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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)

#31

Post by gambiting »

zoe4883 wrote: post #25
gambiting wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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!

Ah, so you were being facetious then. Should have said at the beginning, would have saved us some time and you the downvotes.

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

#32

Post by upwardbound »

ryanmercer wrote: post #20
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 detonation…

Relatedly: apparently it would be a good idea to destroy the Martian moon Phobos before settling the planet. It's a fascinating proposal and makes sense; you can read about it here:

https://marspedia.org/Bringing_down_Phobos

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

#33

Post by nobodyandproud »

zoe4883 wrote: post #19
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…

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!

Is this like where people are tricked into believing “sea salt” in the diet is somehow healthier than “table salt”?

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

#35

Post by bashinator »

zoe4883 wrote: post #25
gambiting wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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!

> Natural eruption would considerably reduce man made CO2 emmisions in near future.

I imagine this is technically accurate, as an eruption of for example Yellowstone would utterly destroy most human civilization in North America.

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

#36

Post by ortusdux »

upwardbound wrote: post #32
ryanmercer wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 detonation…

Relatedly: apparently it would be a good idea to destroy the Martian moon Phobos before settling the planet. It's a fascinating proposal and makes sense; you can read about it here: https://marspedia.org/Bringing_down_Phobos

If we are going down that rabbit hole, I love the plan to create an artificial Martian magnetosphere by placing a magnetic field generating satellite between mars and the solar winds. Generating an atmosphere on mars is all well and good, but it will just blow away again without some protection. The generator would only require roughly 583.9 exajoules, or roughly the world's total energy consumption in 2020.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2111.06887.pdf

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

#37

Post by caeril »

jdsully wrote: post #28
MisterTea wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It escapes . . . as a gas . . . in an already highly pressurized environment . . . that is already containing a large amount of high-pressure hydrogen sulfide that cannot escape as it is?

I'm pressing X to doubt.

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

#38

Post by phkahler »

One thing not considered in TFA is the idea of drilling a hole and then using nuclear explosions to pulverize the surrounding rock to effectively increase the size of the hole. This might also punch through the last (how many?) meters of rock that are too hot to drill through. I still doubt it would work, and if it did that might be really bad too.

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

#39

Post by TrainedMonkey »

phkahler wrote: post #38

One thing not considered in TFA is the idea of drilling a hole and then using nuclear explosions to pulverize the surrounding rock to effectively increase the size of the hole. This might also punch through the last (how many?) meters of rock that are too hot to drill through. I still doubt it would work, and if it did that might be really bad too.

Both Cold War superpowers considered some variant of using nuclear weaponry for subterranean engineering in their "peaceful atom" projects. For example soviets actually used a nuke to put out a gas well fire: https://interestingengineering.com/soviet-engineers-detonate...

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

#40

Post by q1w2 »

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 not a very efficient process. Firstly, you need to drill very very far down, unless you are near an active volcano. If it isn't very near the surface, most heat is lost traveling up the bore hole. Remember that you never drill INTO the magma chamber, because that would collapse/plug the hole, so companies drill adjacent to the magma chamber and allow radiant heat to rise.

It's also unstable and inconsistent. Ground water changes, magma movement, hole collapses, all make it an unreliable source of power.

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