A NASA plan to stop the Yellowstone supervolcano from erupting, could actually cause it to blow... triggering a nuclear winter that would wipe out humanity.
As we have detailed recently, government officials have been closely monitoring the activity in the Yellowstone caldera.
However, as SHTFplan.com's Mac Slavo details, scientists at NASA have now come up with an incredibly risky plan to save the United States from the super volcano.
A NASA scientist has spoken out about the true threat of super volcanoes
and the risky methods that could be used to prevent a devastating
eruption. Lying beneath the tranquil and beautiful settings of Yellowstone National Park in the US lies an enormous magma chamber, called a caldera. It’s responsible for the geysers and hot springs that define the area, but for scientists at NASA, it’s also one of the greatest natural threats to human civilization as we know it.
Brian Wilcox, a former member of the NASA Advisory Council on Planetary Defense, shared a report on the natural hazard that hadn’t been seen outside of the agency until now. Following an article published by BBC about super volcanoes last month,
a group of NASA researchers got in touch with the media to share a
report previously unseen outside the space agency about the threat
Yellowstone poses, and what they hypothesize could possibly be done
about it.
“I was a member of the NASA Advisory Council on Planetary Defense which studied ways for NASA to defend the planet from asteroids and comets,” explains Brian Wilcox of Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology.“I came to the conclusion during that study that the supervolcano threat is substantially greater than the asteroid or comet threat.”
Yellowstone currently leaks about 60 to 70
percent of its heat into the atmosphere through stream water which
seeps into the magma chamber through cracks, while the rest of the heat
builds up as magma and dissolves into volatile gasses. The heat and
pressure will reach the threshold, meaning an explosion is inevitable.
When NASA scientists considered the fact that a super volcano’s eruption would
plunge the earth into a volcanic winter, destroying most sources of
food, starvation would then become a real possibility. Food reserves
would only last about 74 days, according to the UN,
after an eruption of a super volcano, like that under Yellowstone. And
they have devised a risky plan that could end up blowing up in their
faces. Literally.
Wilcox hypothesized that if enough heat was removed, and the temperature of the super volcano dropped, it would never erupt.
But he wants to see a 35% decrease in temperature, and how to achieve
that, is incredibly risky. One possibility is to simply increase the
amount of water in the supervolcano. As it turns to steam. the water
would release the heat into the atmosphere, making global warming alarmists tremble.
“Building a big aqueduct uphill into a mountainous region would be both costly and difficult, and people don’t want their water spent that way,” Wilcox says. “People are desperate for water all over the world and so a major infrastructure project, where the only way the water is used is to cool down a supervolcano, would be very controversial.”
So, NASA came up with an alternative plan. They believe the most viable solution could be to drill up to 10km down into the super volcano and pump down water at high pressure. The
circulating water would return at a temperature of around 350C (662F),
thus slowly day by day extracting heat from the volcano. And while such a
project would come at an estimated cost of around $3.46 billion, it
comes with an enticing catch which could convince politicians
(taxpayers) to make the investment.
“Yellowstone currently leaks around 6GW in heat,” Wilcox says. “Through drilling in this way, it could be used to create a geothermal plant, which generates electric power at extremely competitive prices of around $0.10/kWh. You would have to give the geothermal companies incentives to drill somewhat deeper and use hotter water than they usually would, but you would pay back your initial investment, and get electricity which can power the surrounding area for a period of potentially tens of thousands of years. And the long-term benefit is that you prevent a future supervolcano eruption which would devastate humanity.”
Of course, drilling into a super volcano comes with its own risks, like the eruption that scientists are desperate to prevent. Triggering an eruption by drilling would be disastrous.
“The most important thing with this is to do no harm,” Wilcox says.“If you drill into the top of the magma chamber and try and cool it from there, this would be very risky. This could make the cap over the magma chamber more brittle and prone to fracture. And you might trigger the release of harmful volatile gases in the magma at the top of the chamber which would otherwise not be released.”
The cooling of Yellowstone in this
manner would also take tens of thousands of years, but it is a plan
that scientists at NASA are considering for every super volcano on
earth.
“When
people first considered the idea of defending the Earth from an
asteroid impact, they reacted in a similar way to the supervolcano
threat,” Wilcox says.
So what would happen?
on.cc東網專訊
地球上的超級火山如果爆發，可能毀滅全人類。美國太空總署（NASA）想到給火山鑽洞，用水流循環給火山降溫，既能防範火山爆發，還能借助地熱發電。
NASA旗下噴氣推進實驗室（JPL）的科學家威爾考克斯（Brian Wilcox）說：「我曾是NASA行星防禦諮詢委員會（ACPD）成員，我通過研究得出結論，超級火山的威脅比小行星或彗星的威脅大得多。」
地球上目前已知有大約20個超級火山，平均每10萬年左右有一次大規模火山爆發。超級火山爆發可能改變地球氣候，延長寒冬，導致飢荒。聯合國2012年曾經估算過，地球的食物儲備只夠吃74天。
面對超級火山的潛在威脅，NASA的科學家認為，排除隱患最合理的方法是給火山降溫。像美國黃石公園這樣大的火山，相當於一個巨大的發電機，其產生的發電量相當於6座工業發電廠。目前，黃石公園把60％至70％的熱量通過岩石縫隙的水分釋放到地表大氣層中，其餘則留在地下。滯留地下的熱量愈積愈多，一旦到達臨界點，超級火山就會爆發。
不過，火山如果把更多熱量釋放到地表，而不是讓其滯留地下——等於給火山「降溫」，它就永遠不會爆發。NASA估算認為，把散熱比例提高35％，就能解除黃石國家公園的火山爆發威脅。
NASA認為，鑽洞冷卻是最為可行的方法。按照該方法，在火山處向地下鑽洞，深度最多10公里，用高壓把水注入洞中，讓水在洞中循環出入，給火山「降溫」。這個項目如果實行，預計耗資34.6億美元。
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