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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)

#41

Post by coenhyde »

beerandt wrote: post #24

With 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…

Yeah I don't see why we can't use nukes. We just need bigger nukes and more of them. How about we drill the largest borehole we can, then drop a chain of nukes down it. ie detonate a nuke every 100m. First few can be Tsar Bomba's.

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

#44

Post by anm89 »

zardo wrote: post #43
anm89 wrote: post #42

Follow up question: if you were able to meaningfully release that heat, would it be enough to affect the global climate?

The heat will be getting out one way or another.

As far as I know, nothing has been releaseed from one of these major calderas at scale in recorded history

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

#45

Post by ethbr0 »

My favorite National Park Service quip of all time. At the bottom of the page on Yellowstone's volcano [0] are a few questions and answers, and among them this gem:

>> What is Yellowstone National Park doing to stop or prevent an erruption?

> Nothing can be done to prevent an eruption. The temperatures, pressures, physical characteristics of partially molten rock, and immensity of the magma chamber are beyond human ability to impact—much less control.

In my head, some staff geologist, tired of answering dumb questions, was asked and finally snapped a little.

[0] https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/volcano.htm

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

#46

Post by ethbr0 »

coenhyde wrote: post #41
beerandt wrote: post #24

With 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…

Yeah I don't see why we can't use nukes. We just need bigger nukes and more of them. How about we drill the largest borehole we can, then drop a chain of nukes down it. ie detonate a nuke every 100m. First few can be Tsar Bomba's.

Can I interest you in a pamphlet about careers in Strategic Air Command?

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

#47

Post by ethbr0 »

dmos62 wrote: post #23
xyzzy21 wrote: post #21

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.

Hypersonic lava sounds AWESOME!

Not a Dwarf Fortress player, are we?

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

#48

Post by mLuby »

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…

They tried that in the excellent documentary The Core (2003) but as I recall they didn't all survive.

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

#49

Post by echelon »

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.

Do rocks and minerals even have a boiling point, or do they thermally decompose?

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

#50

Post by hinkley »

q1w2 wrote: post #11

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 y…

When you core a tree to look at growth rings you have to be fast because the wood will begin to swell almost immediately. If you get distracted then you lose the corer. The tree is stronger than the handle.

I would think rocks under high pressure would do the same thing. You’d either have to dig a conical hole to get a cylindrical bore, or the boring machine would have to have cutters on both the face and the sides to keep grinding away rock that expands into the void you are creating.

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