Iceland Is Drilling a 3-Mile Hole to Tap Magma Power

by jonbaer • 10 years ago

94 52 10 years ago

pif2• 10 years ago

Wow! They were able to dig a well down to magma without having magma pouring out of it? That's the ideal trashbin! Start pouring in nuclear waste and other non-recyclable garbage, now!

tombone123• 10 years ago

You know magma has a tendency to come out right? If you put trash down the hole, its burned remains just clog up the end and risk coming back out whenever the stopper is removed.

pif2• 10 years ago

What I'm hoping is that pollution will be diluted in the mantle before coming back as just traces in the magma.

markyc• 10 years ago

is it really recommended to mess around fault lines like that? I guess we'll find out

exabrial2• 10 years ago

Not sure why you're downvoted for a good question... I hate drive-by downvoters.

Well, the best answer I can say is: we do it already. Every time we've drilled for fossil water (that's a thing actually), oil, gas, salt (yep, we drill for salt), typically you want to do it into a fault line, because natural resources tend to gather there after millions of years. The exact circumstances depend heavily on the geology of the area; which I can imagine, for this type of investment/project, they are studying it thoroughly.

Really there's hardly ever problems sucking stuff out, it's shoving stuff back in that occasionally causes problems. 'Saltwater' (That's the leftover stuff after you extract the resources from your oil/water emulsion) disposal wells in the Midwestern USA have been implicated it lubricating ancient faults and causing minor earthquakes. (Interesting side note, the Midwestern USA was a giant ocean and has massive layers of salt deposits really far into the earth).

The technology behind injection wells is actually quite fascinating... they have cement and steel casing around the production casing through an absurd about of rock until they're way past the point where the point where it has no hope of returning to the surface. However, we apparently can't make very good predictions about what they do to ancient faults, and the communication between producers is minimal because they don't want to spill their secrets. Nearly ever state has a commission that regulates the amount producers are allowed to both extract and inject, but occasionally we still have problems because the commissions lack the field flow analysis that are proprietary secrets for most producers.

And no, fracking does not cause earthquakes or causes surface damage, even when the highly regarded scientific research organization CNN tells you it does. Doing so would be counterproductive to the producer anyway: they'd lose the valuable fluids they were trying to extract.

detaro• 10 years ago

Seems relatively tiny compared to how geologically active Iceland is anyways. If it triggers something, that something probably would have been triggered by natural causes anyways in the next decades(?)

Now I wonder if active regions are safer for this, since energy is released more often (vs stable regions that might have huge energy built up over a long time). Could be total BS though.

JorgeGT• 10 years ago

Tapping supercritical steam directly seems awesome, specially if it can be replicated in other areas. And if they avoid awakening a Balrog, of course.

dasil0032• 10 years ago

Seems like a Balrog could be a good power source.

johan_larson3• 10 years ago

The use of supernatural creatures as weapons or power sources is prohibited by the secret Appendix AA to the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968.

misnome• 10 years ago

Giant treadmill?

envy2• 10 years ago

This feels like the beginning of a horror film: how long until the demons start crawling out from the centre of the earth?

kyriakos• 10 years ago

they're literally opening a gateway to the "underworld"

trophygeek• 10 years ago

Yes. The description made me remember an old movie I saw as a kid that scared the shit out of me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_in_the_World

`An international consortium of scientists, operating as Project Inner Space in Tanganyika, Africa, is trying to tap into the Earth's geothermal energy by drilling a very deep hole down to the Earth's core. The scientists are foiled by an extremely dense layer of material at the boundary between the two. To penetrate the barrier and reach the magma below, they intend to detonate an atomic device at the bottom of the hole.

The atomic device is used and Rampion's fears prove justified, as the crust of the Earth develops an enormous crack that progresses rapidly. Sorenson discovers that there was a huge reservoir of hydrogen underground, which turned the small conventional atomic explosion into a huge thermonuclear one that was millions of times more powerful. Another atomic device is used in the hope of stopping the crack, but it only reverses the crack's direction. Eventually the crack returns to its starting point at the test site, and a huge chunk of the planet outlined by the crack is expected to be thrown out into space. Sorenson remains at the underground control center to record the event despite pleas by his wife Maggie to evacuate with the rest of the project staff. She and Rampion barely escape in time to observe the fiery birth of a second moon. Its release stops the crack from further splitting the Earth.`

idlewords3• 10 years ago

Icelanders are tough. There's probably already a dude or woman at each power plant whose job it is to demon hunt on the night shift, with good benefits and a pension plan.

pacnw• 10 years ago

We're surrounded by liquid hot magma!

ceejayoz• 10 years ago

Nah, they'll have checked for that first.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/why...

Sharlin• 10 years ago

That'a just a normal day in Dwarf Fortress.

DrScump• 10 years ago

Start?

20andup• 10 years ago

Very cool indeed. It's the first news/article I have read in awhile that isn't anything negative. It tries to push the boundaries of humanity by doing something innovative.

johan_larson3• 10 years ago

What's the worst-case scenario again?

Pica_soO2• 10 years ago

Better heat conduction cools the magma below, causing it to "fall"-flow downwards, while somewhere else nearby, hotter magma must go up. Just a assumption, neither geologist nor fluid-dynamics-expert.

Its a turbulent system though, so any prediction is futile :D

johan_larson3• 10 years ago

Would it be too much to hope for a series of cascading failures leading to a kilometer-high fountain of lava?

