Nuclear Explosion for Carbon Sequestration(arxiv.org)
arxiv.org
Nuclear Explosion for Carbon Sequestration
https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.06623
65 comments
The lengths people go to not to make walkable cities (and insulated buildings, fast trains.. you know, all the stuff that actually exists and works)
There is no climate model for less than 2 degrees of warming with decarbonization alone. It's unfortunate but that's where we are today. Large scale decarbonization and removal together are both required, and fast.
You do realize the effects of climate change will not be something for which you can just isolate your bedroom for, then move on.
Everyone needs water. Directly, and for food production. The most populous regions in the world run on meltwater. The Indus Valley. Pakistan. Bangladesh. Indonesia. California. Central China. There are thousands such locations as well, by the way, just smaller. Meltwater that only comes if not only the planet is hot, but is hotter this year than last. If not, ZERO meltwater comes. Not a little bit. Zero. If you stop global warming 2 billion people need to be relocated.
To make matters worse, one of the "points of no return" which is coming global warming will switch from pumping water INTO the atmosphere to pumping water OUT of the atmosphere. This will turn the "inside" (any location sufficiently far from a coast) of countries like India, Africa and China back into the deserts they were 500 years ago. Except, it will do so rapidly. We don't know, of course, but certainly less than 100 years. Potentially much less.
If you calculate energy required, you will conclude that lifting water is a nonstarter. With current energy generation we cannot bring water to these locations. Never mind that most don't even have railway connections, never mind electrical power to the trains. We cannot realistically use desalinated water at elevations above maybe 300 meters. It's just not happening.
To make matters worse, both things are tipping-points. There is very, very little change while you get closer to the tipping point, then all the builtup change happens VERY suddenly. And this will happen twice, a two-punch situation, maybe a decade or two apart. First meltwater will stop, entirely, in one or two years, and it will not come back for tens of thousands of years and then a decade or so later rains will stop.
Walkable cities and isolated buildings do exactly nothing to stop any of this.
Everyone needs water. Directly, and for food production. The most populous regions in the world run on meltwater. The Indus Valley. Pakistan. Bangladesh. Indonesia. California. Central China. There are thousands such locations as well, by the way, just smaller. Meltwater that only comes if not only the planet is hot, but is hotter this year than last. If not, ZERO meltwater comes. Not a little bit. Zero. If you stop global warming 2 billion people need to be relocated.
To make matters worse, one of the "points of no return" which is coming global warming will switch from pumping water INTO the atmosphere to pumping water OUT of the atmosphere. This will turn the "inside" (any location sufficiently far from a coast) of countries like India, Africa and China back into the deserts they were 500 years ago. Except, it will do so rapidly. We don't know, of course, but certainly less than 100 years. Potentially much less.
If you calculate energy required, you will conclude that lifting water is a nonstarter. With current energy generation we cannot bring water to these locations. Never mind that most don't even have railway connections, never mind electrical power to the trains. We cannot realistically use desalinated water at elevations above maybe 300 meters. It's just not happening.
To make matters worse, both things are tipping-points. There is very, very little change while you get closer to the tipping point, then all the builtup change happens VERY suddenly. And this will happen twice, a two-punch situation, maybe a decade or two apart. First meltwater will stop, entirely, in one or two years, and it will not come back for tens of thousands of years and then a decade or so later rains will stop.
Walkable cities and isolated buildings do exactly nothing to stop any of this.
Indonesia, a land of 17,000 islands has meltwater on one mountain on one island, not the main one. I doubt it's that reliant on meltwater.
Indonesia is surprisingly big and most of the land is surprisingly far away from the coast. A lot of it will dry out, and effectively cut water supply to Jakarta.
cities are made of concrete and steel, both of which emit carbon in their production. nearly everything from pharmaceuticals to clothes to computers is made with petrochemicals. It's not just a matter of civil design, and we don't have the answers.
We do have the answers. Pigovian taxes. Government and industry work together to distract people so they don’t organize to demand the actual answers be implemented.
