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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: 2) by gawdonblue on Monday August 21 2017, @09:26PM (2 children)
If the heat is siphoned off and released above ground it will add to global warming. Which is bad, no?
If the super-volcano erupts the planet will go into a temporary global "nuclear" style winter, causing temperatures to fall and reversing much of the warming damage done by humans in the last few centuries. Should it be encouraged to erupt?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 23 2017, @01:37AM
Not feeling the badness myself. The Earth has fairly efficient mechanisms for radiating excess heat to space.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday August 23 2017, @02:04AM
If the heat is siphoned off and released above ground it will add to global warming. Which is bad, no?
If it's used for generating power, the alternative is to leave the heat in the ground, and generate that same amount of power by burning fossil fuels, which not only releases a lot of heat into the environment, but also a lot of emissions (both toxic (NOx etc.) and global warming (CO2)).
If the super-volcano erupts the planet will go into a temporary global "nuclear" style winter, causing temperatures to fall and reversing much of the warming damage done by humans in the last few centuries. Should it be encouraged to erupt?
Personally, I think this might be the better option. It'll probably cause complete destruction of modern civilization, but we honestly deserve it at this point, so not only will it reverse the warming damage done by humans in the last few centuries, it'll roll back our societies 500-1000 years or more too, leaving us with much less population too. It'll also be a great case study for alien archaelogists which they can use in their classes to show how stupid races end up being destroyed (or at least set way, way back so they can't achieve interstellar flight) because they're too dumb to do anything about existential threats to their existence even after their smarter members identify such threats along with workable solutions, mainly because they're too greedy and shortsighted to invest the necessary resources.