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Supervolcano in Yellowstone Park

by Anonymous

Recently, the "Discovery Channel" has been showing a documentary produced by the BBC about uncommon -- and uncommonly powerful -- geological structures known as supervolcanoes. Ten million years ago one of them spouted in Idaho, and managed to cover Nebraska (and most equally-distant places) with more than a foot of ash. Seventy-four thousand years ago, one of them spouted in Indonesia, and the total global human population plummeted to only a few thousand individuals. Today, in Yellowstone National Park, a supervolcano is causing roughly a thousand square miles of landscape to bulge noticeably. It will definitely explode someday in the not-extremely-distant future, because its last two eruptions were spaced six hundred thousand years apart -- and the most recent one was six hundred thousand years ago. Here is a Web link to an introduction to the documentary:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/supervolcanoes.shtml

A transcript can also be found:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/supervolcanoes_script.shtml

This supervolcano threatens the long-term survival of the United States of America, but it is also an opportunity in disguise, IF Americans decide to take adequate positive action. The magnitude of the potential explosion can be measured in terms of thousands of nuclear weapons -- certainly such is not at all desirable on U.S. soil. However, until the explosion occurs, all that truly exists is a vast reservior of heat-energy. And America has an energy crisis, does it not? It seems a foregone conclusion that either this nation can extract and use that energy -- or we will be sorely abused by the blatantly obvious consequences of failure to act in time: thousands of immediate deaths, hundreds of thousands of asphyxiated deaths in all the nearby States, and tens of millions of starvation-deaths due to climatic change. (And that is just the U.S.A....)

From the depths of the planet heat rises and accumulates, and creates enormous pressure, and an explosion is the simplest way for it to be released. BUT it is not the only way. A significant part of modern technology is dedicated to transporting heat energy from one place to another -- the only difference here is a matter of scale. Nature operates on a vast scale -- but occasionally, sometimes by necessity, so does Man.

Certain existing technologies need to be improved, of course. To extract heat from a magma chamber that is located several miles underground requires the drilling of heat-extraction passageways at least that many miles long. However, since the overburden covering the magma probably should not be weakned, even-longer diagonal passageways should be drilled. Also, drilling directly into the magma should be avoided, because it does not need to be given a free and easy path to the surface.

So, at hundreds or even thousands of sites surrounding Yellowstone Park, "drill heads" and power plants need to be built. Each borer needs to be of a variety that will not wear out, and can be left in place at the bottom of the shaft (perhaps a "melter" or plasma torch). Just behind the borer would be some device to apply metal cladding to the walls of the freshly-bored shaft, thereby creating a continuous tube. At least two smaller inner tubes need to be extended along the interior of the shaft -- drilling at a diagonal could prove beneficial to the stress at the drill-head, caused by the weight of those smaller tubes. One would supply power and/or fuel to the borer. The other is a thermally insulated return-pipe for debris. Water would be sent down the main outer tube, and return via the inner tube with debris. The water would also keep the main pipe cool as the shaft approaches the magma chamber. The flow of water could deliberately be made sufficient that each gallon returning to the surface would carry relatively small amounts of debris from the bored shaft. That flow of cleaned and recirculated water could also carry segments of tubing down to the borer, to be pieced together (via telepresence waldos, perhaps) and locked in place as the shaft is extended.

At some depth only the pressure of miles of water in the shaft will keep if from flashing into steam, as it absorbs heat from the surrounding rocks. The rate of drilling can be slowed to a crawl. The thermally insulated return-pipe allows the hot pressurized water to travel all those miles back to the surface, where energy can be produced. As the heat is extracted, the rocks surrounding the magma chamber become cooler; replacement heat flows from the magma back into those same rocks (and replacement heat for the magma flows from the center of the Earth). A long-lasting source of humanly useful energy is thus established, and should the rate of energy production decline, we can simply extend the shaft closer to the magma. After all, if we extract heat from the rocks faster than it can escape the magma, then that means the boundaries of the magma pool must be shrinking! -- and thus it would actually be quite safe to extend the shaft.

It is quite apparent to me and anyone else who is even basically knowledgeable about volcanoes that we are facing an event that will occur, should we fail to act. This is not a situation that is based on speculation. This particular volcano is active, and dangerously suppressed. The only thing we do not know is when it will break loose. We cannot afford to wait -- and why should we? -- we need the energy now. On both counts, therefore, this is obviously a matter of National Interest and National Security. There is no room for politics or bureaucracy here -- politicians and bureaucrats are famous mostly for hiding their heads in the sand, and allowing them to do so in this case will only lead to doom for most of us, themselves included.

 
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