
Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity - unspecified
http://theconversation.com/drilling-surprise-opens-door-to-volcano-powered-electricity-22515
======
csense
Besides creating electricity, there are many potential industrial uses of
magma:

"Magma serves as a heat source, replacing fuel in magma smelters, magma
forges, magma glass furnaces, and magma kilns...Other uses for magma include
obsidian farming, trap design, melting ice, igniting fires, and even garbage
disposal." [1]

[1]
[http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Magma](http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Magma)

~~~
DrStalker
Then one day someone leaves a sock on the ground starting a series of events
that ends with everyone in Iceland being either dead or insane.

~~~
shaggyfrog
Urist Björnsson cancels Pickup Item: on fire

------
squigs25
The problem with geothermal power is access. It's the reason why Iceland is
almost entirely powered by renewables, and why the rest of the world isn't.

So if Iceland finds pockets of magma at 5km, it's only really a breakthrough
if you can access magma at shallow depths in other regions.

~~~
dredmorbius
There is, however, access in a number of regions where geothermal can be quite
useful.

Iceland doesn't have a large population (332,000), but it's relatively close
to Europe (or at least Ireland), and there have been proposals to link it via
undersea transmission cables to the European grid.

Other significant resources exist around much of the Pacific Rim, including in
Hawaii (limited population and a long way from nowhere), Japan (high
population and critical energy resource ocnstraints), the Philippines, New
Zealand, and the Pacific coast of the US. One of the largest present
geothermal installations is The Geysers in California, with just under 1 GW of
installed capacity. The largest geothermal resource within the US would be the
Yellowstone supercaldera, and though this is presently protected from
development, it represents a vast energy potential, as much as 20% of present
US electric generating potential under some estimates. The National Park
Status means that research is highly limited, so take with a very strong dose
of salt.

Other significant resources exist in Kenya (another rift zone, as is New
Zealand). Given Africa's status as a developing region, this is potentially
hugely useful.

Geothermal has been significantly developed in many of these areas. I did some
digging and apparently the Philippines has developed as much as 50% of its
potential, where it provides 16% of the nation's electricity needs. Japan and
the US have also done considerable development, as, of course, has Iceland.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power_in_the_Philip...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power_in_the_Philippines)

Geothermal offers a number of very useful characteristics in a renewable /
sustainable energy mix, including:

⚫ Base-load potential. Geothermal runs 24/7, is dispatchable (that is, you can
throttle it up or down), and balances the nondispatchable nature of wind and
solar energy.

⚫ Proven. Geothermal has been in active commercial production for decades.
This is proven technology.

⚫ Relatively low local impacts. Plant footprints are small and local
environmental disturbance fairly limited. Water needs and the possibility of
locally-induced earthquakes (most minor) are possible concerns.

But it is still limited to specific locations for high yields. And if you're
drawing sufficient amounts of thermal energy from even high-yield caldera, it
can take a considerable period of time (decades) for a geothermal zone to
recover. This is particularly a concern with "EGS" (enhanced geothermal
systems) in which boreholes are drilled into otherwise only marginal zones.
Often a single borehole's useful life is limited to a decade or two.

~~~
_delirium
> there have been proposals to link it via undersea transmission cables to the
> European grid

A transmission cable is sometimes discussed, but so far Iceland has been
taking advantage of the fact that aluminum smelting is a workable way to
congeal cheap power into transportable money. Aluminum smelting is typically
by electrolysis [1], and aluminum is light and compact relative to its value
so easy to ship, so smelting aluminum and exporting it essentially allows you
to "export electricity". Not at the same rates as you could sell actual
electricity, but with easier transport/storage characteristics that makes it
still attractive. The largest power plant in Iceland (a hydro one) is entirely
purpose-built solely to power a smelter [2].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall%E2%80%93H%C3%A9roult_proc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall%E2%80%93H%C3%A9roult_process)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rahnj%C3%BAkar_Hydropow...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rahnj%C3%BAkar_Hydropower_Plant)

~~~
dredmorbius
Right. Much as food production is an alternative to exporting water, aluminum
(or fertilizer) productions are alternatives to exporting energy.

You'll typically find aluminium smelters where electricity is cheap. E.g., the
Pacific Northwest / Western Canada, where ample hydroelectric resources exist.

