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Yellowstone Super Volcano


TheSoloPlayer

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 If a pressure buildup is occurring underneath Yellowstone National Park, with gas pockets and Lava pockets, that could create an eruption, then why don't we just release the pressure.

 Couldn't we just dig a hole above a gas pocket or lava pocket, and place a kind of valve on the hole so it would be a controlled release of pressure? Not like a hole, more like a pipe, with a valve attached to release the pressure at a steady rate, but keep people far from the pipe's because of the toxic gases such as hydrogen sulfide.

 

 Could we do it?

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 If a pressure buildup is occurring underneath Yellowstone National Park, with gas pockets and Lava pockets, that could create an eruption, then why don't we just release the pressure.

 Couldn't we just dig a hole above a gas pocket or lava pocket, and place a kind of valve on the hole so it would be a controlled release of pressure? Not like a hole, more like a pipe, with a valve attached to release the pressure at a steady rate, but keep people far from the pipe's because of the toxic gases such as hydrogen sulfide.

 

 Could we do it?

I don't think so. We are talking about a mass of magma many kilometres below the surface. The pressures and temperatures close to the magma body would make it very hard to keep a borehole open (normally drilling mud is used to create a backpressure in the hole, but this would boil). The energy stored in the magma body is also enormous - equivalent to many H bombs. I do not think there is any made-made artifact that could cope safely with the energy unleashed. But maybe one day we may manage this sort of thing.

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  • 2 weeks later...

 If a pressure buildup is occurring underneath Yellowstone National Park, with gas pockets and Lava pockets, that could create an eruption, then why don't we just release the pressure.

 Couldn't we just dig a hole above a gas pocket or lava pocket, and place a kind of valve on the hole so it would be a controlled release of pressure? Not like a hole, more like a pipe, with a valve attached to release the pressure at a steady rate, but keep people far from the pipe's because of the toxic gases such as hydrogen sulfide.

 

 Could we do it?

There are not gas pockets and lava is magma that has erupted, just to correct a couple misconceptions. While a hole could certainly be drilled into -or near to- the magma chamber, the risk is causing the eruption rather than preventing it. Releasing the pressure results in gasses coming out of solution in a violent cascade. There used to be an experiment video on Youtube showing this effect using resin, but alas I can't locate it today. Let sleeping dogs lie. :dogwalk:

 

Edit: Found it in another old thread here on Yellowstone. >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlchXvrySWs

Edited by Turtle
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  • 3 weeks later...

Silicate magma can be a hot a 2400`F while steel has a melt temperature of 2500`F so in theory it would be possible to bore holes to relieve pressure, however cold formed steel loses all of the strength it gained in the forming process when heated.  The annealing temperature of steel depends on the particular alloy and ranges from 500`F to 1400`F, so it would be useless for a drilling rig.

 

300px-Yellowstone_Caldera_map2.JPG

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Silicate magma can be a hot a 2400`F while steel has a melt temperature of 2500`F so in theory it would be possible to bore holes to relieve pressure, however cold formed steel loses all of the strength it gained in the forming process when heated.  The annealing temperature of steel depends on the particular alloy and ranges from 500`F to 1400`F, so it would be useless for a drilling rig.

 

300px-Yellowstone_Caldera_map2.JPG

Again, the problem is that releasing the pressure will precipitate an eruption; the problem is not if you can drill the hole.

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So drilling into a magma chamber is difficult and dangerous.

 

I wonder if you could run pipes merely close to the chamber, pump water or some other fluid though the pipes, and cool the chamber, getting oodles of useful energy in the process?

 

There’ve been some successful geothermal plants along these lines, like Iceland’s Krafla and Nesjavellir. These plants are not intended to cool the magma chambers that power them, just to produce electricity and direct steam heat, but in principle, they do both.

 

To get a rough sense of scale, some rough quantities:

Volume of Yellowstone magma chamber: 10^13 m3

Density of magma: 2500 kg/m3

Temperature of magma: 1000 - 1600 K

Specific heat of magma: 800 J/kg/K

Energy of magma in Yellowstone caldera: 2 x 1023 J

Power output of Krafla, Nesjavellir: 108 W

Power consumption of humankind: 2 x 1013 W

 

So, if I’ve not made a mistake gathering or arithmeticing these numbers, they show it would take about 30,000,000 years for a couple of powerplants like Krafla, Nesjavellir to extract all the energy in Yellowstone. If all the power for humankind could be gotten from it, it would last 300 years.

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I live not far from the town of Centralia PA. This is the town that had to be relocated because of a fire that rages in the maze of old coal mines below. Although not the same situation I think there are similarities, and over the years they have tried to pour millions of gallons of water to cool or put out these fires, but can't do it.

