
Nasa’s ambitious plan to save Earth from a supervolcano - jostmey
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170817-nasas-ambitious-plan-to-save-earth-from-a-supervolcano
======
iaw
I like the idea but a $0.10/kWh marginal cost is not the same as $0.10/kWh
electricity.

If they plan on extracting 6GW they'll need to put it somewhere, what's a
people hub near Yellowstone? ...

So they'll have to build out high capacity transmission lines which have
associated costs for leases, construction, and maintenance.

Then finally you get into the real kicker: cost of transmission. If only 5% of
your transmitted energy actually makes it to your buyer, without congestion,
you're spending $0.10 / kWh but your buyer is paying $2.00 / kWh where the
difference all goes to line losses.

Maybe building data centers nearby is a good way to mitigate the
infrastructure problem.

Edit: I also forgot to mention the time value of energy infrastructure. What
is the expected time horizon to break even at target rates of return? How do
those returns compare to other forms of capital investment? What's the risk
profile look like for power producers that require heavy upfront investment?
(hint: not good)

Edit: Okay, the 5% figure was out of bounds, more realistic is 97% with proper
build-out.

~~~
xyzzyz
> If they plan on extracting 6GW they'll need to put it somewhere, what's a
> people hub near Yellowstone? ...

You can put it into aluminum production, for example, though at $0.10/kWh it's
going to be an unprofitable business.

> If only 5% of your transmitted energy actually makes it to your buyer,
> without congestion, you're spending $0.10 / kWh but your buyer is paying
> $2.00 / kWh where the difference all goes to line losses.

You might get 95% loss if you wrapped your line around the globe, but for
practical length of 1000 km, you can get as little as 3% with high voltage DC.
Check out the Pacific DC Intertie, which is 50 years old instalation with over
800 miles of conductor spanning from Columbia River to Los Angeles.

~~~
elihu
Presumably any process that can use the heat directly rather than converting
to electricity would be more cost-effective, as you lose most of the energy in
that conversion.

I assume 350C isn't hot enough for aluminum which melts around 660C, but maybe
there are other industrial processes that could take advantage of the heat.
Maybe using the heat to kiln-dry wood or cure autoclaved aerated concrete
blocks or something like that.

~~~
xyzzyz
> Presumably any process that can use the heat directly rather than converting
> to electricity would be more cost-effective, as you lose most of the energy
> in that conversion.

All practical electricity generation technologies do it through heating water
just the same, and they produce hot water as a waste product too. So, if your
industrial process can use heat directly, it might as well use waste heat from
existing power plants.

~~~
jopsen
And some places this is how entire cities are heated...

Well, usually they run out of excess heating in the winter.

Perhaps, Yellowstone and Iceland ought to have some heavy industry.

~~~
njarboe
Iceland has some large aluminum smelters and aluminum is 40% of their export
income[1]. They do heat their homes with geothermal. It's basically free and
when I was there the lowest setting for the heat in my apartment was 22.4C
(72F).

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Iceland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Iceland)

~~~
lostlogin
Interesting link. 800,000 mtpy is a lot of aluminium. While the ‘zero
environmental imapct’ claim is controversial, the environment impact is
definitely lower than many other producers.

------
Semiapies
And I look in vain through the article, trying to find any quotes from someone
identified as a geologist. (Brian Wilcox, of course, is an electrical engineer
and roboticist.). This article may be better than the original link, but it's
still fear-mongering with breathless appeals to the geological and ecological
expertise of a guy who designs robots.

[https://www-robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/people/Brian_Wilcox/person...](https://www-
robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/people/Brian_Wilcox/personFull.cfm)

~~~
glennon
Erik Klemetti, an assistant professor of Geosciences at Denison University,
wrote a response in Discover Magazine after news outlets reported about the
NASA project in August. His article discusses the notion of an overdue
Yellowstone eruption, the context for the NASA exercise, and the state of
existing technology. Klemetti concludes, "It is a fun science fiction short
story...but it isn’t any sort of real plan to save the planet from
Yellowstone."
[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/rockyplanet/2017/08/31/225...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/rockyplanet/2017/08/31/2250904/)

As an aside, I hold a Master's in Geoscience with an emphasis in hydrogeology,
and have studied the Yellowstone geothermal system since about 2000. The NASA
thought exercise is certainly worth considering in the very long term, and we
should aspire to advance technology and our understanding of the associated
environmental systems to afford it.

However, more immediately, there has been immense political pressure to allow
geothermal energy exploitation outside the national park -- with unknown and
poorly understood consequences for the geysers and thermal system inside the
park. In 1994, a law that would cease any nearby geothermal drilling if Old
Faithful Geyser was disrupted failed to pass in Congress. I worry that this
type of article, the original post, is being floated to promote that drilling
agenda: a near-term excuse for private industry gains under the guise of
saving humanity and at the expense of one of the world's most fantastic
landscapes.

