Why NASA’s Far-fetched Idea to Cool the Yellowstone Supervolcano Will Never Work

Ten years ago, NASA scientists came up with an idea to save the world from a potential supervolcano eruption beneath Yellowstone National Park that could end humanity.

Their plan aimed to prevent one of the world’s largest supervolcanoes from erupting by removing its heat and cooling it with water.

It was an ambitious and expensive proposal. It would also be logistically impossible and, according to volcanologists, would do absolutely nothing to reduce Yellowstone’s explosive potential.

The 2015 theory would never have worked, and NASA never tried to make it work. So why are people still talking about this?

“This was a rough calculation made by some scientists studying the ways in which the Earth could be threatened by catastrophe in the future,” said Mike Poland, the scientist in charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. “But that was never the plan. It was never taken seriously.”

Idea

The “plan” was more like a “thought experiment” than a serious proposal to save the world from Yellowstone, Poland said. This was reviewed by the agency’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office.

“The planetary defense group was looking at things that could pose a threat to the planet, like asteroid impacts and so on,” he said. “Large volcanic eruptions are one of those things that could potentially affect the planet, so they considered it one of the threats. So they conducted a separate study on how this threat could be mitigated.”

Four scientists from Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory wrote the 26-page study:Protecting human civilization from supervolcanic eruptionsThe study summarizes that while supervolcanic eruptions can devastate humanity, they can be avoided through large-scale engineering solutions.

“Supervolcano eruptions occur more frequently than large asteroid or comet impacts, which could have equally catastrophic consequences for human civilization,” the study says. “We are assessing whether future supervolcanic eruptions can be muffled, delayed or prevented through engineering solutions.”

The study was presented to NASA in 2015, and that was it. Poland said the study would never have been published if Brian Wilcox, the study’s lead author, had not mentioned it during a 2017 BBC interview.

“It was never released,” he said. “Then (Wilcox) posted this in response to some news out of Yellowstone. He just sent it to the BBC and NASA ended up publishing it on their website and it took on a life of its own.”

Drill, Baby, Drill

The study classifies Yellowstone as “the greatest supervolcano threat to the United States (and perhaps all of human civilization).”

Eruptions on the same scale as the latest Yellowstone eruption could spew 10 quadrillion kilograms of ash and sulfate aerosols, “enough to cover large parts of continents and create a regional or global “volcanic winter” causing agricultural failure and widespread starvation.

To prevent future eruptions, scientists have concluded that Yellowstone needs and can be cooled.

If implemented, NASA would drill more than 160 holes 6 miles deep into the rock above Yellowstone’s magma chamber. High-pressure water will then be pumped into the holes to gradually cool the volcano’s ambient temperature to about 662 degrees.

At this comparatively lower temperature, the likelihood of an eruption would be greatly reduced and a human-ending crisis would be averted.

This process will be slow and expensive. The study estimates the base cost of the project will be $3.46 billion, which will be offset to some extent by the enormous amount of geothermal energy generated from the process.

“Even for a supervolcano as large as Yellowstone, such a cooling system would require less than 50,000 years to completely remove heat from the magma chamber while producing competitively priced electricity,” the study said.

While the study identifies several supervolcanoes that could threaten the United States, the world and humanity, it primarily focuses on Yellowstone. The scientists acknowledged that the task seemed “difficult and possibly impossible” but concluded that it could be accomplished.

“Given the potentially enormous cost of supervolcanic eruptions on a regional or even global scale, we believe they are potentially valuable in stimulating future research,” the study says. “It seems likely that the entire enterprise could become self-sustaining after the initial investment by selling the generated electricity to the national grid.”

Wrong plan

Because the 2015 study was just an internal document created only for NASA, it has not been peer-reviewed by volcanologists. If this were the case, the Planetary Defense Coordination Office would realize that their plan would be a colossal waste of time and resources.

“He has a lot of problems,” Poland said. “It doesn’t take the volcano aspects into account very well. The plan to drill and cool the volcano did not work. That’s not how Yellowstone or any other volcano works.”

Volcanoes are essentially giant holes formed in the Earth’s mantle either along the boundaries or melted inside tectonic plates. The heat of the Earth’s interior keeps the magma in the mantle constantly melting, turning to rock only when it erupts as lava onto the surface.

Yellowstone is not an isolated hot spot in the Earth’s crust. Since it is connected to a constant heat source, it cannot be cooled by any amount of water injected from the surface.

