[HN Gopher] Yellowstone Caldera Volcanic Power Generation: Volca...
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Yellowstone Caldera Volcanic Power Generation: Volcanic Energy on
National Scale
Author : mhb
Score : 55 points
Date : 2023-02-12 14:09 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencedirect.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencedirect.com)
| orasis wrote:
| I live near Yellowstone. This is a sad joke.
|
| No one wants the pristine nature of our first National Park
| soiled and the logistics of building infrastructure in such
| intensely mountainous terrain would be wildly impractical.
|
| The billionaires already have a hard enough time getting their
| "cabins" built at the Yellowstone Club.
| stevespang wrote:
| [dead]
| somewhat_drunk wrote:
| It's an interesting idea, but it would mean that a single attack
| could cripple the entire country.
|
| It will never happen.
| 71a54xd wrote:
| I briefly worked for a guy who made millions a few years out of
| college speculating his entire net worth on corn fields in Iowa
| when the Obama admin was looking to buy up land for ethanol
| production facilities.
|
| At the time, he was working on a relatively interesting crypto
| backed prediction market intended to mine data from skilled
| professionals. It worked, but unfortunately the idea and the
| bespoke math behind it never really took off.
|
| However, with his background as a construction engineer he
| created this:
|
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US9121393B2/en?assignee=ma...
|
| A novel means to extract geothermal energy without needing both
| water AND mineral rights on a piece of land AND the ability to
| vary how much energy you'd like to extract. This patent also
| explicitly references that you could power the entire western US
| with a few of these wells placed near Yellowstone. Granted, each
| well at that scale would near a cost of $1B.
|
| Hope you're doing well Matt!
| stupendousyappi wrote:
| The benefits described sound contradictory to me. If you're
| removing enough heat to reduce the likelihood of Yellowstone
| erupting, you're removing enough to reduce the power output of
| the plant. Perhaps there's way to balance those two outcomes, but
| I know that other geothermal plants have sucked their heat
| reservoirs dry over decades of use. I suppose you could do a
| better job of matching the rate of heat extraction of the rate of
| natural regeneration, but I imagine that would enormously reduce
| the potential output of the plant, and that's not an issue this
| paper addresses.
| evan_ wrote:
| On the other hand, preventing Yellowstone from erupting would
| be a pretty good outcome by itself, and getting a few decades
| (centuries?) of free power in the exchange is just a bonus...
| wins32767 wrote:
| They're proposing drilling into the caldera. I'm not sure
| releasing the pressure on the magma chamber is going to forestall
| the eruption...
| LinuxBender wrote:
| As someone that lives close to Yellowstone I am personally fine
| with either outcome. Less than 5% of the upper lava chamber is
| molten and less than 2% of the lower magma chamber is molten.
| There are differing numbers by different scientists on the next
| major eruption but they are all well beyond 10,000 years. This
| is why we do not get the regular eruptions seen in Hawaii.
| Hawaii's lava chambers are over 50% molten.
| paulkrush wrote:
| TL;DR: Only read sentences that have "copper" or "8".
| rich_sasha wrote:
| What a strange paper.
|
| It seems to fixate on seemingly irrelevant details, like a lot of
| ink is devoted to saying "copper" (surely some alloy is more
| suitable or cost-effective) or particular models of a steam
| turbine. It presents the price of copper, in $/pound, and states
| it is abundant on that basis. Doesn't mention annual production
| as far as I can tell. It asserts, without justification, that
| water can be demineralized, pumped through copper pipes and
| returned to a lake with no damage to the environment, again
| providing vague and comparatively minor details about e.g.
| mineral buildup in the pipes.
|
| On the other hand, it seems to ignore massive issues. For
| example, it specifies that the copper elements should be
| manufactured nearby, be 8m in diameter, made in 10m long
| segments... But what about how to drill them into the ground?
| Into hot magma no less?
|
| > The details of the tunneling process, from a geology,
| volcanology, as well as a mining and drilling standpoint, is
| beyond the scope of this paper.
|
| Furthermore, volcanoes have complex dynamics. It's not merely a
| soup of hot magma sitting in one place. It rises and falls, for
| example, presumably flows around too.
|
| Cooling the upper parts of the magma chamber is not exactly
| without risk, either. Cooler, thus harder crust on top of the
| volcano keeps the pressure fro erupting, but also allows it to
| rise further. It's like bolting on the pan cover instead of
| letting it rattle in the steam.
|
| It's like reading an experiment design for cooking an egg on
| Mars, which is all concerned about cooking times and
| temperatures, and what colour the egg holder should be, and
| getting to Mars in the first place is an implementation detail.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| What could go wrong?
| jeffbee wrote:
| 150 megatons of copper seems like a lot. That's a decade of
| global production. This paper, while novel, does not seem
| compelling when compared to traditional water injection
| geothermal, as practiced at the Long Valley or Clear Lake
| volcanic fields in California.
| jmclnx wrote:
| This would be interesting and would like to see it.
|
| I wonder if this will cause a lot of people to migrate to an area
| that could be risky to live near. But, I guess if yellowstone
| blows, it would not matter where you live in North America.
| mc32 wrote:
| Generally, one would want to be more than 1000km from the
| eruption site. Ash would cover crops and so on, but you're not
| going to be obliterated. Yes, the crop failures and cascading
| effects would render much of the world food source inoperable
| for some time, but also would replenish the midwest topsoil.
|
| How long ash would remain airborne would also have an impact on
| crops elsewhere and could result in mini ice-age conditions.
|
| Still not the end of the current civilization.
|
| Also, Yellowstone is not the only supervolcano around.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Or the world.
|
| Ice age I believe.
| bamboozled wrote:
| * (3) the need to forever forestall the eruption of the
| Yellowstone Supervolcano.*
|
| What a project...