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I live not far from the town of Centralia PA. This is the town that had to be relocated because of a fire that rages in the maze of old coal mines below. Although not the same situation I think there are similarities, and over the years they have tried to pour millions of gallons of water to cool or put out these fires, but can't do it.

Get some big fans to suck all the air out. :)

 

As for drilling to relieve pressure, there should only be a risk of setting off a dangerous eruption (an eruption that's going to happen eventually anyway but at least this way you're ready for it) if you wait too long after the last eruption.

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So drilling into a magma chamber is difficult and dangerous.

Given the magnitude of the danger at Yellowstone, seems there's plenty of reason not to go to the trouble. :rolleyes:

I wonder if you could run pipes merely close to the chamber, pump water or some other fluid though the pipes, and cool the chamber, getting oodles of useful energy in the process?

 

There’ve been some successful geothermal plants along these lines, like Iceland’s Krafla and Nesjavellir. These plants are not intended to cool the magma chambers that power them, just to produce electricity and direct steam heat, but in principle, they do both.

However, these plants don't run pipes near magma chambers. They drill boreholes to release steam. It's not clear from your article if they are injecting water, but at the Salton Sea power plant in California they do inject water and as more steam comes out than the water they could inject, the earthquakes increased considerably. Geothermal power facility induces earthquakes, study finds Earthquakes precipitate volcanic eruptions.

To get a rough sense of scale, some rough quantities:

Volume of Yellowstone magma chamber: 10^13 m3

Density of magma: 2500 kg/m3

Temperature of magma: 1000 - 1600 K

Specific heat of magma: 800 J/kg/K

Energy of magma in Yellowstone caldera: 2 x 1023 J

Power output of Krafla, Nesjavellir: 108 W

Power consumption of humankind: 2 x 1013 W

 

So, if I’ve not made a mistake gathering or arithmeticing these numbers, they show it would take about 30,000,000 years for a couple of powerplants like Krafla, Nesjavellir to extract all the energy in Yellowstone. If all the power for humankind could be gotten from it, it would last 300 years.

LOL Pray tell, where does the caldera get its heat? While I don't question your arithmeticing in-and-of-itself, I question the premises on which it is based.

 

We have neither the understanding of hotspots nor the technology to control them [per the question in the OP] and it's a fools errand to attempt such control with our current level of both.

 

Post Script: Not sure where you got your figures Craig, but if you're not aware of the most recent estimate of the magma chamber(s) volume, you may want to re-arithematcize. >> Yellowstone's Volcano Bigger Than Thought

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Given the magnitude of the danger at Yellowstone, seems there's plenty of reason not to go to the trouble. :rolleyes:

 

However, these plants don't run pipes near magma chambers. They drill boreholes to release steam. It's not clear from your article if they are injecting water, but at the Salton Sea power plant in California they do inject water and as more steam comes out than the water they could inject, the earthquakes increased considerably. Geothermal power facility induces earthquakes, study finds Earthquakes precipitate volcanic eruptions.

LOL Pray tell, where does the caldera get its heat? While I don't question your arithmeticing in-and-of-itself, I question the premises on which it is based.

 

We have neither the understanding of hotspots nor the technology to control them [per the question in the OP] and it's a fools errand to attempt such control with our current level of both.

 

Post Script: Not sure where you got your figures Craig, but if you're not aware of the most recent estimate of the magma chamber(s) volume, you may want to re-arithematcize. >> Yellowstone's Volcano Bigger Than Thought

What caldera are you referring to? 

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LOL Pray tell, where does the caldera get its heat? While I don't question your arithmeticing in-and-of-itself, I question the premises on which it is based.

Yeah, I didn’t want to muddy my nice round numbers with too much physical reality, like where magma comes from, which is, of course, from the mantle. It’s really just plume-ish intrusions of mantle stuff into the crust, so unless you could somehow cut off a caldera from the mantle, you wouldn’t be able to cool one permanently with any sort or energy-extracting technology on the scale of present-day human technology.

 

The deeper (the puns seem unavoidable) question of where the mantle and its magma-y extensions get their heat is that it gets it mostly from decay of the huge diffusion of radioactive stuff in the mantle, and to lesser effect. Otherwise, as Kelvin calculated back in 1862 (and incorrectly used to conclude that the Earth and the Sun were only about 20,000,000 years old) the mantle would have frozen early on, and be a far different place. The radioactive stuff comes from 4,600,000,000+ year-old supernova. Very early in the universe’s history, there wouldn’t have been enough radioactive elements for long-lived hot mantles like Earth’s, but there also wouldn’t have been enough silicon and iron for there to be iron-cored rocky planets at all.