Asking for a friend.

irq-1• 10 years ago

50 MW seems really small? I don't think nuclear is the way to go, but the scale seems to make this type of plant irrelevant.

from: http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=104&t=3

As of December 1, 2015, there were 99 operating nuclear reactors at 61 nuclear power plants in the United States. The Fort Calhoun plant in Nebraska has one reactor with the smallest generating capacity of 479 megawatts (MW). The Palo Verde plant in Arizona has three reactors and has the largest combined generating capacity of about 3,937 MW.

maxerickson• 10 years ago

If the cost of the produced electricity is competitive, the unit size of the production system doesn't matter much (this metric will account for the differing capital and operating costs of the production systems).

Looking around a bit, I guess nuclear is considered cheaper than geothermal, but for Iceland the fixed costs of dealing with nuclear might be prohibitive (right now they spend nothing on stuff like securing nuclear materials, to add a gigawatt of nuclear, they have to deal with it for a long time, or pay someone else to do it).

tombone123• 10 years ago

Yeah, Iceland doesn't really have a surplus if geologically stable land...

niftich• 10 years ago

Iceland's total installed capacity in 2014 was 2770 MW; total generation was 18.1 TWh [1].

So interestingly, even at Iceland's scale, this 50 MW additional capacity will amount to only 1% of their total installed capacity, which seems small.

[1] http://px.hagstofa.is/pxen/pxweb/en/Atvinnuvegir/Atvinnuvegi...

tombone123• 10 years ago

It's 50 MW per borehole, a power station typically generates power from a largish number of holes. A big geothermal plant on Iceland can have 30 boreholes, which with the new method could then produce 1.5 TW, 54 % of total capacity. Of course, how much is actually possible to take out at given size depends on the size of the magma system you are tapping and how fast it refills.

adevine• 10 years ago

Iceland currently generates more electrical power per capita than any other country; they only have about 325k residents.

All that cheap geothermal power is being used for energy intensive industry, like aluminum production. While one borehole of 50 MW is not huge on their scale, each bit of additional energy can go toward their industries.

hugi3• 10 years ago

The article is somewhat misleading. The 50MW number refers to power provided by each borehole, not an entire plant. For example, the Hellisheiði Geothermal Power Station [1] generates around 450MW using 30 holes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellisheiði_Power_Station

finid• 10 years ago

If the IDDP's magma well is successful, it could add a new source of abundant green energy to the country, and the technique could be imitated near fault lines around the world.

Yes, go ahead, folks. What could possible go wrong with drilling near fault lines?

mrfusion• 10 years ago

Why are these negative type of comments always at the top, hacker news? We can do better.

robotresearcher• 10 years ago

Well, what? A teeny bore hole in a multiple-thousand-mile structure that involves vast forces over huge scales. Almost certainly completely insignificant.

Iceland is covered in huge freaking volcanos.

Are you worried about releasing the Ancient Ones or something?

markbnj• 10 years ago

How many people here are old enough to have seen "Crack in the World?" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059065/

jasonkester• 10 years ago

Iceland has the most genius way of disposing of wastewater from geothermal power.

They have tons of hot sulfurous water left over that needs to go somewhere, but you can't just dump it in the ocean or environmentalists would get all mad. And you can't dump it on the land because it'll leave this ugly white stain as the minerals leach out.

So they dump it all in to this big pool out by the airport and call it The Blue Hole and have busloads of tourists lining up waiting to pay $50 to swim in it. Genius.

One day somebody will figure out how to do this same trick with nuclear waste and we'll have our power needs sorted forever.

hugi3• 10 years ago

Who wouldn't like to visit Three Mile Island's own Green Lagoon. For that healthy glow. Makes you positively luminous.

rimantas• 10 years ago

Interestingly enough, you can get less radiation from diving in the spent fuel pool than being in open air: https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/

AnthonBerg• 10 years ago

Bathing in said runoff is an effective treatment for psoriasis :) https://scholar.google.is/scholar?hl=en&q=blue+lagoon+psoria...

avar• 10 years ago

It sounds like your mostly being facetious, but in the interest of historical accuracy: The Blue Lagoon started as just a runoff from the power plant, it's only later after the natives had been bathing there for free for a while for free that it turned commercial.

idlewords3• 10 years ago

On my visit there, the bus driver told us the local teens had been swimming in it and causing a nuisance, until someone had the bright idea to put a hotel next to it and make it a spa.

It's proximity to the airport makes it especially attractive to tourists who want to soak for a few hours in the middle of a transatlantic flight. Go there if you can; it's fun!

joering2• 10 years ago

Somewhat related - it is very impressive to me how atomic energy players pushed some genius PR onto people in terms of advertising that atomic energy is so so clean.

I mean - most people I asked were just thinking that atomic energy creates steam and that's all.

When I educated my family and friends that its not the case, and that radioactive after-material is put in boxes and stored on the oceans' floor with life expectancy of 25,000 years before it will start leaking, everyone was in shock how this has even been approved in the first place...

lifeformed2• 10 years ago

Coal kills us now. I'm sure we can think of a better containment solution in 25,000 years...

eximius• 10 years ago

Put the box in another box?

z3t4• 10 years ago

do u see much 25k old documentation? Everything we know today will be forgotten.

exabrial2• 10 years ago

Somewhere there is a Doctor Evil quote describing this exact scenario...

Iceland Is Drilling a 3-Mile Hole to Tap Magma Power

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