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

Post by coryrc » Mon, Dec 11, 2023, 6:27 AM UTC

7thaccount wrote: post #21

fbdab103 wrote: post #17

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Given what would likely be billions of dollars to build such a plant, I am not sure why the transmission infrastructure is more than a footnote on the project. There is a lot of engineering know-how on moving electricity large distances. Less so on building the world's largest power plant in the efforts to avoid a global catastrophe.

Transmission is crazy expensive and hard to permit for. Something like this could easily be in the billions depending on how much would need to be built and the associated upgrades.

Post by _just7_ » Mon, Dec 11, 2023, 6:46 AM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #29

jtriangle wrote: post #16

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No, it's not like a balloon, an eruption isn't the earth popping, it's an upheaval from the mantle eventually surfacing through a weak spot that causes it.

> Drilling into, or above, the magma chamber below Yellowstone would be fraught with problems. For one, it could potentially cause the volcano to erupt, the very thing we’re trying to avoid.

Post by corethree » Mon, Dec 11, 2023, 6:55 AM UTC

shiroiuma wrote: post #39

zdragnar wrote: post #26

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There's already federal laws against setting up geothermal power generation in Yellowstone. Any discussion on the topic has to begin with assuming the usual red tape has been cut (however much I agree with the impossibility of that happening aside).

A federal law can easily be changed by simply passing another federal law. It's not like a constitutional change. Of course, this requires political will too, but unlike various other issues, I doubt that some old law protecting national parks is going to be held as sacrosanct as the second amendment. The GOP certainly doesn't care about protecting NP resources, and the Dems will agree too as long as enough scientist…

Post by suzzer99 » Mon, Dec 11, 2023, 7:04 AM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #42

fbdab103 wrote: post #18

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Big fan of WH40k as the exemplar of massive scale. This article[0] defines a super volcano as >The size of volcanic eruptions can be expressed by the volume or mass of magma released (table 1), with super-eruptions yielding in excess of 450 km3, or more than 1×10^15 kg, of magma (Sparks et al. 2005). Wikipedia says the Empire State Building has a volume of 1e6 m3 or 0.001 km3. So the eruption would be equivalent to a…

Those numbers aren't that large. They aren't small in anyone's estimation, but the Empire State Building is a lot less than the amount of material a motivated earthmoving company can get through in a year. There'd be some interesting technical challenges tearing down Everest, but it is conceivable. The part that requires creative thinking is why it would be worth it spending that much money.

Post by thorncorona » Mon, Dec 11, 2023, 7:09 AM UTC

Maxion wrote: post #48

pacificmint wrote: post #37

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Plus you’d take a great step towards solving our energy problems.

We'll except the fact that deep geothermal plants are completely theoretic as a means of production - the final cost of power is a big ???. Most people want cheap power. Anything over around 20 cents a kWh makes it uncompetitive to fossile equivalents (e.g. wood / oil / gas heating).