| bilsbie wrote:
| Anyone have a short summary? I got lost reading that paper.
| jeffbee wrote:
| A crank with a tenuous grasp of thermodynamics proposes a
| planet-scale megaproject to extract energy from the
| Yellowstone, and all he needs is several trillion dollars and
| all the world's known copper.
| cs702 wrote:
| It's a very clever idea and a really cool proposal. The paper's
| abstract does a great job summarizing it:
|
| "The USA is confronted with three epic-size problems: (1) the
| need for production of energy on a scale that meets the current
| and future needs of the nation, (2) the need to confront the
| climate crisis head-on by only producing renewable, green energy,
| that is 100% emission-free, and (3) the need to forever forestall
| the eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano. This paper offers
| both a provable practical, novel solution, and a thought
| experiment, to simultaneously solve all of the above stated
| problems. Through a new copper-based engineering approach on an
| unprecedented scale, this paper proposes a safe means to draw up
| the mighty energy reserve of the Yellowstone Supervolcano from
| within the Earth, to superheat steam for spinning turbines at
| sufficient speed and on a sufficient scale, in order to power the
| entire USA. The proposed, single, multi-redundant facility
| utilizes the star topology in a grid array pattern to accomplish
| this. Over time, bleed-off of sufficient energy could potentially
| forestall this Supervolcano from ever erupting again. With
| obvious importance to our planet and the research community
| alike, COMSOL simulation demonstrates and proves the solution
| proposed herein, to bring vast amounts of green, emission-free
| energy to the planet's surface for utilization. Well over 11
| Quadrillion Watt hours of electrical energy generated over the
| course of one full year, to meet the current and future needs of
| the USA is shown to be practical. Going beyond other current and
| past research efforts, this methodology offers tremendous
| benefits, potentially on a planetary scale."
|
| The obvious questions have to do with political feasibility and
| cost. Is this realistically possible? Is there enough citizen,
| business, and government support to move forward with it? Do we
| have the resources to pull it off? Can we afford it? Deep inside
| the paper I found this tidbit, suggesting the authors don't know:
|
| "There is no question that this entire project, including
| facility construction, as well as the upgrade for the power
| distribution network, would cost trillions of dollars. This paper
| was not, however, written to discuss the wisdom of such a costly
| investment. Even if spending these many trillions of dollars is
| not practical, it does not mean that any of the proposed ideas is
| not doable and should not be contemplated. This paper was thus
| written with the intent to propose these ideas and analysis
| within the realm of a thought experiment. The ideas presented
| here are entirely implementable with enough national will, and a
| large enough pocket book to do so."
| voisin wrote:
| > Is there enough citizen, business, and government support to
| move forward with it?
|
| We can't even agree collectively that climate change is
| happening, let alone is a problem, let alone needs vast
| resources to fix. In some localities, you cannot have solar and
| be grid connected.
|
| So no, we can't have nice things.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Neither the article nor the comments here (so far) address the
| implication that this project would turn one of our most
| beautiful national parks into an industrial site.
| Ilverin wrote:
| It proposes 100 sites over a 1200 square mile area. Each site
| would be at least 3 miles away from any other site. Energy
| generation, except nuclear, either uses a fair bit physical
| space or causes pollution, and doing energy generation in
| Yellowstone means other areas of the country don't have to.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| This is fair, but also if the supervolcano goes up, you have
| also lost the national park.
|
| I wonder if this would be a good case to try various concepts
| for including nature in our engineering design. How much could
| we ensure is zero emission, mostly underground, and reducing
| impact to plants and animals.
| pwython wrote:
| Nature is beautiful. But if this were a possibility, to create
| clean energy to power a nation, wouldn't you think that's more
| beautiful? I mean, is it any worse than hydroelectric dams?
| Steltek wrote:
| How feasible is transmitting power from a central point to
| everywhere on the continent? Wouldn't the losses make this a
| nonstarter?
|
| A single power plant is a single source of failure. Handing over
| the nation's power needs to a prototype is insane.
|
| Finally, if power could be effectively transmitted cross-
| continent, why not choose other proven ideas? A huge solar array
| in the desert? An enormous offshore wind farm? A hydro dam that
| doesn't exist to grow alfalfa (hey-o!)?
| snickerbockers wrote:
| IDK how much energy would be lost, but if it's all free energy
| the volcano was going to release anyways then it doesn't matter
| if it's wasteful.
|
| Not sure if there are any limits to how far you can send power
| over cables though. I only have a hobbyist understanding of
| electronics, and I'd imagine that at that scale a lot of the
| abstractions that make things simple (like 0-impedance from
| cables) don't apply.
| amluto wrote:
| I'm skeptical of their material choices. Gold plated copper 8km
| underground? If the gold gets damaged, it seems like they may
| have a problem. What's wrong with stainless steel? And pumping
| 90000 gpm of demineralized water through hot copper doesn't sound
| like a very nice thing to do with the copper, although I have no
| actual experience with this. (Certainly, various water
| compositions are quite corrosive to copper at room temperature,
| and I've seen copper damaged by corrosive water.)
|
| Also, this thing is 8km deep, and it will have water going down
| one way and steam going back up the other way. The fluids are
| moving, which complicates things, but the hydrostatic pressure of
| 8km of water is 11k psi, and the hydrostatic pressure of 8km of
| steam is much much less, and there will be some gnarly dynamics
| involved. (As a relevant example, a tube of water that's sealed
| and hot at the bottom makes a geyser!). And any residual solids
| in the water going down will stay down the hole as scale.
|
| If I were designing this thing, I would seriously consider a
| working fluid that is liquid over the entire operating range.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| My understanding is that they're talking about solid copper 8 m
| wide
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