“The idea that you could somehow remove heat from Yellowstone is like putting a pot of boiling water on the stove while it’s on and trying to cool it down by taking an eyedropper and dropping ice water into the pot one drop at a time . time,” Poland said. “This won’t work. The burner is still on, the heat source is still there, and the water is still boiling.”

Poland also found the $3.46 billion price tag “kind of ridiculous.”

“All of these estimates are always off by about a factor of 100,” he said. “And yes, you might get energy from it, but that energy doesn’t offset the cost of the effort to create it.”

It would also require enormous amounts of water—much more than is currently available in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Poland said the water would need to be transported to northwest Wyoming to become a viable source of geothermal energy.

“You’re going to have to drain a lot of the aquifers in the central U.S. and send the water into Yellowstone,” he said. “I don’t think farmers in the central US will be very interested in this. There’s a whole list of things that don’t work in this regard, and there’s no need for it.”

Supervolcano – minor threat

The last eruption of the Yellowstone volcano occurred more than 70,000 years ago, and the last major eruption – the scale that destroyed humanity – occurred more than 600,000 years ago. Despite the abundant geothermal activity in the Yellowstone Caldera, Poland is adamant that the supervolcano poses little, if any, threat to humanity.

“Yellowstone is not going to erupt anywhere near that date,” he said. “There are many, many more serious threats to the United States that could happen on our time scale. How many Category 5 hurricanes will hit the Gulf States in our lifetime?”

Even events like Black Diamond Pool hydrothermal explosion There are no signs of an imminent volcanic eruption this summer. Poland and other scientists found that all the rock ejected by the explosion originated several hundred feet below the surface, not even close to the magma chamber bubbling away several miles below.

Poland added that Yellowstone is not even the most dangerous volcano in the western United States. Future eruption of Mount Rainer more likely and destructive than the Yellowstone Caldera.

“The danger with a Mount Rainier eruption is that it could melt a lot of the snow and ice sitting on the volcano,” he said, “and that could lead to catastrophic flooding of the drainage ditches radiating from the mountain. This occurred in the geologically recent past, and these debris flows may be large enough to affect populated areas.”

Losing Yellowstone to Stop Yellowstone

In addition to scientific criticism, Poland has personal objections to the NASA study. If the plan had gone through, Yellowstone would have had to be sacrificed to stop Yellowstone.

“There have been many other cases around the world where geothermal energy has been produced near geyser fields, and those geyser fields have changed their behavior,” he said. “Some geysers have switched off. This development will destroy these magical systems.”

Drilling 160 holes 6 miles deep in Yellowstone would inevitably change the park’s geysers, mud pots and hot springs. Water feeding Old Faithful’s water supply will be pumped into the openings, not to mention water from rivers, streams and other bodies of water in the park.

Geothermal Steam Act 1970. prohibits the development of geothermal power plants in several national parks, including Yellowstone. While the act of the US Congress likely will not prevent a crisis that will end humanity, it will still prevent Yellowstone’s energy potential from being exploited.

Even then, Poland says, it will all be in vain. Efforts to prevent the supervolcano from erupting will irreparably change Yellowstone National Park, but will do nothing to stop the Yellowstone supervolcano.

“You don’t have to go to Yellowstone to do this,” he said.

Poster child

Even with scientific and ethical objections to NASA’s study, no one needs to explode over the possibility of large-scale drilling to stop Yellowstone’s eruption. It was never intended to be a “call to action” or anything other than finding solutions to a hypothetical threat.

“That was never the plan,” Poland said. “I know it’s taken on a life of its own: ‘NASA has a plan for this.’ But essentially it was just a thought exercise for a couple of scientists. This was never the plan.”

And yet, why Yellowstone? Given Yellowstone’s low likelihood of a significant eruption and the potential threat posed by other volcanoes, why is Yellowstone always considered the greatest volcanic threat to humanity?

“Yellowstone has become an example of this type of volcanism, even if it is not a volcano that is likely to erupt anytime soon,” Poland said. “Yellowstone is an iconic city. First National Park, Bison, Old Serviceman. This is a place where millions of people come and everyone all over the world knows about it. You could mention some other caldera system in the world, but it wouldn’t be as interesting because it wouldn’t be as familiar to people as Yellowstone. He has such legendary status.”

Andrew Rossi can be contacted at [email protected].