1) Universal basic income funded by taxes at the point of extraction or emission. See: Alaska (Permanent Fund)
2) Use the taxes to pay down the debt, give UBI since you’ll have to print money anyway.
3) Also raise taxes on non biodegradeable plastics and forever chemicals.
UBI can shift the Overton window from people protesting raising taxes on fossil fuels (eg Yellow Vest protests) to actually embracing them.
Rather than telling individuals they cant have a bag or a straw, the government should put the pressure on bottling companies and clothing companies which continue to use plastics and PFAS everywhere… “recycling” is just another scam to keep individuals distracted. It turns out they were just shipping it all to China for decades.
1) Universal basic income funded by taxes at the point of extraction or emission. See: Alaska (Permanent Fund)
2) Use the taxes to pay down the debt, give UBI since you’ll have to print money anyway.
3) Also raise taxes on non biodegradeable plastics and forever chemicals.
UBI can shift the Overton window from people protesting raising taxes on fossil fuels (eg Yellow Vest protests) to actually embracing them.
Rather than telling individuals they cant have a bag or a straw, the government should put the pressure on bottling companies and clothing companies which continue to use plastics and PFAS everywhere… “recycling” is just another scam to keep individuals distracted. It turns out they were just shipping it all to China for decades.
Any nation that implements a carbon tax will be at an competitive disadvantage, since you're compensating to reduce a global externality. It's a tragedy of the commons.
You could work out a global carbon tax system. Non cooperating nations would get trade sanctions costing them more than implementing the tax.
Just because the US doesn’t recycle/upcycle doesn’t mean the rest of the world doesn’t…
However, there's 2 huge problems with that. First, stopping CO2 additions at this point will just cause a marginal delay in the progress of global warming.
Second adding CO2 will stop. Fossil fuels are finite and will stop this century. All regulation can hope to do is stop it a bit faster. A few decades at best. Which just doesn't matter. Plus oil producing countries, the only ones that have any hope of doing this will never cooperate.
Even nuclear winter will pause global warming, but it won't work to prevent it's consequences, because of water. So will any other mechanism that lowers temperatures.
I'm not saying there aren't other advantages to ecological policy, but stopping global warming just isn't one of them.
Global warming cannot be stopped by regulation. It cannot be stopped by humans at all. That's what the IPCC models say. We need to adapt to it. That means moving billions of people, frankly, out of the way. At an extremely high level what needs to happen is that billions of people need to be moved a LOT closer to a coastline.
Second adding CO2 will stop. Fossil fuels are finite and will stop this century. All regulation can hope to do is stop it a bit faster. A few decades at best. Which just doesn't matter. Plus oil producing countries, the only ones that have any hope of doing this will never cooperate.
Even nuclear winter will pause global warming, but it won't work to prevent it's consequences, because of water. So will any other mechanism that lowers temperatures.
I'm not saying there aren't other advantages to ecological policy, but stopping global warming just isn't one of them.
Global warming cannot be stopped by regulation. It cannot be stopped by humans at all. That's what the IPCC models say. We need to adapt to it. That means moving billions of people, frankly, out of the way. At an extremely high level what needs to happen is that billions of people need to be moved a LOT closer to a coastline.
Oh I agree with the rest of your assertion, but recycling would be a great idea even without global warming
fascinating. Ignoring the ecological questions, I admire the "outside the box" thinking.
For the sake of the calculation: $10^10 for 10^12 tons is an implied cost of one cent per ton. So three orders of magnitude cheaperish than current approaches around $100 per ton.
The long term value of this paper may twofold - 1. to spark other ideas. This illustrates that carbon removal might be able to be done for orders of magnitude cheaper, even if just on the back of a napkin (most napkins today point to $100/ton). 2. to demonstrate the scale and seriousness of the carbon removal issue. yes, we need to do this, and yes, maybe there are better/safer ways.
For folks pointing out "we need to decarbonize": yes, we do. However, carbon removal is also needed at this point alongside decarbonization. We have to reduce emissions and clean out what's already in the air. Without decarbonization and carbon removal together, there's no pathway to stay below 2˚C of warming. (and given that both decarbonization and removal aren't growing quickly enough, we also need to cool the planet too, which is another whole topic)
also: http://airminers.com/connect - we have a Slack channel of 3,000 people focused about removal solutions. come join!
