💥 ☢ An explosive climate solution: A Quick Q&A with … software engineer Andy Haverly on geoengineering with nuclear bombs
'Our method of carbon sequestration can be scaled even further and can feasibly and cheaply sequester all carbon required to stop and reverse climate change completely.'
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers,
Mitigating the worst impacts of climate change — or even reversing it — might demand different sorts of atmospheric vacuum cleaners. Like quantitative easing in monetary policy, governments would deploy such tools to stabilize the atmosphere. Conventional ideas include spreading chemical compounds that bind to CO₂ and giant turbines sucking in ambient air to extract the carbon.
Among the more unconventional of these methods: a giant nuclear bomb. A large explosion under the ocean floor would shatter basalt rock into tiny pieces, which would then react with seawater to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
From the abstract of Andy Haverly’s fairly recent paper, Nuclear Explosions for Large Scale Carbon Sequestration:
This paper presents a bold proposal to employ a buried nuclear explosion in a remote basaltic seabed for pulverizing basalt, thereby accelerating carbon sequestration through Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW). By precisely locating the explosion beneath the seabed, we aim to confine debris, radiation, and energy while ensuring rapid rock weathering at a scale substantial enough to make a meaningful dent in atmospheric carbon levels. Our analysis outlines the parameters essential for efficient carbon capture and minimal collateral effects, emphasizing that a yield on the order of gigatons is critical for global climate impact.
I asked Haverly a few quick questions about what it would mean, both for climate change and the future of climate technology, to detonate a nuclear explosion beneath the ocean floor.
Haverly is a software engineer for Microsoft, and is simultaneously pursuing his doctorate in Computer Science and Engineering from Mississippi State University.
1/ What is Enhanced Rock Weathering?
Enhanced rock weathering is the process of using alkaline rocks, such as basalt, to react with dissolved inorganic carbonates (DIC) in a process that “traps” the carbon into rocks which sequesters carbon dioxide for a very long time. By reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the ocean, the atmospheric carbon dioxide will seek an equilibrium concentration and thus absorb and replace the carbon dioxide in the ocean. This process reduces the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
The radiation from this explosion is impossible to avoid.
2/ What factors should be considered when deciding how and where to set the bomb?
There are many factors that need to be considered. The most important factors to consider are safety of both humans and wildlife as well as efficacy of this process. These factors produce secondary factors such as distance from land and human populations, depth of the ocean, seismic activity, type of rock in the seafloor. As a result, we come to the conclusion that a very isolated and deep seafloor made of basaltic rock is likely the safest and most effective location for this bomb.
3/ How could we ensure the safety of both human and marine life before going forward with this idea?
Ensuring safety of human life is relatively simple. Oceans are very large and through an iterative process of increasing the yield in extremely remote locations we can ensure human safety. This isolation will allow us to reduce immediate and long term effects of this explosion.
Marine life will be much more difficult to protect. The explosion will produce a massive shockwave that we can attenuate through a very large bubble curtain. The radiation from this explosion is impossible to avoid. This radiation cannot be contained while also ensuring this process is successful. After the explosion, this radiation will start to dilute. After some time this radiation will fall below harmful levels.
We should only use this solution optimally and continue our switch to technologies that are more environmentally friendly. We only want to use this solution as required to minimize environmental harm.
4/ How big of a dent would this plan make in our current climate trajectory?
The IPCC, which is one of the most important climate organizations, says that ~9 gigatons of CO2 per year of carbon sequestration are required to limit warming to reasonable levels. These levels are projected between 2.5°C and 4°C. Our method of carbon sequestration is more than capable of meeting these requirements. However, our method is capable of sequestering much more CO2 than has been realistically considered before. Our method of carbon sequestration can be scaled even further and can feasibly and cheaply sequester all carbon required to stop and reverse climate change completely. However, our team still is of the opinion that this solution should be used responsibly. We should only use this solution optimally and continue our switch to technologies that are more environmentally friendly. We only want to use this solution as required to minimize environmental harm.
5/ How could we potentially get the international community on board with this plan?
