[HN Gopher] In Iceland, well diggers seek to tap a volcano's magma
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In Iceland, well diggers seek to tap a volcano's magma
Author : rbanffy
Score : 65 points
Date : 2021-09-19 15:53 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| l8rpeace wrote:
| This works in Iceland because it's easier to get to the hot
| places. They pump water down fissures, the steam comes up to
| power steam generators, and they actually pump the water back up
| and send it miles away as hot water to Reykjavik.
|
| It's effective because the fissures make it easier to implement
| this process.
|
| Source: I went to Iceland in 2017 and toured their geothermal
| plant on Christmas Eve.
| pstuart wrote:
| I still think the US should figure out how to do this responsibly
| with the Yellowstone supervolcano.
| the-dude wrote:
| I don't understand all the poohaa about the climate change.
| When it gets too bad, well just nuke some volcanos, have a
| couple of decades of 'winter' and Bob's your uncle.
| nix23 wrote:
| Yes and even more CO2 in the Atmosphere and additionally
| dying plant-live. Great way to make earth like venus...what a
| great idea.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Funny thing... Venusians had the same idea.
| nix23 wrote:
| Or they sucked up the martians atmosphere like in
| spaceballs and later found out that's a bit too much
| "atmosphere" ;)
| CyanBird wrote:
| It was a would be funny, but volcanes induce acid rain
| besides many other issues
| [deleted]
| codingdave wrote:
| I knew I had read that idea before -- I think this is the
| article I was thinking of:
| https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/news-yell...
| pstuart wrote:
| There are valid concerns about impacts from such a project
| but they are all surmountable.
| jefflombardjr wrote:
| Is there a way to access the heat potential irresponsibly?
|
| Clarification: I mean of course if you create a volcano in the
| wrong spot that would be bad, but like if you're drilling for
| thermally heated ground water can stuff go wrong?
| rbanffy wrote:
| Just exclude any current company in the energy sector.
| _Microft wrote:
| Did you mean responsibly instead?
|
| A sibling comment posted a link on this and I just submitted
| a similar article myself. The twist seems to be to extract
| the heat/energy from the side or from below the magma chamber
| to not destabilize the ceiling of the chamber. That's because
| rock becomes more brittle when cooling down. Triggering a
| supervolcano eruption instead of preventing it would be a
| very unfortunate outcome ;)
| jefflombardjr wrote:
| You answered my question, thank you! I meant irresponsibly.
| I assumed these are super safe considering a ton of farms
| have access wells to hot water in Iceland.
| pstuart wrote:
| I'm guessing you mean responsibly, as we all know the answer
| otherwise.
|
| I'm just an internet rando, but I think that if they could
| identify spots that were remote enough to not impact the park
| features, and to design it from the start to address all
| other concerns (like handling waste water etc), disrupting
| nature, it could be done.
|
| A brief moment of optimism from someone pessimistic about the
| future.
| omnibrain wrote:
| In the german town of Staufen im Breisgau the City Center has
| risen about 12cm since a drilling operation in 2007, which
| led to many cracks in buildings.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staufen_im_Breisgau
| hetspookjee wrote:
| From the wiki:
|
| The cause for this geological change has been identified as
| a drilling operation conducted in the summer and autumn of
| 2007 to provide geothermal heating to the city hall. The
| drilling perforated an anhydrite layer and caused high-
| pressure groundwater to come into contact with the
| anhydrite, which then began to expand.
|
| By 2010, some sections of town had risen by 30 centimetres
| (12 in). In July 2013, no end to the rising process was in
| sight.
|
| Quite the woopsie
| jacquesm wrote:
| But even though it is still rising today that does not
| seem to deter more geothermal heating plans:
|
| https://www.thinkgeoenergy.com/city-of-freiburg-germany-
| endo...
| londons_explore wrote:
| What is the environmental impact of taking terrawatts of thermal
| energy and releasing it on the earths surface?
|
| One might imagine that if we figure out how to build geothermal
| wells not just near geologically active sites, but anywhere on
| the earths surface, then suddenly thermal energy will become much
| cheaper, and projects like heating entire cities and farms become
| feasible. Cooling entire cities will likewise happen with air
| conditioners powered by these wells.
|
| Overall, far more watts of energy will be transferred from deep
| under the earths crust to the bit of earth we live on... What
| will the side effects be?
| maxerickson wrote:
| Radiative losses from the Earth system will increase a bit.