For the sake of the calculation: $10^10 for 10^12 tons is an implied cost of one cent per ton. So three orders of magnitude cheaperish than current approaches around $100 per ton.
The long term value of this paper may twofold - 1. to spark other ideas. This illustrates that carbon removal might be able to be done for orders of magnitude cheaper, even if just on the back of a napkin (most napkins today point to $100/ton). 2. to demonstrate the scale and seriousness of the carbon removal issue. yes, we need to do this, and yes, maybe there are better/safer ways.
For folks pointing out "we need to decarbonize": yes, we do. However, carbon removal is also needed at this point alongside decarbonization. We have to reduce emissions and clean out what's already in the air. Without decarbonization and carbon removal together, there's no pathway to stay below 2˚C of warming. (and given that both decarbonization and removal aren't growing quickly enough, we also need to cool the planet too, which is another whole topic)
also: http://airminers.com/connect - we have a Slack channel of 3,000 people focused about removal solutions. come join!
To crib from Wes Anderson, "what this paper presupposes is Project Plowshare didn't go -far enough-."
More seriously I'll refrain from judgment until I've read it all. But it's interesting thus far.
More seriously I'll refrain from judgment until I've read it all. But it's interesting thus far.
This would only give a 30yr break on just one factor of the ecological collapse. I get it's tempting to think of a technological fix (even one as risky as an Earth-shattering nuclear explosion), but we have to question ourselves more.
A 30yr break on an exponential process with dangerous tipping points seems like an awesome deal
Of course it doesn't work as the only fix, and there is the danger that it could be used as an excuse to slow down necessary changes. But the situation we currently find ourselves in is one that moves in the right direction (per-capita CO2 emissions peaked in the late 80s in the EU-27 and the 00s in the US, and many lower-emission solutions now have better economics than their established counterparts) but inertia an an ill-timed increase in the standard of living of China and India mean we are not moving nearly fast enough. More time is one of the most valuable things we can get in this situation
Of course it doesn't work as the only fix, and there is the danger that it could be used as an excuse to slow down necessary changes. But the situation we currently find ourselves in is one that moves in the right direction (per-capita CO2 emissions peaked in the late 80s in the EU-27 and the 00s in the US, and many lower-emission solutions now have better economics than their established counterparts) but inertia an an ill-timed increase in the standard of living of China and India mean we are not moving nearly fast enough. More time is one of the most valuable things we can get in this situation
There's no fix other than a technological one. Modifying the collective behavior of 8 billion people is just not going to happen.
The problem will fix itself when we lose food security.
The only other way is to curb the carbon emission by stopping the burning of hydrocarbons.
It’s always been the solution, and will always be
The only other way is to curb the carbon emission by stopping the burning of hydrocarbons.
It’s always been the solution, and will always be
> The problem will fix itself when we lose food security.
Except the highest producing people are the ones who will lose food security the last
Except the highest producing people are the ones who will lose food security the last
There's zero technical analysis in this paper. Is there no better source for this discussion?
edit: It doesn't even make much sense. It asserts, without any engineering rationale, that a large fusion bomb will efficiently pulverize 4 trillions tons of basaltic rock—the volume of a sphere of basalt 20 km (!!) in diameter—into a fine silt.
So many strange assumptions going into that.
edit: It doesn't even make much sense. It asserts, without any engineering rationale, that a large fusion bomb will efficiently pulverize 4 trillions tons of basaltic rock—the volume of a sphere of basalt 20 km (!!) in diameter—into a fine silt.
So many strange assumptions going into that.
They are talking about one gigantic nuclear explosion (81 Gt). Why couldn't multiple smaller explosions achieve the same outcome?
Maybe because "We propose burying this device beneath the Kerguelen Plateau in the Southern Ocean, 3-5 km into the basalt-rich seafloor and 6-8 km below the water’s surface." would be prohibitively expensive for hundreds of nukes.
