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posted by CoolHand on Friday February 03 2017, @09:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the too-hot-to-handle dept.

An attempt to drill into the heart of a volcano in the south-west of Iceland is now complete.

Geologists have penetrated 4,659m down, creating the deepest-ever volcanic borehole.

Their aim is to tap into the steam at the bottom of the well to provide a source of geothermal energy.

They recorded temperatures of 427C, but believe the hole will get hotter when they widen it in the coming months.

If it works, maybe the Japanese could do likewise and avoid nuclear and fossil fuel power alike.


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  • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday February 03 2017, @10:12PM

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Friday February 03 2017, @10:12PM (#462613) Journal

    Well, thing is, temperature != heat. It's unknown whether the unspecified whatever at a temperature of 427C, that far down, has enough heat to heat enough water for a shower.

    Heat and temperature are funny. A bucket of warm water has more heat than a white-hot nail, for example [google.com]. "More atoms vibrating" is the tl;dr explanation.

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  • (Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Saturday February 04 2017, @05:11AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 04 2017, @05:11AM (#462756) Journal

    It's unknown whether the unspecified whatever at a temperature of 427C, that far down, has enough heat to heat enough water for a shower.

    Do you really think that? More than 4km down, it's going to be some mix of rock and perhaps superheated water. Both have a lot of specific heat and appear in amounts that can be measured in the unit of cubic kilometers. You can take a pretty long shower on that.

    • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Saturday February 04 2017, @12:52PM

      by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 04 2017, @12:52PM (#462826) Journal

      Both have a lot of specific heat and appear in amounts that can be measured in the unit of cubic kilometers.

      I guess the question is, how much of them are exposed to the plumbing in the hole. FTFA:

      Over the coming months, the next stage will be to pump cold water into the well, which will open it up.

      Then they will wait for the well to warm up again.

      The article is short on measurement and short on math, so there's really no way to tell how long it would take to get that shower ready.

      To be clear, I totally concede that the earth has enough heat to warm enough water for us all to have nice hot showers forever--and probably to supply the majority of our energy needs here on the surface. In my inexpert mind, I have always thought that the secret to geothermal energy was digging deep enough, and articles like this are exciting to me for that reason.