 

What I found revealing in playing with the heat numbers for the Yellowstone caldera is that they’re huge by human engineering standards, but not so huge that its unimaginable that they might not be enough for a civilization vigorously climbing the Kardashev scale. I’m guessing that the caldera’s powering current and near future geothermal powerplants are being so minimally cooled by the energy extraction compared to the rate they circulate mantle-stuff that they’re barely affected, but a vastly scaled up system, - say, the 5 x 1015 W that would satisfy the world’s present needs (which I understated by a factor of 200 in my previous post) – would exhaust the heat of even a supervolcano system like Yellowstone so quickly I suspect it would solidify it faster than it could be replenished with mantle stuff. Vastly more powerful geothermal power systems might have to stop going for the easy pickings of near surface volcanic features, and bore deep into or even completely through the crust.

 

My getting-close-to-a-Type I civilization imaginings usually envision gigantic engineering outward in space to use much more sunlight, but I think reaching inward into the planet might be able to reach the magic 1017 W mark of a Type I civilization. I imagine such a path would involve a lot of big human-caused Earthquakes.

 

 

Post Script: Not sure where you got your figures Craig, but if you're not aware of the most recent estimate of the magma chamber(s) volume, you may want to re-arithematcize. >> Yellowstone's Volcano Bigger Than Thought

I used the newer, bigger-than-thought volume 2400 mile3 =~ 1013 m^3, which being a resident of the area, I like to visualize as 2.5 cubic Washington DCs (before Virginia took back its part in 1846, DC has a nice neat 10 mile on each side square footprint).

 

On the scale of engineering I’m imagining, though, plus or minus a few cubic DC’s is small stuff. :)

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Yeah, I didn’t want to muddy my nice round numbers with too much physical reality, like where magma comes from, which is, of course, from the mantle. It’s really just plume-ish intrusions of mantle stuff into the crust, so unless you could somehow cut off a caldera from the mantle, you wouldn’t be able to cool one permanently with any sort or energy-extracting technology on the scale of present-day human technology.

 

The deeper (the puns seem unavoidable) question of where the mantle and its magma-y extensions get their heat is that it gets it mostly from decay of the huge diffusion of radioactive stuff in the mantle, and to lesser effect. Otherwise, as Kelvin calculated back in 1862 (and incorrectly used to conclude that the Earth and the Sun were only about 20,000,000 years old) the mantle would have frozen early on, and be a far different place. The radioactive stuff comes from 4,600,000,000+ year-old supernova. Very early in the universe’s history, there wouldn’t have been enough radioactive elements for long-lived hot mantles like Earth’s, but there also wouldn’t have been enough silicon and iron for there to be iron-cored rocky planets at all.

 

What I found revealing in playing with the heat numbers for the Yellowstone caldera is that they’re huge by human engineering standards, but not so huge that its unimaginable that they might not be enough for a civilization vigorously climbing the Kardashev scale. I’m guessing that the caldera’s powering current and near future geothermal powerplants are being so minimally cooled by the energy extraction compared to the rate they circulate mantle-stuff that they’re barely affected, but a vastly scaled up system, - say, the 5 x 1015 W that would satisfy the world’s present needs (which I understated by a factor of 200 in my previous post) – would exhaust the heat of even a supervolcano system like Yellowstone so quickly I suspect it would solidify it faster than it could be replenished with mantle stuff. Vastly more powerful geothermal power systems might have to stop going for the easy pickings of near surface volcanic features, and bore deep into or even completely through the crust.

 

My getting-close-to-a-Type I civilization imaginings usually envision gigantic engineering outward in space to use much more sunlight, but I think reaching inward into the planet might be able to reach the magic 1017 W mark of a Type I civilization. I imagine such a path would involve a lot of big human-caused Earthquakes.

 

 

I used the newer, bigger-than-thought volume 2400 mile3 =~ 1013 m^3, which being a resident of the area, I like to visualize as 2.5 cubic Washington DCs (before Virginia took back its part in 1846, DC has a nice neat 10 mile on each side square footprint).

 

On the scale of engineering I’m imagining, though, plus or minus a few cubic DC’s is small stuff. :)

 

Accepting pi-in-the-sky (arithmetising pun for fun intended) Type I technology, I still see muddyish problems. First, Yellowstone sets over a hotspot which is a yet-understood/suitably explained phenomena of near-crust mantle heat well above the normal, or average if you will. Second, should you suck out all the core heat you will also shut down the dynamo that generates Earth's magnetic field and as goes the field, so goes the atmosphere. Buh bye! It also strikes me as unreasonable that Type I folks would discount earthquakes out of hand. :wave:

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  • 2 weeks later...

There is nothing that humans can physically do to minimize an eruption.  The only thing we can do is evacuate the area down-wind of the fall-out zone and keep it vacant.  I don't see this as a global extinction event, although there may be climate changes (colder weather, crop failures, starvation in areas without food reserves, etc...) for a few years.  This has happened before and will happen again.

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