Isn't that much more expensive and therefore less likely to be approved?
The nukes just laying around in stockpiles are mostly in the 100-800kT range. You could use nukes that would otherwise need refurbishment (exploding old stockpiles and producing new stock instead of refurbishing old stock), or maybe even spin it as a disarmament treaty where the method of disposal are underground explosions for carbon sequestration. Or use it as an opportunity to use old nukes for a good purpose when you want to switch to a newer model (instead of needing facilities to disassemble them)
The point would be experimentation. You do a small one, measure the results, and if it aligns with theoretical predictions, you scale up. It transforms it from high risk and high reward, into low risk high reward.
Good article!
assuming this is serious...
There is no silver bullet - you can't just build a 10bn$ nuclear bomb programm and call it a day. All the other means are still needed to transition away from fossil fuel.
The earlier we start the better.
There is no silver bullet - you can't just build a 10bn$ nuclear bomb programm and call it a day. All the other means are still needed to transition away from fossil fuel.
The earlier we start the better.
Very much this! This is about removing (if it at wall will do that) without fixing the root cause. How deep can you put your head in the ground? It reminds of the Matrix where they scorched the skies to remove solar power capabilities as a way to block the enemy.
Climate science consensus is we need to decarbonize and remove. We've gone too far at this point, decarbonizatin alone is no longer sufficient. So we need all the solar-y wind-y nuclear-y stuff AND all this weird removal stuff. And some other weirder stuff too.
Or, use sensible CCS methods like plankton or kelp, charring that, and sending it to the bottom of the ocean instead of resorting to absurd plans like nukes.
I'm getting similar vibes from this to the Soviet's idea to reverse nothern rivers flow:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_river_reversal
They were also planning to use nukes for that. Thankfully it never happened
They were also planning to use nukes for that. Thankfully it never happened
An 81 Gt nuclear device would seem rather risky and expensive being greater than the world's nuclear arsenals combined. However trying it on a smaller scale could combine nuclear disarmament with an interesting experiment which could help reduce global warming. Win win.
This would likely be less damaging if the bomb could be largely based on H-11B fusion rather than DT or DD fusion. The latter inevitably produce large numbers of neutrons.
At gigaton scales, thermonuclear devices become easier to build in a sense, because the assembly has more time to react as it expands. More stages are needed to compress that very large final stage, though.
The argument reminds me of Freeman Dyson's H bomb propelled interstellar concept, which exploited the fact that per unit of energy output, deuterium was (at the time of publication, in 1968) thousands of times cheaper than fossil fuels.
At gigaton scales, thermonuclear devices become easier to build in a sense, because the assembly has more time to react as it expands. More stages are needed to compress that very large final stage, though.
The argument reminds me of Freeman Dyson's H bomb propelled interstellar concept, which exploited the fact that per unit of energy output, deuterium was (at the time of publication, in 1968) thousands of times cheaper than fossil fuels.
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I find it interesting ever more risky way to sequester carbon are invented.
Instead of making adding biochar to farm land an agricultural subsidy. A simple, extremely low risk policy, that is a local subsidy and does create international trade conflicts like other subsidies can.
And it does not affect any wilderness.
And in hot humid climates is proven to increase fertility.
Or a bit risky we could fertilize the open ocean, very significantly increase ocean life. And it has been proven that a significant percentage of fish poop sequesters carbon in the deep ocean.
Instead efforts seem to be focused on shading the sun. And new ideas using nukes....
Instead of making adding biochar to farm land an agricultural subsidy. A simple, extremely low risk policy, that is a local subsidy and does create international trade conflicts like other subsidies can.
And it does not affect any wilderness.
And in hot humid climates is proven to increase fertility.
Or a bit risky we could fertilize the open ocean, very significantly increase ocean life. And it has been proven that a significant percentage of fish poop sequesters carbon in the deep ocean.
Instead efforts seem to be focused on shading the sun. And new ideas using nukes....
The potential benefit of this idea is it's very cheap. One penny per ton vs hundreds of dollars of per ton of biochar.
