How To Tap the Underground Oceans

Hello reader, this thread will explore an option to drill and harvest the underwater oceans trapped inside rock beneath our feet. In 2007, it was discovered that there were oceans worth of water locked inside rock, deep inside the earth. I would propose, in this thread, an idea to unlock it with relative ease. The technology exists, though it may need to be tweaked, to drill into the rock and extract it. First, if you haven't read up on the topic, here are two articles. Feel free to read through them before or after this thread.

www.eutimes.net...
www.livescience.com...

From what I have researched, the best way that I could come up with to harvest the water would be a (possibly slightly modified) form of Hydraulic Fracturing, used to harvest oil from shale or bedrock.



Here is a video explaining the current process.


Now, if water can be harvested in the same way that oil can be, we can use this exact same method to produce billions of barrels of water, instead of oil, from the same type of well.

If there are any experts here that can anazlyze this method and elaborate on any shortcomings or suggestions to modify the technique to yield more water, please feel free to let me know!

Hope this was informative.

reply to post by sbctinfantry


1. The depth of the water is quite deep.
2. The water may be bound tightly in minerals which would require heat to release it.
3. On release, it may dissolve salts.
4. It is much easier and cheaper to desalinate sea water.

The water would probably have a very high saline content
2nd line

Yes the water would most likely be extremely high in it's saline level and would therefore need to be desalinated after it is recovered. It would be much cheaper to just desalinate seawater from the start. From my experience most deep rock water is very salinated and I don't know how true it is but I once had a geologist that I worked with at Shell tell me it was water that was left over from seas during the Permian era and was trapped beneath the ground. Anyone whom has ever been to west Texas around the permian basin and drank the groundwater will know what I am talking about.

Living in central Fl and seeing the water issues that we are suffering I have often wondered why we have not invested in desalination plants here. From 2002-2003 I workes in Saudi Arabia on the construction of the Shoaiba Desalination Plant and found the process quite interesting. It cost $1.5 billion to build, supplies water to 1.5 million people and created upwards of 1000 jobs, not to mention the contractor jobs while it was being built. It also has the benefit of creating sea salt as a by product which brings a pretty hefty price.

Here in Fl they are trying to get permitting for 2 new nuclear power plants and I have suggested to my local congressman to incorporate a desalination plant into them since the heat from the reactor core turns much of the cooling water into steam during the cooling process anyway and it would reduce the cost of building the desalination facility. I was met with all different kinds of reasons why it couldn't be done and most of them boiled down to political B.S.

reply to post by Nucleardiver


Putting a desalination plant for human consumption anywhere near a nuclear facility could be a bad idea. If anything ever went "slightly" wrong who could you trust? Just look at Fukushima, and all the covering up of the scale and severity of the problem. Small leaks would be even easier to sweep-under-the-rug in the notion of not creating a panic over just a little radiation contamination. Acceptable limits would be hotly contested locally I'm sure.

Many years ago farmers decided that building the outhouse far away from or downhill from the spring/well was a really good idea. Still seems like sound logic to me.

reply to post by twinmommy38


You have a good point for the most part but with the exception of a major disaster there is no chance of leakage from the core to the cooling tubes. This has to be prevented regardless of whether a desalination plant is piggy backed on it or not as any leak of nuclear material into the cooling tubes would result in imminent catastrophe for anything any where near the water since water is a sponge for radiation.

This is why the U.S. Atomic Energy Council has stringent regulations on the constant inspection of cooling tower tubes at reactor locations. I am not sure what the current requirement is, but when I first started working I worked for several years as a nuclear diver inspecting the cooling tubes at plants around the southeast and at that time they had to be x-rayed checked every 60 days for cracks and checked for seepage with gieger counters.

It would be no more dangerous than what we already see with nuclear reactors in places such as Tn where water from the reservoirs are used to cool the reactors and the same water is used for the drinking water supply.

reply to post by Nucleardiver


Very excellent point. I guess that there would be no greater of a threat "using" the excess heat generated to desalinate water from the ocean and store into a reservoir of fresh water. Rather than "wasting" the heat while using the same fresh water over and over again.

I tried to post this earlier on my mobile, and I am glad I haven't forgotten the idea yet!

I am an admitted layman from the start, and I'm glad to have those of you who are more learned on the topic, so I want to add a dimension to the OP. I thought it was implied initially, but I must have made an error in judgement. Once again, I am not an expert in this field, so feel free to correct me.

Wouldn't the hydraulic fracturing create air pockets where the heat alone from that depth turn the water into steam, releasing it from the surrounding rock and thus drawing more moisture into the empty pores creating a sucking motion like a straw on a sponge? A simple pump at the top of the well can siphon off the condensed water and viola, clean water!

Of course, I might be totally wrong?

NO NO NO!
Hydraulic fracturing is the same thing they call fracking!
This process has led to huge ground disturbance and even earthjquake danger...!
Besiides the salts id bet yer water may be radioactive as well to some degree....
think about it......NO Frakin Fracking!

Look at you trying to lobby the ATS folk. Such modesty. NO FRACKING


Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

Originally posted by sbctinfantry
Wouldn't the hydraulic fracturing create air pockets where the heat alone from that depth turn the water into steam, releasing it from the surrounding rock and thus drawing more moisture into the empty pores creating a sucking motion like a straw on a sponge? A simple pump at the top of the well can siphon off the condensed water and viola, clean water!

There is no air used in fracking and at the depths we are talking about drilling and fracking is not possible with current technology. Recovering an ancient brine at untold expense is pointless. A more likely scenario is to use geothermal energy to desalinate ocean water or deep saline aquifers. Production of geothermal power would be beneficial and part of it could be used to run reverse osmosis desalinators. Reject would be returned to a distant part of the aquifer.