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

[chongli]

It’s a shame this was written earlier this year. In Iceland there’s an ongoing magma intrusion event near (and under) the town of Grindavik. There also happens to be a geothermal power plant not far from the town.

The progression of this magma intrusion, particularly beneath the power plant itself, seems like it should provide a valuable case study to test the idea presented by this article. If there ends up being an eruption under that power plant we might learn something about the advantages and potential pitfalls of this proposal.

[ceejayoz]

> At this rate, the energy of the next eruption would be drained after about 16,000 years, and in less than 50,000 years the magma chamber would be cooled completely.

Iceland's event is much smaller, but we're not talking about the sort of thing that you can implement in a year.

[senectus1]

I suspect the SCALE required to ease the pressures would be absurd.

Warhammer 40k sort of absurd.

Having said that, It should be considered to take advantages of clean energy.

[onetimeuse92304]

I think the puny icelandic power plant is no match for the forces that are at play there.

Also remember it takes time for heat to transfer through so much rock, so a plant would have to continuously remove energy for a very long time to reach the places where it actually matters.

[hutzlibu]

"Regardless of the specifics of the details, in the abstract, such a scheme is in some sense, possible. How should we consider it?

On the one hand, building a huge geothermal power station at Yellowstone would generate a large amount of (potentially cheap) electric power while simultaneously reducing a catastrophic risk. "

"On the other hand, in many ways Yellowstone is a particularly bad place to try to build such a plant. The harsh, corrosive conditions in and around the magma chamber would make drilling the wells especially difficult, and its location in the middle of nowhere would require the construction of enormous transmission lines"

"In any case, the debate is likely to remain academic for the foreseeable future. Using Yellowstone for geothermal power was made illegal by the Geothermal Steam Act of 1970"

So the answer is likely yes, in theory. But there are lots of other places, where it makes more sense to build geothermal plants. (for energy, but also security, there are lots of other potential super vulcanos that are not as activly monitored like Yellowstone is)

[fbdab103]

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.

[jeffbee]

I don't even see why you'd need transmission lines. Just use the enormous quantity of free energy for direct carbon capture, at that site.

[roenxi]

One option would be to set up a big industrial district. Call it Shenzhen II. Cheap power and some industrialist-friendly tax laws and maybe the US could keep pace with the Chinese. People'd start building and finding uses for that power extremely quickly.

I find it very much laugh-or-you'd-cry that the US would rather have Yellowstone winding up for a big one than allow geothermal power projects near a national park. Talk about catastrophically bureaucratic priorities.

[thingsilearned]

The article really focused on doing this in Yellowstone, and all the problems we'd have there. I noticed the second hottest spot on the map is Southern California - which has the benefits of being a desert and close to major population that'd use the power.

Looking it up, we're of course already on top of harnessing the geothermal there https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Valley_Geothermal_Pro....

[toss1]

As the article mentioned, the Yellowstone risk is more future than current, and is being extensively monitored, and "A much bigger risk is likely large eruptions from volcanoes that we aren’t tracking and have no data for.".

One that is being tracked, and showing a present threat is the Vesuvius complex (which did in Pompeii), and is showing markedly increased activity [0]. I'd be more interested in proposals that might mitigate that.

Or more generally, studies finding out how late such a project could start and still be successful, i.e., able to extract sufficient heat from the system before it erupts, thus preventing the eruption.

[0] https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/volcanos/europes-mo...

[calamari4065]

It'd be so cool if someone threw a ridiculous amount of money at doing this. The science seems at least plausible and there's some hypothetical benefits, but mostly it'd be a really fucking cool engineering project. Probably completely impractical, but the kind of massive "just to say we can" project I think we really need

[sschueller]

Depending on the depth this can be risky.

Switzerland had two larger projects to dig deep enough for a geothermal power plant and both got cancled due to the triggered earth quakes. [1]

There may be another attempt but it's risky and I think doing this at Yellowstone maybe a lot more risky.

[1] https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/strom-aus-erdwaerme-trotz-sc...

[isthatafact]

I inferred from the article that the risks are very poorly understood. If it just triggers a bunch of very minor earthquakes, that would be insignificant compared to potentially preventing a civilization-ending eruption.

Maybe learning more with simulations or theory is a good way forward, or maybe small scale experiments. If we do nothing and eventually notice that a giant eruption is about to happen, I suppose it would be too late. There seem to be many similarities in long term risk and possible prevention of asteroid impacts. I think these problems are worth exploring even though there is probably no direct benefit within a human lifetime.

[littlestymaar]

> The authors note that given the size of past Yellowstone eruptions, and the span of time between them, the rate that energy builds below the volcano is only around 1.5 gigawatts - less heat than a typical power plant sheds. Yellowstone currently bleeds heat at a rate of about 4.5 to 6 gigawatts, mostly through heated water moving below the surface. You'd thus (theoretically) only need to increase the heat bleed by around 35% to stop energy accumulating and stop future eruptions.