~~~
adwn
> Much as food production is an alternative to exporting water

There's only very little water in exported food, so as long as you're not
using non-replenishable sources (like fossil water) or limited sources (like
rivers) for food production, the amount of water that is actually exported is
negligibly small.

~~~
dredmorbius
_There 's only very little water in exported food_

The point isn't how much water is physically _in_ food exported, but how much
was required to _create_ it. From this Forbes article:

[http://www.forbes.com/2008/06/19/water-food-trade-tech-
water...](http://www.forbes.com/2008/06/19/water-food-trade-tech-
water08-cx_fp_0619virtual.html)

 _We don’t realize it as we sit down to a meal, but most crops require huge
volumes of water to grow: 65 gallons to grow a pound of potatoes; 650 gallons
for a pound of rice._

 _Often, food supplies are only maintained at the expense of literally
emptying some of the world’s great rivers, such as the Indus in Pakistan, the
Yellow River in China and the Nile in Egypt. Elsewhere, underground reserves
are being pumped dry._

 _But increasingly, countries are giving up on trying to feed their
populations from their own resources and are switching to food imports. That
means they are also importing the water embodied in the crops, or virtual
water. Every ton of wheat arriving at a dockside carries with it, in virtual
form, the thousand tons of water needed to grow it._

And if you're looking at meat, it's much higher -- about 2,500 gallons per
pound of beef.

Similarly, it's not that you're going to get zapped by electricity when
touching aluminum, but the _amount_ of electricity required to _extract_ that
aluminum is vast.

~~~
adwn
Maybe you should have actually read my comment: I was explicitly excluding
cases where river or fossil water is being used.

And the "65 gallons of water per pound of potatoes" is utter bullshit. Whether
rain falls on untouched grass land or on potato plants does not matter to the
water ecosystem.

------
politician
I'd love to see an xkcd "What if" follow up to this article exploring the idea
of pin-holing the planet with these vents, the peak PW output, and the effects
of the resulting cooling.

~~~
XaspR8d
I just submitted a question on "running out" of renewable energy that included
this scenario, so fingers crossed!

------
ck2
About about using the $1 Billion in natural gas they burn off every year in
North Dakota for electricity instead of just heating the atmosphere.

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2269517/The-
picture-...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2269517/The-picture-
space-shows-U-S-oil-field-burning-gas-power-Chicago-AND-Washington-cheaper-
selling-it.html)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/business/energy-
environmen...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/business/energy-
environment/in-north-dakota-wasted-natural-gas-flickers-against-the-
sky.html?_r=0)

~~~
tokenadult
I seem to be one of the few persons commenting so far who actually lives in
the region and regularly reads local reporting on issues in North Dakota (a
state neighboring my state). Western North Dakota, where the Bakken Shale oil
boom is occurring, is very sparsely populated and historically had minimal
infrastructure. It takes TIME to build pipelines to move the natural gas
brought up by oil drilling operations to natural gas customers. Pipeline
proposals are currently in regulatory review. There isn't even pipeline
infrastructure in place yet for all of the petroleum production in North
Dakota--much of the oil produced there is brought to broader markets in tanker
trucks, and the truck traffic volumes are putting a lot of stress on highway
roadbeds until the highways can be upgraded. Right now there is a boom economy
in western North Dakota, with extremely high wages, low unemployment, a
shortage of single women,

