Scientists Unveil Radical Plan to Drill Into a Volcano For Near-Unlimited Energy

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 182 points – Scientists Unveil Radical Plan to Drill Into a Volcano For Near-Unlimited Energy
sciencealert.com

Scientists Unveil Radical Plan to Drill Into a Volcano For Near-Unlimited Energy::undefined

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I kind of thought that this is what Geothermal energy was... Or will this be Geothermal energy on steroids?

With standard near-surface geothermal energy, boreholes up to 200 meters are drilled. The heat difference from that depth is only around 10-15°C, but that's enough to collect the energy to heat buildings.

So yes, drilling into lava areas will spice up things.

Iceland has geothermal power plants going down 2.5km and with temperatures of ~250°C that produce electricity, not heat.

I saw this move! They end up drilling to the core so they can place nuclear explosions to restart the core. Then they had to drill back going up. It was a good movie. Also. Everyone has always thought about doing this.

Yo I'm doing the same thing in my Oxygen Not Included playthrough right now

Great game and amazing simulation! I fee likel I learned a lot about the difficulty of balancing thermal loads in a closed system.

i always thought the problem with this geothermal-delivered-to-surface was transmitting the power over long distances..

course, this article is really just about drilling into a magma chamber and the volcano not going boom

Don't worry, water boils, steam spins turbine.

The article says they have one example of drilling into a magma chamber and it not going boom. I hope their optimism is justified, but this looks like the plot at the beginning of an apocalyptic movie

These guys will do anything except using hydro, wind, solar, and nuclear energy

There’s nothing wrong with thermal energy plants. They are real and with companies like Eavor making real commercial plants using closed-loops there’s a lot of stuff happening in the space right now.

Yeah what's with the weird fixation on magma over there at the uh... *checks notes* Krafla Magma Testbed Organization?

You realise geothermal is included in the category of clean, green energy? And Iceland has been pioneering the field for ages?

One thing that surprised me in the article - I had no idea magma could be acidic!

This is not something I had ever thought about before and I am also fascinated.

Fun fact, when you touch acidic magma/lava, it does burn your skin!

Isn’t this when the lava demon things jump out and cause some ruckus?

There is no possibility of this ever backfiring in the slightest way, like oh say awakening something sleeping deep in the earth's crust. :-P

we drilled too greedily, and too deep. You know what we awoke in the darkness of Khazad-dum. Shadow and Flame.

To be fair, probably all they will find is melted rock and like... gas. But it's fun to dream isn't it?!:-D

I'm less concerned about that and more concerned about supervillains building lairs.

I wonder if it will make the volcano more stable.

Near-unlimited as in "renewable", right x) ?

You can throw your trash in the lava to create more.

You get a bonus smokey flavor, and that is how stars are made.

Renewable in the sense of solar, by the time it runs out we'll have bigger things to worry about

That's my point, unlimited in time, not as in "we can get as much as we want from it. Title is kinda click-bait

I think I’ll take “a real commercial plant” from Eavor rather than this, thank you.