~~~
YokoZar
Erik's argument seems to be:

\- It's not erupting within our lifetimes

\- If it were showing signs of actively erupting soon, it would take
infeasible amounts of drilling and cooling to prevent

\- Therefore, we should make contingency plans for an eruption but no plans to
prevent.

This sounds like sheer madness to me. The problem of cooling down Yellowstone
is much easier if you spread the task over a few thousand years rather than
postpone it until an eruption is imminent. Yet he doesn't even consider such
an option, despite the clear upside of thousands of years of extracted
geothermal energy.

~~~
soundwave106
I found the argument reasonable. My summary of this article would more read:
it would be hugely super expensive to explore this plan, there are many
unknown assumptions, at this point the technology is not sufficient due to the
depth of the magma and quantity of water required, and VEI8 explosions
actually don't typically lead to mass extinction anyways. I personally give
more weight to opinions from those with stronger backgrounds in geology.

Things I would add: Yellowstone is in an _extremely_ rural area, so
transmission costs and infrastructure would have to be considered in any
geothermal project.

Yellowstone the park attracts four million people a year now, making up a
significant portion of Wyoming's GDP, and geysers are a big reason for this;
mucking with this ecosystem should be done cautiously.

Aside from aesthetics, there are some potentially very valuable insights on
life and science that are perhaps possible within a protected geyser
ecosystem. To give an example, this thermophilic bacteria's enzyme plays a
very important role in PCR DNA amplification, and it was discovered in
Yellowstone's Lower Geyser Basin --
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermus_aquaticus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermus_aquaticus)

The other thing I see is that there are many other volcanic systems out there.
So as far as the risk of a supervolcano explosion is concerned, I'm not sure
how much reducing one potential VEI8 explosive zone matters from a humanity
risk perspective. Taupo actually has had 3 VEI8s in 1 million years compared
to just 1 in Yellowstone. The worst VEI8 explosion in the last million years
(as far as ejecta) was not Yellowstone, but Lake Toba. Other than Taupo and
Yellowstone, most of the other VEI8 explosions seem to be at pretty random
locations, so it seems like mitigating _all_ supervolcano risk from drilling
projects would be difficult.

One can argue that doing something is better than nothing, but the cost /
benefit ratio might be quite a lot better with things explained in the article
like seed banks (which would protect from multiple disaster types occurring in
any location, not just one volcanic one).

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droopybuns
I recently visited Iceland. We toured the Krafala area:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krafla](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krafla)

There were numerous signs about the "Krafla fires" in the late 70's & early
80's. [http://earthice.hi.is/krafla_fires](http://earthice.hi.is/krafla_fires)

The signs in the region very clearly express a possible linkage with early
geothermal energy drilling. I want to be gentle with my wording- because I
don't recall it exactly, but the writers had little doubt that there was a
link between some of boring that was happening the week the eruptions started.

It's been interesting to return home & do google searching on the topic. I
can't seem to find any references that authoritatively link the eruptions with
the geothermal activity- but it seems like an anecdote worth looking into.

~~~
caf
The BBC article linked in an earlier comment has this:

 _“The most important thing with this is to do no harm,” Wilcox says. “If you
drill into the top of the magma chamber and try and cool it from there, this
would be very risky. This could make the cap over the magma chamber more
brittle and prone to fracture. And you might trigger the release of harmful
volatile gases in the magma at the top of the chamber which would otherwise
not be released.”_

 _Instead, the idea is to drill in from the supervolcano from the lower sides,
starting outside the boundaries of Yellowstone National Park, and extracting
the heat from the underside of the magma chamber. “This way you’re preventing
the heat coming up from below from ever reaching the top of the chamber which
is where the real threat arises,” Wilcox says._

------
mchannon
When you inject cold water into hot brittle rock, fracturing can occur.

You'll notice western Oklahoma is now replete with earthquakes, when they were
never there before. From fracturing.

I liken this idea to defusing a bomb with a circular saw- sure, you might chip
away at the explosives, reducing the yield when it goes off, but you also
might short the detonator out and trigger an eruption.