[http://www.twincities.com/national/ci_22382285/north-
dakota-...](http://www.twincities.com/national/ci_22382285/north-dakota-oil-
boom-unsettles-gender-balance-some)

and established businesses in the region importing workers from as far away as
Illinois just to keep up normal operations as workers quit to join oil field
crews. There hasn't been time to build infrastructure yet to move away the
natural gas to markets that will pay for the gas--especially because the price
of natural gas all over the United States has crashed because of the huge
increase in production in the last few years. But given time, yes, there will
be infrastructure in place to transport Bakken Shale gas to other markets, and
I'm sure that we here in Minnesota will be as glad to have North Dakotan
natural gas to supplement our nuclear-powered energy grid as we already are to
have North Dakotan petroleum brought in by truck. Once more pipelines are
built, the entire United States energy economy will become more flexible.

Still to be figured out is the economics of converting natural gas
deliquefaction terminals (those cost BILLIONS of dollars and years to build or
convert) along the Gulf Coast into liquefaction terminals, so that the United
States can get into the business of exporting liquified natural gas. It could
happen. North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula used to flare off all of their
natural gas incidentally brought up during petroleum production--there was no
local market for it. It took a long time to develop natural gas liquefaction;
now there is international trade in natural gas that was undreamed of when I
was growing up.

~~~
revelation
I don't get it. If you don't have the capacity to transport what you are
producing, you can't be producing. Or put very simply: you can not be allowed
to burn off unwanted gas. The cost is certainly not _zero_ , it is an enormous
sum that dwarfs whatever profit they could hope to get from selling it, and it
is failed states only that would allow this massive negative externality.

There seems to be no learning in the American midwest. Every other time some
novel way of destroying the environment comes along, disenfranchised states
quickly clear out _all regulatory law_ to make place for the new boom, and
when it's over they are left with unemployed single men with a bunch of new
trucks and a wrecked environment while the companies made off with the profit.

~~~
Crito
Burning the gas as waste contributes CO2 to the atmosphere, but burning the
gas for productive reasons still produces that same CO2.

If it were burned for productive reasons, some of the thermal energy released
would be stored in chemical bonds formed by the manufacturing of any number of
things, but most of it would ultimately still be released into the atmosphere
as waste heat during _some_ stage of its use.

There is the angle that if more natural gas were used to generate electricity,
then less coal burning would be required. That certainly is an argument for
getting and burning more natural gas in power plants, but barring that
possibility in the present due to poor logistics, we will still be burning
that coal whether the natural gas is burned off as waste, or whether it is
never pumped up in the first place.

We could also spend money taking the gas and shoving it back where it came
from, but that really is not practical.

The bigoted attitude towards the mid-west is uncalled for, even if you don't
like what is going on in North Dakota.

~~~
joeyo

      > Burning the gas as waste contributes CO2 to the
      > atmosphere, but burning the gas for productive
      > reasons still produces that same CO2.
    

True, but if has to be burned, it may as well be productive. Moreover, if it's
burned unproductively now, then presumably there is other productive CO2 being
released now as well (unless we start accepting black-outs). There could be as
much as two units of CO2 being released now, versus a single unit of CO2
otherwise. So that's more CO2 over a short time-scale.

There are time-scales over which releasing CO2 is more or less harmful; I
don't pretend to know the critical ones. However, it seems self evident that
if that rate of release can be slowed, then its consequences will be less
harmful, even if the total amount of CO2 released by T_{infinity} is exactly
the same.

~~~
Crito
> _" Moreover, if it's burned unproductively now, then presumably there is
> other productive CO2 being released now as well (unless we start accepting
> black-outs). There could be as much as two units of CO2 being released now,
> versus a single unit of CO2 otherwise. So that's more CO2 over a short time-
> scale."_

I assume that either way, we are going to eventually burn it until depletion.
We can't keep it up forever, we will need to switch to renewable energy at
some point and that renewable energy will be carbon neutral.