|
| The Sun hits the Earth with more than 100 petawatts of
| radiation, all the time.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Geothermal: I asked a friend who's a retired petroleum geologist
| about this just recently. She said it's a real thing and there's
| a lot of money pouring into it, but it's not viable everywhere.
| The deeper you go, the more expensive the equipment has to be.
|
| Her son lives near Madison, WI, and he actually looked seriously
| into installing it for his house. It sounds cool, to get all your
| energy, 24x7x365, but the reality was that it was just not cost-
| effective right now. Maybe soon.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| One unfortunate situation is that the word "geothermal" is
| overloaded for personal use. On one hand you have geothermal
| _power_ , which is as you describe. On the other hand you have
| water source heat pumps which are often described as
| geothermal, but which are completely distinct from the form
| described in this article.
|
| Water source heat pumps work everywhere, and they seek to use
| ground-water temperature anti-freeze in a closed loop as the
| output from a heat pump. So rather than having an AC dump heat
| outside (or cold for outside for reversible systems), heat is
| extracted from or dumped into the ground. Expensive to install
| ($30k seems a common mark), but very efficient and viable
| everywhere.
| zrail wrote:
| We have a ground source heat pump at our house. It has a bit
| of a learning curve vs a traditional ac but it's very
| efficient. The 26% federal tax credit and low interest state-
| supported financing take a bit of the sting out of the
| project but it's still not cheap.
| cronix wrote:
| I went to Oregon Institute of Technology, in Klamath Falls,
| OR., in the early 90's. Much of the campus was run on
| geothermal. From heating the water to heating the dorm rooms
| and campus buildings, which was great as KF experiences some
| pretty cold winters.
|
| https://oregontechsfstatic.azureedge.net/sitefinity-producti...
| baybal2 wrote:
| Geothermal needs A LOT of freshwater, to the extend it can cause
| a local water crisis, unless water injection is not used, which
| dramatically reduces available power.
|
| Not to say, cheap, plentiful energy greatly increases water usage
| by itself.
|
| In Pakistan, every farmer now has powerful immersible pumps with
| which they suck groundwater dry because of cheap solar panels
| availability.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| Pakistan has quite a large daily temperature swing. You dont
| even need to dig or consume freshwater to get thermal energy.
| anonporridge wrote:
| How much loss happens in the system?
|
| Do you need a constant stream fresh water, or just a big
| initial injection?
| baybal2 wrote:
| Depends on the system used, but open cycle is the most common
| because of simplicity, and cost.
|
| > How much loss happens in the system?
|
| For an open cycle system it is 100% obviously.
| anonporridge wrote:
| Is the waste water unusable, e.g. irradiated? Or can it be
| pumped back into the municipal water supply or reservoirs?
| _Microft wrote:
| I think chemical contaminants are more of a concern than
| radiation.
| anonporridge wrote:
| In this case, shouldn't the operation be forced to treat
| the waste water anyway rather than dump it back into the
| environment?
|
| If it's dangerous for us to drink, it's probably damaging
| to wherever we dump it.
| pjerem wrote:
| That's cool ! I love when I'm reminded that we don't know
| everything about anything. And I love it even more when it's on
| topics you learn (and take for granted) in school.
| mariuolo wrote:
| > That's cool
|
| Not really:)
| jefflombardjr wrote:
| I don't know why this isn't done more in the US. At least with
| thermal water, my understanding is that you don't need huge
| temperature differentials and this is cost effective on a pretty
| small scale.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| The "irony" here is that it's frackers who are going to drill
| the geothermal wells. If they start seeing clearly, they'll
| realize that green energy could mean a juicy paycheck.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I bet you can get some huge differentials next to volcanos or
| Yellowstone. You'll need to fight conservationists
| (understandably) but clean energy is clean energy.
|
| And every gigajoule you take from Yellowstone is one less
| gigajoule for the next supervolcano eruption.
| anonporridge wrote:
| The problem is that there are no large population centers
| near Yellowstone. Maybe you could reach Salt Lake City or
| Denver without prohibitive transmission line inefficiency?
|
| Maybe increasing automation means that we can build more
| factories and data centers near these sources of massive
| renewable energy potential without struggling to convince
| workers to live in these remote locations (although that
| might not be a huge challenge for a beautiful place like
| Yellowstone).