Luckily, looks like the economics of this are prohibitive and likely to stay
that way.

~~~
ewhanley
The earthquakes in OK aren’t a direct result of fracing. With a few rare
exceptions, oil & gas fracs are accomplished through hydraulic force rather
than thermal effects. The induced seismicity in OK is a product of water
disposal wells which can raise pore pressure causing faults to slip. The
microseismic events that occur during the actual fracing process can only be
measured with highly sensitive geophones.

------
FuckOffNeemo
I highly recommend you read the book Super Freakonomics.

The section of the book about an incubator (the name escapes me) in the US
that's coming up with a suite of brilliant, non-intuitive ways to tackle
greenhouse gasses and produce green energy (such as the one shown here) are
fascinating.

------
Joakal
Wouldn't it be better to dig it out? Yes, digging out a volcano from a
mountain! A mammoth task and a boring one at that. But considering the
destructiveness, heat would be released more quickly through less compressed
rocks. It doesn't have to be all the way down to magma.

Drilling down and injecting water may cause quake issues and make it more
likely to erupt as I'm not sure if they can see if superheated water will seep
to the side of the drilled hole(s)?

------
agumonkey
I like the idea of tapping into potential disaster for energy. Next topics:

\- lightning

\- quakes

\- tsunamis / tide

\- avalanches

~~~
KozmoNau7
\- American presidency

\- Putin

\- North Korea

Potentially endless sources of disaster energy

~~~
agumonkey
That's emotional energy, hard to store safely at room temperaturz

------
takk309
Sounds a lot like destroy the ecosystem for short-term gains to me. The
geothermal features were exploited early on in the history of Yellowstone and
that exploitation resulted in impacts to the geyser basins that can still be
seen today. Why we as humans seem to think that life can't possibly continue
without us has always boggled my mind.

Edit: Here is some backup to my claim about messing with the geysers:
[https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/yellowstone-geysers-
tr...](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/yellowstone-geysers-trash-
garbage)

2nd Edit: Here is an article about tapping into the geothermal waters around
Yellowstone. [http://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/17/us/feud-over-geothermal-
wa...](http://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/17/us/feud-over-geothermal-water-rights-
pits-yellowstone-against-a-church.html)

~~~
gooseus
Terrestrial life can't possibly continue without us is the only logical
conclusion I can come to, knowing what we know.

A super-volcano won't end life on Earth, but unless some other life-form
evolves which can carry life to another planet, we are the only guarantee that
life can continue beyond whatever timeline the solar/galactic system has in
store for us... which we know definitely means our star exterminates all life
on this planet at some point in the future.

Honestly, I don't see we can see ourselves as anything but Life's only hope of
continuing.

Sure, we're doing a shitty job right now, we should do better, but honestly,
if we fuck up, life will find a way too... that super-volcano is going to
erupt and destroy way more species and ecosystem than a couple holes and
geothermal plants will. If we can help delay/prevent that, I think it'll be a
step toward making up for at least some of the damage we've done.

~~~
takk309
I have to agree with you on the point that life will find a way regardless of
our meddling or not. However, I feel like the Yellowstone super volcano
bogeyman is not worth the effort. It is like worrying about an asteroid
hitting the planet, there is nothing we can do about it so why worry?

~~~
gooseus
I would say that we can do something about it... we can hedge our bets and we
can be smarter about how we direct our efforts in the time we have.

I have recently started to evangelize panbioticism and project which seek to
seed the solar system/galaxy with terrestrial life.

Even if humans can't become self-sustaining outside of Earth before we get
wiped out by something, I believe that we can give our genetic family a chance
by sending out clusters of small probes of primitive AI and primitive
organisms which can maybe evolve elsewhere. Also by storing a vault of our
knowledge and storage for embryos for ourselves and as many diverse species as
possible. We could build that and land it on a moon outside of the radius of
an expanded sun with a beacon to help it be found.

Any of these things is absolutely feasible and would give life a better shot
in the future. Here is Dr. Michael Mautners website for the Society for Life
in Space (SOLIS)

[http://www.panspermia-society.com/](http://www.panspermia-society.com/)

~~~
logfromblammo
I'm already with you. I think the initial effort lies with exploiting
extremophile bacteria and encysting or spore-forming organisms, though. Not to
say that a K-strategy solution won't work eventually, but right now,
r-strategy seems best. Get as many Earth-origin organisms to as many different
celestial bodies as possible, and hope that 0.0001% of them land in a good
spot.

------
pokemongoaway
Think they should probably drill into dozens of small volcanoes first to prove
that doing so can't set them off?

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jlebrech
Saving earth != saving the human race.

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vectorEQ
nasa's ambitious plan to slurp up tax dollars

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elihu
Can the link be updated to point to the original BBC article that has the same
information and is better written?

[http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170817-nasas-ambitious-
pla...](http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170817-nasas-ambitious-plan-to-save-
earth-from-a-supervolcano)

~~~
sctb
Yes, thank you! We've updated the link from
[http://www.thinkgeoenergy.com/cooling-down-a-supervolcano-
an...](http://www.thinkgeoenergy.com/cooling-down-a-supervolcano-and-generate-
geothermal-power-a-possible-win-win/?jo).

~~~
elihu
Thanks.

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lexxed
What if someone drop a bomb into it ?

