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A NASA plan to stop a supervolcano from erupting would also be a source of geothermal energy:
Beneath Yellowstone National Park is a giant volcano. The heat from this volcano powers all of the park's famous geysers and hot springs, so most tourists probably don't worry about having tons of hot magma under their feet. But perhaps they should: The Yellowstone supervolcano is a disaster waiting to happen.
The supervolcano erupts about every 600,000 years, and it's been about that long since the last eruption. That means the volcano could erupt any day now, and if it does it'll send enough dust and ash into the sky to blot out the sun for years, along with blowing a 25-mile-wide crater in the western U.S. That's why a group of NASA scientists and engineers are developing a plan to prevent an eruption by stealing the volcano's heat.
[...] NASA's plan is to drill a hole into the side of the volcano and pump water through it. When the water comes back out, it'll be heated to over 600 degrees, slowly cooling the volcano. The team hopes that given enough time, this process will take enough heat from the volcano to prevent it from ever erupting.
As a bonus, the scientists are proposing to use the heated water as a source of geothermal energy, potentially powering the entire Yellowstone region with heat from the volcano that wants to destroy it. A geothermal generator could produce energy at around $0.10 per kWh, competitive with other energy sources.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fraxinus-tree on Monday August 21 2017, @09:53AM (17 children)
Supervolcano is bad. Missing your target by a few orders of magnitude is worse. Depleting water sources around is bad, too. Why don't they try with some less powerful volcano, just to prove the concept? BTW there is a lot of electricity production running in Iceland (and few other places) doing the same.
(Score: 3, Funny) by lx on Monday August 21 2017, @09:57AM (3 children)
Nothing to worry about.
They only want to tickle the dragon's tail a little.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday August 21 2017, @05:11PM (2 children)
Have you seen that balloon? It's a great balloon, but it's getting inflated very slowly, and maybe it will pop in the next 100000 years, and that will be bad.
Now, if I took that microscopic needle and carefully tried to bleed the balloon, what would happen?
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Monday August 21 2017, @11:34PM (1 child)
Your analogy would break down?
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday August 22 2017, @12:23AM
If I tried to make the analogy about drilling the lid of a pressure cooker, therefore affecting structural integrity of the thing containing the pressure, I'd get a cease-and-desist from Seb arguing that pressure cookers don't explode.
And going for the "geeze, will they remove the safety valves after a while, as in Porter Ranch" won't speak to many people.
(Score: 5, Informative) by RamiK on Monday August 21 2017, @10:30AM (12 children)
The desired temperatures are in the margins of hundreds of degrees Celsius while the area for laying down pipes is many kilometers wide and hundreds of meters deep. Moreover, you can always increase and reduce the water flow to adjust the temperatures. Most importantly, there's no danger in over-cooling the magma unless you pour down an ocean's worth so the worst that could happen is for them to not cool it enough. Which is better off then what they're doing now: Waiting for the thing to blow.
Asked and answered. Or to de-whoosh your reasoning, they already use volcano geothermal power in Iceland and have witnessed the beneficial side-effects on seismic activity so it's tested to work.
The water in steam-electric (coal and geothermal) generators is recovered via the surface condenser.
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(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday August 21 2017, @11:53AM (7 children)
Unless you use this system for district heating. One you remove steam from the plant to heat you lose that water. You can think of district heating as a distributed condenser without a feedwater return.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday August 21 2017, @05:03PM (4 children)
The bears, bison and elks of Yellowstone are already privileged bastards enjoying a librul no-gun zone, and now you want to use my tax dollars to bring them renewable heat?
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Monday August 21 2017, @06:09PM (3 children)
Plus those bears flaunt their civil disobedience by breaking all public urination laws... they go so far that the bears even shit in the woods.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday August 21 2017, @07:06PM (1 child)
Between that Smokey's arson protection racket, Yogi's repeated picnic box thefts and Pedo's multiple arrests for child-molestation, I say those fucking bears have it coming.
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(Score: 2) by DECbot on Monday August 21 2017, @09:47PM
It's all a conspiracy. Every bear is a Russian agent!
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Monday August 21 2017, @08:46PM
[Citation Needed]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @08:07PM (1 child)
That's not how district heating work. There's a heat exchanger between the steam cycle and the distribution network, there's also heat exhangers on the consumer side.
The steam cycle use really clean water with some added chemicals(cleaning agents, ph control etc).
The distribution network uses water and antifreeze(so it doesn't freeze on the way back, or if a pump breaks down.)
At the consumer there's heat exhangers to heat the tapwater and exhangers connected the heating system.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday August 21 2017, @11:19PM
I'm going off of the Con Edison steam system here in New York City. It's a one way steam system with no return. You receive steam the same way a customer would receive gas; a pipe is tapped, main bought to customers premises and a meter is installed along with appropriate plumbing. The customer is responsible for disposing of condensate.
Most of the steam comes from dedicated steam boilers without generators. Those plants are the 59th street station (formerly the IRT Powerhouse), Ravenswood A house, and a plant in The Brooklyn Navy yard that is contracted after it was sold off during deregulation. I do know steam from the 14th street station and east river plant (74th street station) have generation and I believe the 60th street station under/next to the 59th street bridge. Whether or not they use turbine exhaust is unknown. One or more of those are gas turbine co-gen systems. So I might be wrong about using turbine exhaust.
Cool system. I have seen the steam rooms of a few buildings including the Metropolitan Museum of Art. All you need is a small room with a big white insulated pipe coming in to some steam metering and traps then off to a big valve manifold which distributes the steam to the different heating circuits along with more steam traps. Condensate returns drained off to a sewer grate on the ground. Was there in winter so that room was a sauna.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fraxinus-tree on Monday August 21 2017, @12:15PM (2 children)
The precious purified and doped water in steam-electric generators is recovered in condensers that are generally cooled by some large natural or artificial water body by evaporating part of it. That's why we see steam clouds above the cooling towers and lakes. I am not aware of any industrial-scale power plants that are only air-cooled. District heating helps, but only when it is the more favorable season.
(Score: 3, Informative) by RamiK on Monday August 21 2017, @02:11PM (1 child)
Stop looking in the US. These environmental concerns are relatively new and the US hasn't been meaningfully investing in infrastructure, let alone green infrastructure, for about 3 decades now. Look up closed circuit dry cooling plants in Asia, Africa and Europe. Start here: http://www.ucsusa.org/clean-energy/energy-and-water-use/water-energy-electricity-coal [ucsusa.org]
Some real world examples are mentioned here: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/cooling-power-plants.aspx [world-nuclear.org]
The tech is there. It's not even that expensive. And it's not like you care about efficiency when the fuel is free...
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(Score: 2) by fraxinus-tree on Tuesday August 22 2017, @09:18AM
Thanks for the links.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Monday August 21 2017, @03:48PM
Or to de-whoosh your reasoning, they already use volcano geothermal power in Iceland and have witnessed the beneficial side-effects on seismic activity so it's tested to work.
Well then this is one giant reason we simply *cannot* do this here in the US. It's utterly impossible for us to do something here which has been done successfully somewhere else.