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Firstly, Law of Headlines - the answer is no. But secondly, Volcanologists are not even worried about Yellowstone erupting anytime soon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypn3Fe_PLts
And this seems like a thing it's better to start with BEFORE volcanologists believe there's an imminent danger :P
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a lot of skepticism about anything I read from constructionphysics.substack.com. I'm a mechanical engineer, not a civil engineer, so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but it reads like it's written by someone who does not have a solid understanding of engineering fundamentals. For example, they suggested in their "How to design a house to last for 1,000 years" series that you'd want to build such a house o…
I mean, it would be exposed to the normal conditions any residential construction is exposed to. How often is your house dunked into seawater? 800 years from now something terrible could happen that turns all the rain into sulfuric acid but then all residential buildings everywhere are screwed.
Even if we could, to do so would be an ecological disaster, and it would destroy the natural wonders of Yellowstone.
Dear Prof. Hand-Wave, Please tell me about your heat sink - the one that can soak up the heat from a few hundred cubic km or so of molten lava. Without major ill effects. On a reasonable budget. Asking for a friend.
This was linked from the article. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096014812... Along with the JPL's proposal which gets into the crust dynamics. https://scienceandtechnology.jpl.nasa.gov/sites/default/file...
> Yellowstone has erupted 3 times in the past approx. 2.1 million years, with total ejected ash approaching 10^15 kg. While the heat energy associated with this ash is some 10^23 J, this averages to only approx. 1.5 GW continuous magmatic thermal power input to the volcano over the span of these eruptions, and is well within the capacity of humans to safely introduce heat into the environment – a typical electrical power plant commonly rejects more heat than this. However, this assumes that heat is provided to the magmatic system in a steady state manner, which is almost certainly not valid, although the degree to which it is invalid is unknown.
...which, by my lights, sounds far too much like specifying "able to withstand the local average wind speed" in the building code for Hurricane City, Florida.
For a slightly longer answer, here is the conclusion of the article:
Trying to build an enormous geothermal power plant and associated transmission lines(!) in one of the most beloved National Parks(!!), which there’s specifically a law against (!!!), and which could potentially trigger a civilization-destroying volcanic eruption (!!!!) is like the final boss of the permitting reform movement.
Also, most volcanologists don't expect Yellowstone to erupt anytime soon, if at all.
"If heat could be bled off of the magma chambers, cooling and solidifying them, not only would that stop the volcano from erupting..." Where does the confidence to make this claim come from? I can imagine that the consequence of this might actually just be strengthening the "barrier" the magma has to erupt through, and when it finally builds up enough energy to do that, it'll be stronger in proportion to how strong t…
Yeah not to mention the construction of the plant itself! I wouldn’t want to be operating the drill that punctures the magma chambers! I’m optimistic. If we spent less time engineering society and more time engineering the earth, I think we’d all be a lot happier.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The linked JPL proposal is exploratory and, while it has a more serious engineering perspective, it does not have "confidence". https://scienceandtechnology.jpl.nasa.gov/sites/default/file... The USGS is very unconvinced. https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/can-we-drill-yellowstone-stop-it-e...
>Any allowed geothermal extraction would lower the pressure on the existing geysers and hot springs, altering their behavior and, in many cases, causing them to disappear. Oh no. Saving the lives of ten million people might make a geyser stop working. How awful.
[0] https://news.stanford.edu/2019/05/23/lessons-south-korea-sol...
My experience with leaving pots on the stove where a skin builds at the top would make me anxious if I believed anyone actually tried that on super volcano scale.
This is the seed of a science fiction novel that takes place in a far future dystopia where humanities remnants scavenge in the ruins, and who's brightest members are kidnapped by a mysterious group that turns out to be an AI run organization executing the Yellowstone mega project on a 50kyr timeline. And so on.
I think you just described the show "Travelers"