Reducing the Danger of a Supervolcano

[Thomas Kirby]

This is an engineering problem. The idea, and I think we are up for it, is to engineer a device that can render the supervolcano under Yellowstone park inert, or at least a lot safer than it is right now. Hopefully time is on our side, but we don't know more than we do know about when it will go off, covering most of North America in ash.

 

We even have the potential ability to cover the area with cubic miles of rock and dirt. It's not impossible, it's just difficult. We could try to do a controlled release of pressure through pipes. Again, not impossible, just difficult. If we could harvest the volcanic ash produced by controlled release, the project might pay for itself in fertilizer sales. We could try to build some kind of structure over the potential release points and cover them with something that will absorb the impact, sort of like putting out a fire with wet blankets.

 

There is also the possibility of building new chambers near the old chambers to make more space for the magma. Or, many smaller tubes might be better, to divide the problem. These would be easier to extract energy from, would be less likely to cause land subsidence, and would be able to contain more pressure.

 

If we were good enough at building something to take heat and pressure away from the site, we could count on human voraciousness to simply consume enough of the energy and materials produced to leave us with the problem of cooling the volcano down too much. Take enough kilowatthours out of a few hundred cubic kilometers of magma, you have cold rock.

[insane_alien]

the first idea: covering the area with lots of rocks, would only delay it.

the second: a controlled release of magma, is just as likely to initiate an eruption as prevent one.

the third: put something over likely release points, see the first one.

fourth: mine a huge cavern to be filled with magma, it would have to be damn huge and would take centuries and the thing would probably collapse. if there is a large cave system nearby then it could possibly work.

fifth: extracting energy, This could work very very well. in fact its a good idea. build a huge geothermal power plant on top of the magma chamber. the pipes don't have to go into the magma just close to it and we get some "clean" and enviromentally friendly electricity. only problem is that yellowstone is a national park and power plants of anykind are unsightly. not to mention drilling everywhere to put pipes in. and as the outer part of the magma cool to rock we would have to put new pipes in to continue cooling. it also might take too long to extract enough energy to have any effect whatsoevr on any future eruptions.

 

just as an after thought: why does everyone talk about yellow stone as if it is the only potential super volcano in the world and as if it would only affect america. if any of the potential super volcanoes go off it will be a world wide disaster not a national one.

[Thomas Kirby]

I don't happen to know the names of any of the others. Yes, pipes and stuff are unsightly, and I love beautiful places, but I would like to live to be able to enjoy what beauty there is. Our trouble here is just like with asteroid strikes. We don't know when we are going to hit the jackpot. Even the hazards are similar. If we knew for sure it would be more than 10,000 years from now, we could completely stop worrying about it. We won't know for sure with the current state of science until a few days before the eruption. 50 years would probably be enough time to engineer the problem away. Once we can deal with the first cubic kilometer of it, we can repeat the process a few dozen to a few hundred times.

 

Most of the reason to talk about Yellowstone, like I said, is that it is the most famous and has the best name recognition. Talking about its effects on America is because most of the immediate kill radius is in the United States, and all of it is in North America. Maybe we can do the same kind of engineering with other volcanoes.

 

Maybe more even than with asteroids, we need to work out the supervolcanoes to give this species greater permanency. It's not so much that I'm worried that it's going to go off tomorrow, even if the chance of it going off within the next two weeks is probably the same as the chance of it going off 10,000 years from now. It's that we very likely have a huge amount of time to head off the disaster and to prepare for it, and ride it out with minimal losses. If we were just going to be wiped out and we could do nothing about it, I wouldn't worry about it at all. It can be an easy win, amortizing the preparations over centuries, plus we become better engineers and smarter human beings. We become competent. We invest in ourselves. If we're really good at it we can fix the problem without destroying the beauty of the place, too, but yes, we probably will have to give up something for the safety of future generations.

 

It might also be better to do that than later on have to figure out how to make air filtering machines that rise all the way to the stratosphere and precipitate dust.

[mmalluck]

I wonder what the energy influx into the magma chamber is. You'd have to extract more energy than the earth was pumping into the magma chamber to stabilize the pocket.

[AzurePhoenix]

Meh, I'm sick of this "attempt to stop it before we die" crap. We should all band together to induce an eruption!! Who's with me?!?!?!

[insane_alien]

right you seem to think that the chamber is only a few hundered cubic miles. that is what is likely to be erupted if there if there is an eruption. the actual chamber is something like a few MILLION cubic miles and you would need to coolat leats the entire top surface at the same time.

 

mmaluck there is almost no influx of energy geologists believe that the chamber only has a very small opening to the mantle and that most heat transfer is conductive. This source was from the media so i cannot be completely sure of the exactness of this comment.