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _And every gigajoule you take from Yellowstone is one less
| gigajoule for the next supervolcano eruption._ '
|
| What if it disturbs whatever equilibrium the caldera's
| maintained and causes it to erupt sooner than it would have?
|
| This is a genuine question, I know next to nothing about
| this.
| gumby wrote:
| I think the orders of magnitude are so large that it's
| unlikely to make a difference. Much less impact than, say,
| poking a whale with a 30 ga needle.
|
| You might poke a hole and get something hot and nasty
| gushing out but that would only ruin some machinery and
| perhaps the day for a few people.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Yeah, this sounds to me like the "they delved too deep"
| story of dwarves in Moria.
|
| We are not good enough in vulcanology yet to tickle the
| sleeping Yellowstone giant.
| rbanffy wrote:
| We'll never know unless we do more research. I don't
| think we can make a dent in the amount of energy under
| Yellowstone either way - if it's going to blow, it will
| and there's nothing we can do.
|
| If we could take enough energy out of Yellowstone to make
| it less supervolcanic, we'd have a hard problem dealing
| with whatever waste heat would be left after consuming
| that much energy.
| _Microft wrote:
| The excess power, that is the power that is not reaching
| the surface by normal processes and that keeps heating up
| the volcano seems to be in the order of a few gigawatts.
| This is absolutely possible with cooling measures like
| they are used for large power plants.
| rbanffy wrote:
| This would be to keep temperatures constant. If we want
| it to be less of an existential threat to humanity, we
| should cool it down.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| This is energy that would be dispersed at the surface
| anyway, isn't it?
| lostlogin wrote:
| I'm nit sure about that.
|
| If a lot of extraction is done, geysers and other surface
| geothermal activity reduce or stop. Rotorua, New Zealand
| had these issues back in the 1980s when everyone had a
| private bore. Blocking them up helped a lot.
|
| https://www.geothermal-
| energy.org/pdf/IGAstandard/Japan/1997...
| _Microft wrote:
| I would really like to see a project like this actually
| attempted. Protests against it would be very understandable
| because of the impact of several large power plants. I think
| the biggest issue might be that they also need to release the
| waste heat somehow. That would mean water consumption and
| cooling towers with steam clouds that might be visible from
| far away.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Please don't. Yellowstone is a pristine nature reserve.
| There's many other areas in nearby Idaho you probably could
| tap into similar thermal energy without ruining the first
| National Park. Yellowstone is also in one of the least
| densely populated areas in the country so it's very
| difficult to transport without massive energy loss by
| resistance.
| maxerickson wrote:
| High voltage transmission losses are a few percent.
|
| We don't need to make a mess in Yellowstone, but 'massive
| energy loss by resistance' is just wrong.
| _Microft wrote:
| I absolutely understand your concerns.
|
| There are approximately twenty supervolcanoes around the
| world, so I wouldn't worry to much. There is an almost
| supervulcano in Italy that is also much closer to where
| power is needed [0].
|
| Remoteness is not that much of a problem though: (ultra)
| high-voltage direct-current ("(U)HVDC") power lines have
| losses in the order of 3% per 1000km (that's 620mi) which
| is very acceptable. China has power lines that move the
| power equivalent of several nuclear power plants over
| thousands of kilometers for example.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlegraean_Fields
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
| voltage_direct_current
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Yellowstone is not just "a supervolcano", as mentioned
| it's a natural preserve and generally beautiful place.
| I'm pretty sure there are enough other geologically
| active sites closer to populations and with less history
| that there's no reason to bother with Yellowstone
| _Microft wrote:
| As I already said, I absolutely understand the concerns.
| That does not mean that it might not become inevitable to
| do something about it one day. In the long run, the
| choice seem to be that it either blows up right away (in
| the geologically-near future) or to extract enough energy
| to at least delay the disaster.
|
| Edit, as reply to child comment: here is the NASA report
| that concludes that it is possible to cool
| supervolcanoes:
|
| https://scienceandtechnology.jpl.nasa.gov/sites/default/f
| ile...
| chrisco255 wrote:
| It's naive to believe that you can extract enough energy
| from the earth's core to prevent supervolcanic eruptions.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > There is an almost supervulcano in Italy
|
| And the Mediterranean can provide a lot of water for
| cooling at the same time the extra heat can easily be
| used for desalination.
| techbio wrote:
| It's been under research in Hawaii for decades.
| ph0rque wrote:
| It's coming: https://www.vox.com/energy-and-
| environment/2020/10/21/215154...
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(page generated 2021-09-19 23:00 UTC)