It's a shame that it is being wasted instead of used for something productive,
but I am just not convinced that it is some sort of environmental disaster.

~~~
onetwofiveten
I don't think we will run out of gas before we switch to renewables. The
supply of gas (as in, the amount of gas that can be produced per month) is
limited and the demand for energy is always increasing, so prices are always
going to go up. As new technology develops, and with economies of scale,
renewables are getting cheaper. I think we'll get past the tipping point where
renewable generation + storage is cheaper than fossil fuels well before we
actually run out of gas. Being inefficient with our resources (like burning
gas like this) means we'll be much worse off when that happens.

------
pm90
For many years I imagined that space faring future humans would depend on
hydrogen gas clouds as the source of their energy. Think: intergalactic
highways with gas-stations at such formations. But this brings another
resource to mind: In the future, we might view planets, not merely for their
mineral resources, but also for the heat that may be trapped within them
(AFAIK not all planets have a hot, molten core).

Autonomous planetary settlement bots; colonizers of planets. Harnessing the
energy trapped within the planet to refine minerals on the surface or
terraform the surface.

~~~
dredmorbius
Stars are fusion plants.

Sufficiently large planets are dual gravitational + fission plants. There's
pretty good reason to believe there may be active natural sustained chain
reaction fission reactors within the Earth's inner mantel / outer core (for
reasons the geologists / geophysicists are better able to explain, apparently
not in the core itself). There's also considerable latent heat from formation
-- even after 4.5 billion years (rock is a good insulator).

But not all planets have molten interiors (Mars doesn't). And many aren't
particularly accessible: Venus has that little atmosphere problem, Mercury's a
tad toasty, and gas giants don't give your legs a leg to stand on. Plus
gravity.

Visions of spacefaring humans are, I suspect, mostly strongly fantastical:

[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2007/06/the_high...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2007/06/the_high_frontier_redux.html)

[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2009/11/the_myth...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2009/11/the_myth_of_the_starship.html)

[http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/why-not-
space/](http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/why-not-space/)

~~~
ep103
I don't buy it. Those articles just make it sound like any truly future craft
needs to include a biome and fission reactor; in short, an aircraft carrier
with Wisconsin fast plants. But sci-fi has been pointing us in this direction
for ages. The Apollo missions were amazing, Space-X is amazing, but they are
very much more like knarrs
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knarr](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knarr))
than the caravels
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravel))
that came later and found the new world.

~~~
dredmorbius
Um. What exactly are you suggesting.

Oceans are capable of being crossed by little more than someone clinging to or
sitting on a log (not with a particularly high survival rate, mind). Or
bundles of papyrus reeds or balsawood rafts, as Thor Heyerdahl demonstrated. I
personally know several people who've _rowed_ across oceans. Some of them
multiple times and/or multiple oceans.

The odds of rowing to Ceres or Alpha Centauri, let alone the Andromeda Galaxy,
on a log raft, are rather slim.

------
coryfklein
It sounds like they didn't intend to drill into magma, but is it possible to
survey the land and intentionally find magma near the surface to exploit in
this manner?

If not, isn't the question of whether you can effectively harness the energy
or not moot?

~~~
jug6ernaut
Not going to say its easy. But you can pretty accurately map magma under the
surface using seismology. I believe it requires an earthquake and having the
correct equipment in place, so its far from ideal. But it does work well.

~~~
tomrod
It's been awhile since I've sat in on geology, but I seem to recall that they
can use short-range seismic signals (by firing a shotgun shell into the
ground). I'm not sure as to the resolution -- one could imagine getting better
resolution firing multiple shells simultaneously over a certain area. My $.02

~~~
VladRussian2
30 years ago remember USSR used underground nukes at least once specifically
for exploration of oil/gas in Siberia.