Iron fertilization, shading the sun, and more nukey-stuff, all worth exploring at this point.
Iron fertilization, shading the sun, and more nukey-stuff, all worth exploring at this point.
Can you tell me, without looking up, how many gigatons of carbon are in the atmosphere and how many are added by humans each year?
Yeah, it's 'simple' until confronted with the sheer scale of it
Yeah, it's 'simple' until confronted with the sheer scale of it
Does biochar remain in ground for long? How quickly does it decompose and rot?
That is pretty variable I would think due to ground composition and how complete the char burn is. In my anecdotal experience, if you do a low grade charcoal that still has a decent amount of oils in it like a lot of old-school burn wood and bury it in earth or drench in water, most of it will have broken down to invisibility after just a few years or so mixed into the ground. However charcoal that I have burned in a container sealed from air ingress and using a secondary source of heat until the wood stops venting any gases and is nearly pure carbon, I still see decent size chunks of it in my garden areas over 2 decades later, and no reason to expect it to not still be there even 50+ years from now.
The current best in class methodology for biochar aims for 100+ years. There are some folks saying there are pathways to make biochar last 1000+ years.
Puro methodology: https://biochar.groups.io/g/main/attachment/32853/2/Puro.ear...
The nice thing is biochar is relatively inert. It just sits there in soil, holding onto water, making space for organisms to grow, but isn't "food", so it doesn't get eaten up and turned back into carbon dioxide. So it's a win for farmers and carbon removal.
Puro methodology: https://biochar.groups.io/g/main/attachment/32853/2/Puro.ear...
The nice thing is biochar is relatively inert. It just sits there in soil, holding onto water, making space for organisms to grow, but isn't "food", so it doesn't get eaten up and turned back into carbon dioxide. So it's a win for farmers and carbon removal.
7 to 10-ish years from what I recall. Which is another thing that makes it so low risk. If you stop the subsidy it goes away with a few years.
I believe Sabine Hossenfelder did a video about this recently:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGPKpx6pMko
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGPKpx6pMko
What if exploding nukes on the seafloor has the opposite effect and actually _releases_ already sequestered carbon?
IMO, this idea is very poorly thought out.
IMO, this idea is very poorly thought out.
Well time to revive the Gnomon/Sundial weapon project. Edward Teller would be pleased.
Worst case scenario: nuclear winter, humanity dies out. Problem solved
The nuclear winter premise is that burning cities will produce enough smoke to cover the sun for temperature to drop. AFAIK, there are no cities in deep ocean floor and even if there were, you'd have a little bit of a problem starting fire there.
Nope, not a potential outcome.
Men will do anything but vote for a carbon tax
What a stupid idea
This is insane shit. Some CCS is needed, probably using biomass, possibly using oceanic life, but this absurd like nuking the moon or using nukes for dam construction.
Nukewards Ho!
81 gigaton bomb?! Holy cow! It sounds like a planet buster! It seems to be the energy equivalent somewhere around an 8.5 magnitude or higher earthquake if the internet is to be believed?
No, the fireball size is proportional to the cube root of energy released, which is why giant nukes are generally wasteful compared to many smaller ones.
But the goal isn't to make a giant fireball, the goal is to bury it 7 kilometers under the seafloor bed at detonate it, pulverizing a massive volume of rock. Nearly all of the energy is being captured by rock and water, not being blasted out into space. Im not sure why you started talking about military nukes when half the point of this thing is how completely infeasible it is for military usage.
The 7 kilometers is the hard part.
We have drilled many oil wells deeper than 7km. We will just need a wider bore to fit that chubby nuke down the hole.
This borehole would effectively be a mineshaft. High yield nuclear weapons achieve around 5 Mt/ton, so a 81 Gt device would have a mass of 16,200 tons, about 1/3rd the displacement of a WW2 Iowa class battleship.
The deepest mine (a gold mine in South Africa) reaches a depth of 4 kilometers.
The deepest mine (a gold mine in South Africa) reaches a depth of 4 kilometers.