[hutzlibu]

"Regardless of the specifics of the details, in the abstract, such a scheme is in some sense, possible. How should we consider it?

On the one hand, building a huge geothermal power station at Yellowstone would generate a large amount of (potentially cheap) electric power while simultaneously reducing a catastrophic risk. "

"On the other hand, in many ways Yellowstone is a particularly bad place to try to build such a plant. The harsh, corrosive conditions in and around the magma chamber would make drilling the wells especially difficult, and its location in the middle of nowhere would require the construction of enormous transmission lines"

"In any case, the debate is likely to remain academic for the foreseeable future. Using Yellowstone for geothermal power was made illegal by the Geothermal Steam Act of 1970"

So the answer is likely yes, in theory. But there are lots of other places, where it makes more sense to build geothermal plants. (for energy, but also security, there are lots of other potential super vulcanos that are not as activly monitored like Yellowstone is)

[fbdab103]

Given what would likely be billions of dollars to build such a plant, I am not sure why the transmission infrastructure is more than a footnote on the project. There is a lot of engineering know-how on moving electricity large distances. Less so on building the world's largest power plant in the efforts to avoid a global catastrophe.

[7thaccount]

Transmission is crazy expensive and hard to permit for. Something like this could easily be in the billions depending on how much would need to be built and the associated upgrades.

[coryrc]

> hard to permit for

The legislative of any state can basically write a law saying "this project is exempt from review". This isn't a complicated problem like interstate water rights with American Indian treaty obligations.

[hutzlibu]

Depends. Because transmission lines usually cross over private property. And that can get very, very complicated.

(Unless of course you are a fan of the chinese modell and want to implement that - but even they fear people revolting over unpopular big decisions)

[gambiting]

Does US not have compulsory purchase process for infrastructure projects? Here in UK if there is a need to run transmision lines or whatever, the government will just compulsory purchase the land needed, you will be paid the market price for the land but you have to sell it.

[Auracle]

Sure

From experience they try to pay far below market rate, so then people challenge it (possibly in court?). This delays things, adds expense, etc.

[pohl]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain

[KennyBlanken]

Gosh, why didn't state "legislatives" think of "exempting from review" interstate power grid construction projects? That'll totally help with all the federal environmental regulations and power transmission regulations. And who knew that "legislatives" could just bypass any state laws they want?

You're like a walking, talking poster child for Dunning-Kruger.

[jeffbee]

I don't even see why you'd need transmission lines. Just use the enormous quantity of free energy for direct carbon capture, at that site.

[zdragnar]

At ~400 parts per million CO2 concentration, that would be wildly wasteful. We could more easily take the money that would go into building the plant and put direct capture on existing fossil fuel power plants.

Better yet would be to put up short transmission lines out of the park, and set up a dirt cheap energy district for energy intensive manufacturing- smelting, data centers, that sort of thing.

The magma chamber stays cool, there's a nice new tax base, good potential for reducing emissions, everyone wins except for the people who want Yellowstone to be untouched wilderness.

[modo_mario]

Whilst we're increasing our CO2 output as a whole still for a good few more years we're going to go for a industrial open air carbon capture?

I wonder when people are going to realise it'll never ever make more sense to filter co2 out of the air at 400-500ppm to deposit deep underground like that compared to not pumping it up and emitting it in the first place. It's always going to be vastly more difficult and a big net loss in the end.

All the carbon capture projects like that are funded in large part by the fossil fuel industries as a cover to reduce the pressure on their backs. Not as something they believe will work long term.

The ones that do make more sense at first glance like the recent increase in direct capture in the US started to get more subsidised by the previous administration but not to benefit the environment however but to reduce the cost of CO2 for enhanced oil recovery. Because without there wasn't even enough incentive to do it right at major carbon sources when there was an industry willing to pay for the CO2.

[jeffbee]

If you don't care for capture it's also practical to colocate any other big energy consumer like metal refining, drying battery materials, etc. Shipping energy 2000 miles to charge some Tesla in Poughkeepsie doesn't sound like the best application.

[salawat]

What are you going to do? Pipeline air/build giant fans to mix carbon rich air from elsewhere to the One Carbon Capture Plant You Spent Way Too Much making?

[c0pium]

That is very much not how the atmosphere works. The jet stream as one example moves over the US at hundreds of miles per hour, and more generally speaking gases disperse through the atmosphere very quickly.

[toolz]

Even more realistically, crypto mining farms would quickly move in to use that energy and it wouldn't be hard, once you've established a stable footing to then give cheaper electricity to carbon capture types of ventures.

Love or hate crypto, it is uniquely capable of quickly moving in and making remote energy production facilities valuable. Which could then provide the infrastructure for things like carbon capture plants to exist remotely.

[roenxi]

One option would be to set up a big industrial district. Call it Shenzhen II. Cheap power and some industrialist-friendly tax laws and maybe the US could keep pace with the Chinese. People'd start building and finding uses for that power extremely quickly.

I find it very much laugh-or-you'd-cry that the US would rather have Yellowstone winding up for a big one than allow geothermal power projects near a national park. Talk about catastrophically bureaucratic priorities.

[habinero]

It's not a case of "would they rather", that's ridiculous.

It's flat out not feasible to do and wouldn't work even if we did. The scale and forces are far too massive for us to do anything about it.

It's like saying "why don't they stop earthquakes by removing earthquake faults".

[roenxi]

> The scale and forces are far too massive for us to do anything about it.

The scale and forces behind fossil fuels are both larger and it looks like we'll have managed to run through all the easily available stuff in about a century. "The scale is really big!" isn't an argument that something can't be done. Modern humans have done a bunch of stuff that was on an unimaginable scale 500 years ago. You'd have been arguing the moon landing was impossible a century ago because the forces involved are too large.

We're not going to overcome technical challenges by banning attempts to overcome them.

> It's like saying "why don't they stop earthquakes by removing earthquake faults".

That should be an option that gets explored. I doubt the economics will work out, but if we figure out a way to extract the energy building up in fault-lines that would be a win-win-win scenario for everyone involved.