~~~
Crito
_" 39 explosions for the purpose of geological exploration (trying to find new
natural gas deposits by studying seismic waves produced by small nuclear
explosions)"_

(As well as several other interesting tests/uses)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_Nati...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_National_Economy)

------
JulianMorrison
Tap Yellowstone's geothermal. See if we can't get greedy enough for energy
extraction that we end up preventing a supervolcano.

~~~
YokoZar
I do wonder to what extent we can mitigate potential future volcanic activity
by preemptively pulling energy out of hot spots like this.

The odds are low, but a supervolcanic detonation in Yellowstone would be one
of the most serious threats to the United States (or even the planet), so if
we can mitigate it slightly while actually profiting from the process that
seems worth pursuing.

------
DanWaterworth
_According to the International Geothermal Association, 10,700MW of geothermal
electricity was generated worldwide in 2010_

I doubt they said that.

~~~
pygy_
Why?

~~~
InclinedPlane
Power is a measure of... power, not energy. MW/year is a silly unit. In the US
energy production on an annual basis is given in BTUs, or Joules (usually
quadrillions of BTUs, depending on the scale). Perhaps the article meant 10.7
GW of installed production capacity. Regardless, that's about 0.3 quadrillion
BTUs per year, which is a blip compared to the world's energy consumption.

~~~
masklinn
> Perhaps the article meant 10.7 GW of installed production capacity.

The original report does indeed, the article misquoted (and possibly
misunderstood) it. Here is the exact quote and its surrounding paragraph:

> In 2005, there were 8,933 MW of installed power capacity in 24 countries,
> generating 55,709 GWh per year of green power, according to the
> International Geothermal Association. IGA reports in 2010 that 10,715 MW is
> on line generating 67,246 GWh. This represents a 20% increase in geothermal
> power on line between 2005 and 2010. IGA projects this will grow to 18,500
> MW by 2015, which based upon the large number of projects under
> consideration appears reasonable if not conservative.

> Regardless, that's about 0.3 quadrillion BTUs per year, which is a blip
> compared to the world's energy consumption.

note that the quote is about electricity generation, not power consumption in
general.

Still a blip though, in 2008 global electricity generation was estimated at
20261 TWh, geothermal production thus accounting for ~0.3% of global
production.

A few select countries have fairly high geo ratios though: Iceland's at 30%
geothermal, the Philippines at 27%, El Salvador 25%, Costa Rica at 14% and
Kenya at 11.2% (2010 numbers).

The US are the biggest producer of geothermal electricity (29% of global
production, #2 is the philippines at 18%) but the ratio matches global,
geothermal is 0.3% of the US's electricity production.

------
ommunist
Old trick. The USSR built geothermal power plants since 1966. But this tech is
only available in very specific geological conditions. What is more
energetically interesting in Scandinavia is their experimental thorium
reactor.

------
cromwellian
Would mining too much geothermal energy hurt the earths dynamo like in the
movie The Core :)?

~~~
secstate
The short answer is, we don't know. The longer answer involves a lot of
evidence that we can't hurt it that much. But then again, in the 1900's
farmers were forced by law to dump their waste ag chemicals into the Atlantic
ocean, so wait 100 years and we'll see.

More importantly are the subtle differences to ground water temperature when
wells are drilled close together in densely populated areas. This is a bit
off-topic for the OP, but I went to an alt-energy talk where someone was all
jazzed about geo-thermal. I asked if anyone's done any research about what the
cold water pumped into the well does to the water table, or whether you could
trigger fungal blooms underground and render otherwise potable water
undrinkable. They, as you can guess, didn't have an answer.

Alt-energy is all exciting and holds such potential until you realize that
bituminous coal was once the miracle solution to having everyone burn wood.

------
philsnow
"Drilling opens door to volcano-powered surprise"

Sounds like somebody's hit the Happy Fun Stuff. Everybody watch out, FPS is
about to hit the floor.

------
truelson
I am not sure if it's a good thing that I saw this headline and immediately
thought of Dwarf Fortress.

~~~
logfromblammo
Just so long as they steer cleer of the hollow adamantite veins, we ought to
be fine.

------
marshray
Why is it so much harder to drill a hole 10-20 km deep (where the mantle is
predictable) than 2 km deep?

------
Aardwolf
What could possibly go wrong :)