 

Kirby, STOP WORRYING ABOUT ASTEROIDS, Earth is tiny compared to space. You have more chance of winning every single lottery on earth at the same time using the same numbers than getting wiped out by an asteroid.

[flyboy]

Meh, I'm sick of this "attempt to stop it before we die[/i']" crap. We should all band together to induce an eruption!! Who's with me?!?!?!

 

 

I AM!!!

[flyboy]

ok heres the options

1. theres no way to stop it

2. if you try to stop it then it goes off

3.we cant stop the force of nature, do you think we know how to stop tornados or hurricanes? all we do is find a way to protect ourselves

[flyboy]

it would be one hell of an eruption though

[Thomas Kirby]

right you seem to think that the chamber is only a few hundered cubic miles. that is what is likely to be erupted if there if there is an eruption. the actual chamber is something like a few MILLION cubic miles and you would need to coolat leats the entire top surface at the same time.

 

mmaluck there is almost no influx of energy geologists believe that the chamber only has a very small opening to the mantle and that most heat transfer is conductive. This source was from the media so i cannot be completely sure of the exactness of this comment.

 

Kirby' date=' STOP WORRYING ABOUT ASTEROIDS, Earth is tiny compared to space. You have more chance of winning every single lottery on earth at the same time using the same numbers than getting wiped out by an asteroid.[/quote']

 

Why can't we worry now and beat the rush? We can get into the intensity and the challenge of the engineering to prevent a disaster instead of the panic that will ensue when we are caught with our pants around our ankles when it all hits the fan? Without doing anything but engineering, we can reduce the approach of a planet-killer asteroid to an assignment for one of many nuclear-powered interplanetary spacecraft, and we can all enjoy watching the engineering achievement of actually taking one of these asteroids and moving it out of harm's way.

 

Fifty years of engineering and we might find a way to prevent much of the world from being wiped out by a volcano. What if we can re-engineer the ground over the volcano so that it can't rupture easily? What if we install safety valves to release excess pressure over days instead of seconds? What if we actually remove the explosive substance that causes so many of these deadly explosions, or use something to make it harmless? That substance is basically just water trapped in bubbles in glass. If a large enough mass of it becomes superheated before a significant fraction of that mass explodes, it can all explode at once like a nuclear chain reaction, steam power stored in thousands or millions of tons of rock. Remove it, alter it to make it safe, or keep it cold and we won't have an explosion.

 

If the energy input is indeed small, chilling it may be all that we need. Just increase the amount of energy that leaves the magma pool by a few gigawatts.

[flyboy]

nature was never meant to be tamed

[flyboy]

and also imagine the magma chamber as a propane bottle,its under pressure.

when you peirce the bottle it explodes which in turn causes the volcano to violently erupt

[insane_alien]

"increase the energy that leaves the magma pool by a few gigawatts".

 

!?! I think your still underestimating this. although the amount of energy going into it is relatively small for the size of the magma chamber the actual wattage of the flux is still far more than a few giga watts. petawatts is more like it.

[Thomas Kirby]

and also imagine the magma chamber as a propane bottle' date='its under pressure.

when you peirce the bottle it explodes which in turn causes the volcano to violently erupt[/quote']

 

But it is safe to attach a valve to it. Believe me, millions of people have actually done this. The valves are designed so that no pressure is released until they are far enough into the cylinder to contain it, and held on by enough threads to keep from popping back off. This definitely means that we have a model for dealing with the safe opening of pressurized cannisters.

 

I think we're more likely to have to deal with the plugging of the borehole by cooling magma than with any sort of blowouts.

[flyboy]

But it is safe to attach a valve to it. Believe me' date=' millions of people have actually done this. The valves are designed so that no pressure is released until they are far enough into the cylinder to contain it, and held on by enough threads to keep from popping back off. This definitely means that we have a model for dealing with the safe opening of pressurized cannisters.

 

I think we're more likely to have to deal with the plugging of the borehole by cooling magma than with any sort of blowouts.[/quote']

 

nobodys tried it with a supervolcano have they?

[insane_alien]

when you are dealing with a manufactured steel bottle with relatively no flaws then yes it could be done quite safely, rock isn't like that. magma is also at thousands of degrees centigrade. (1325 from a few sources) this is where we run into problems. also in a propane bottle its a gas, magma is liquid and thats a whole other kettle of fish.

 

Just out of curiosity where did you get the idea that a valve is attatched to a propane bottle after it is filled? the valves are attached before filling and when there is no pressure. also the container is designed to hold the pressure, magma chambers are not, hence the eruptions.

[flyboy]

i know my analogy isnt very good but i think you guys get my point