That sounds overly simplistic. Volcanic eruptions aren't caused by energy accumulation alone (otherwise every eruption would have the same magnitude), and AFAIK it's mostly the accumulation of gas that triggers eruptions, and in many cases the gas is in fact steam…

[fooker]

Could we trigger an eruption by extensive drilling in/around the magma chamber?

[jtriangle]

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.

[thaumasiotes]

> given the size of past Yellowstone eruptions, and the span of time between them, the rate that energy builds below the volcano is only around 1.5 gigawatts - less heat than a typical power plant sheds. Yellowstone currently bleeds heat at a rate of about 4.5 to 6 gigawatts, mostly through heated water moving below the surface. You'd thus (theoretically) only need to increase the heat bleed by around 35% to stop energy accumulating and stop future eruptions.

Doesn't this say that the heat bleed is already at least 300% of what's necessary to stop energy from accumulating?

[sp332]

No, it says that energy is bleeding at 4.5 GW and accumulating at 1.5GW. To get accumulation to 0, you need to boost bleeding by that amount.

[stsquad]

Isn't this basically the background to HZD: Frozen Wastes? A failing geoengineering project to keep Yellowstone stable.

[SilasX]

Vibes of this Onion parody:

“Bush Vows To Remove Toxic Petroleum From National Parks”

https://www.theonion.com/bush-vows-to-remove-toxic-petroleum...

[firebones]

Strong "I drink your milkshake!" vibes from these proposals.

Both of these proposals require political stability we're unlikely to see over 600 or 50,000 years. You have to be thinking some kind of self-sustaining and monumental Pyramids-type project.

[quickthrower2]

Capitalism wise they should be safe. Unless there is a war why wouldn’t the plants keep running?

[corethree]

Probably could. I doubt the US has the ability to do it. CA can't even finish the bart and they can't even finish the high speed rail.

Huge infra structure projects like this are no longer feasible in terms of cost and political/collective will in the US.

It's almost a 99% guarantee this will never get built ever. At least not by the US. Any time you see speculative stuff about big projects in the US that aren't related to the military it's a pretty much a guarantied pipe dream.

The only way I see it getting built if they angle it as some kind of military thing to stay competitive with China. But that's really a stretch.

[zdragnar]

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).

[fragmede]

How exactly do you "finish the Bart"? It's not a perfect system, but there are stations and trains and they run and people (including me) use it to get around.

[Modified3019]

I can't help but wonder if the yellowstone caldera going off would also trigger the cascadian subduction zone into doing it's thing sympathetically.

[saqadri]

Research like this really gives me cause for optimism about our ability to find creative solutions to the biggest issues facing humanity. It can’t lull us into complacency that “someone will figure it out”, but if we can mitigate volcanic eruptions while generating gigawatts of energy (albeit hypothetical), I hope we can also find ways to mitigate the effects of climate change.

[RagnarD]

What could possibly go wrong?

[lordnacho]

My main thought is how is a country that hasn't existed for 300 years going to maintain infrastructure for 830 years?

The country is already full of crumbling bridges and highways.

[jacquesm]

That's the only valid question for proposals at this scale.

[cratermoon]

I suspect it would work as well as building a giant system of dykes protected New Orleans from flooding in a hurricane.

[dwighttk]

Would pulling that much heat out of the ground help or hurt global warming?

[mcv]

Global warming doesn't come from heat from the ground, but from the atmosphere absorbing extra heat from the sun due to the increased amount of CO2 in it. If this geothermal energy generates enough power so we burn less fossil fuels put less CO2 into the atmosphere, it will slow global warming. The amount of heat we'd get from the ground would be comparable to the amount of heat we get from burning fossil fuels, and both would be negligible compared to the amount of additional heat we get from the sun.

[ndsipa_pomu]

Surely it would have to increase global warming unless there were effects such as a nuclear winter caused by a sudden uncontrolled release of the heat.

If you consider that that heat is stored underground where it doesn't affect weather patterns, then moving it to the surface is bound to involve the use of energy to move it and that energy will contribute to global warming as well as the heat released by the whole project.

[llamaInSouth]

What would it take to convert the Earth into a star?

[andrewflnr]

Several thousand Earth masses of hydrogen, with the unfortunate side effect of ending all life here.

[alephnerd]

We should take Montana and push it somewhere else.

[shiroiuma]

According to the article, this was originally Idaho's problem, but they pushed it to Montana.

[gcanyon]

tl;dr -- likely yes, by building geothermal power plants. This would cost billions (not trillions) of dollars. It would generate a fair bit of power, but not an extraordinary amount. They would run for (depending on how many we build) anywhere from a thousand to a hundred thousand years.

And if we're not careful there's a slight chance we could trigger an eruption instead of preventing one.

[klysm]

I love questions like this that feel like an XKCD

[cainxinth]

Why is this at the top? It's clearly a low effort, AI-generated response. From a user account created literally 20 minutes ago that says it's working for one of those stupid celeb net worth sites... and they even promoted it in their answer!