There are two main approaches to convincing the international community for this plan. The first will be to validate this idea. This entails researching, simulating, experimenting, and exploring this idea as far as we can scientifically. We need to be sure that this idea will be safe and effective.
The second approach is to let climate change convince the international community that climate change is very bad. We will see mass extinctions, droughts, famines, etc. Billions of people will feel the effects of climate change. After some time, we will be more and more desperate for solutions. Eventually, this idea will be seriously considered and possibly implemented.
The existing nuclear-capable militaries should be responsible for building and detonating these nuclear explosives.
6/ What governing body would be entrusted with this device?
Nuclear explosives are currently only entrusted by the nuclear-capable militaries of the world. These militaries have robust and thorough systems in place to ensure that nuclear explosives are under control. There is no need to create a new organization to handle these devices. The existing nuclear-capable militaries should be responsible for building and detonating these nuclear explosives.
7/ Could this plan, if executed, mark the start of a whole series of alternative uses for nuclear explosions?
Hopefully not. Humanity has had too many close calls with nuclear explosives and we do not want to reduce the stigma around nuclear explosives. Nuclear explosives hold the potential to exterminate humanity and we do not want to risk using these devices any more than needed.
8/ If our carbon output fails to drop dramatically, and we continue business-as-usual, would this kind of explosion have to be repeated every few years, in theory, to control climate change?
Yes. If we do not take climate change seriously and use this solution as a crutch then we will have to detonate these explosives repeatedly.
. . . nuclear explosives will sequester CO2 much faster than the existing solutions can ever hope to.
9/ What are the most important advantages of using a nuclear device to reduce climate change compared to alternatives?
There are two different classes of alternatives to reduce climate change. The first class is reducing carbon emissions. This entails things like renewables, nuclear power, electric vehicles, increased use of public transport, etc. Many of these alternatives are unbeatable when compared with their current solutions, e.g. renewable power is cheaper and more environmentally friendly than fossil fuel-derived power. The only benefit that the nuclear device has over many of these alternatives is that they do not actually sequester carbon and they take time. These methods will be unable to completely stop climate change.
The second class of alternatives to reducing climate change is carbon sequestration. Comparing nuclear explosives for carbon sequestration is where we see the real benefit over the alternatives. The biggest problems with other solutions are that they are expensive and do not easily scale to gigatons of carbon sequestration. The most promising methods of carbon sequestration for gigaton scales are reforestation, afforestation, biochar, enhanced rock weathering, and possibly direct air capture. These methods are expensive and will likely cost hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars to sequester gigatons of CO2. Our proposed method will likely be hundreds of times cheaper than these existing solutions. Additionally, nuclear explosives will sequester CO2 much faster than the existing solutions can ever hope to. Time is running out so we need to act quickly and decisively.
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I am a strong supporter of the enhanced rock weathering approach, and nuclear explosives are a cost efficient means of breaking rock, but the efficiency of this seems highly dubious. We need the rock broken very fine and dispersed very widely or the neutralization removes all the local CO2 and stops. Dispersing sand and finer basalt will allow wide spread reactions in soil - and gradually release Iron, Magnesium, Calcium, and Phosporous into the soil A nuclear explosion is going to break a column of rock, depending upon yield, on the order of i hundreds of meters, where i may be less than one and is no more than a few. i is going to vary as the cube root of the yield of the blast. But broken rock does no good unless it is dispersed and exposed to flowing water, and to have a fast reaction rate it needs to be quite fine - and not covered by mud. If you are going to turn a seamount into rubble and then mine and grind the seamount into fine powder, it works, but the bulk of the work will not be the initial blast that rubbelizes the seamount. And you would still have to finely disperse the ground basalt.
Relevant weathering numbers: An Australian study of ground Basalt in farm soils had ~ 55% of the basalt in 10 micron powders consumed in 10 years, 99.9% of 1 micron powders were consumed in 10 years. 10 microns is too coarse for seawater neutralization - it settles too fast. 1 micron is probably finer than needed, at least in warmer waters. You want the basalt mostly weathered before it hits settles out of the surface waters. The weathering rate is highly temperature dependent and requires water, which slows down weathering in temperate soils.