
Re: Can you drill into a supervolcano to relieve pressure? (2016)
#30On a related note: why not seriously tap these geothermal hot spots for energy? Doesn't stop at night or when the wind dies down.
At least in the US, environmental activism has contributed to lack of geothermal development. While the US has large regions with high geothermal potential, such as the Great Basin area of the mountain West, much of this land is undeveloped and under Federal control. This allows activists anywhere in the country to make getting permission difficult and expensive, the effect of which has been to limit the practical size of the power plants to ~25 MW.
Large-scale geothermal installations are not pretty and they cover large areas of land. The individual bore holes must be widely separated from each other, so if you are aggregating the energy of many bores, you are building giant pipe networks. It looks a bit like a large oil field. This gets attacked by environmental activists as despoiling the natural habitat/beauty etc of the formerly undeveloped land. In places like Nevada, which has a lot of geothermal power, there is nothing attractive or unique about this land, it is essentially volcanic badlands of the boring variety, but the campaigns against them use deceptive pictures from other parts of the country suggesting that they are paving over national parks and similar.
This propaganda against geothermal power generation makes it impractical at scale. Instead, the geothermal power plants that are practical to build in this regulatory environment are all solutions with small land footprints. The largest geothermal power plant in Nevada is Of course, there are similar challenges when trying to install solar power at scale in the same kinds of places. Too much of our "green energy" policy is dictated by activists that don't want to build any kind of power generation anywhere.