ELi5: how does carbon capture work?

Question

I get that we would trap carbon but could it fail and potentially cause a mass release?

In: Earth Science

Answer 1

It doesn’t work very well.

It might make sense to capture carbon in wood and them carefully store that wood in an underground salt mine for millions of years, but that’s not what’s happening. Pushing it underground could lead to ao CO2 “gusher” that releases if back all at once or slow cracks (we could call it fracking) that lets it leak out slowly.

We have people that won’t tolerate nuclear waste like radioactive gloves cast in concrete, the concept of underground CO2 storage is actually a lot more dangerous.