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posted by Fnord666 on Friday December 16 2016, @07:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the even-Lassie-couldn't-get-Timmy-out-of-this-one dept.

Geologists say they are close to creating the hottest borehole in the world.

They are drilling into the heart of a volcano in the south-west of Iceland.

They have told the BBC that they should reach 5km down, where temperatures are expected to exceed 500C (932F), in the next couple of weeks.

The researchers want to bring steam from the deep well back up to the surface to provide an important source of energy.

"We hope that this will open new doors for the geothermal industry globally to step into an era of more production," said Asgeir Margeirsson, CEO of the Iceland Deep Drilling Project (IDDP), a collaboration between scientists, industry and the Icelandic government.


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  • (Score: 2) by lgw on Friday December 16 2016, @08:22PM

    by lgw (2836) on Friday December 16 2016, @08:22PM (#442194)

    Just live near enough to a volcano and everything will be fine!

    More seriously, geothermal doesn't scale, and isn't necessarily safe (though the risk may be on the same scale as fracking). The raw solar power per square meter of Earth's surface is something like 10,000x the geothermal power per square meter, so it's only useful in the few places it's concentrated. However, if you happen to have a volcano handy, you might as well generate power from it.

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  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday December 16 2016, @08:29PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Friday December 16 2016, @08:29PM (#442195)

    On the other hand, geothermal is available 24/7, ignoring the clock, seasons, and all weather short of a local landslide.
    That kind of capacity factor goes a long way. Even dams can get the occasional drought or flood disrupting them.

    Anyone knows the typical maintenance outage on Geo, compared to pretty much anything else?

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Hawkwind on Friday December 16 2016, @09:51PM

      by Hawkwind (3531) on Friday December 16 2016, @09:51PM (#442231)
      I think that's an interesting question. I didn't find the real answer but I did come across a seven page pdf discussing the challenges of maintaining a geothermal plant: Maintenance History of a Geothe rmal Plant: Svartsengi Iceland [geothermal-energy.org]. The actual issues and what they do for each one make up §5 (pages 4-7). Near the beginning there's this quote:
       

      A district heating plant must be extremely reliable. There is no “spare” district heating plant, unlike in a good electrical grid system where there are usually redundancies and “spinning reserves”.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @08:30PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @08:30PM (#442196)
    Well maybe if you use enough of the energy the volcano will take longer to erupt :).