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It's named after a Nordic god and drills deep into the heart of a volcano: "Thor" is a rig that symbolises Iceland's leading-edge efforts to produce powerful clean energy.
If successful, the experimental project could produce up to 10 times more energy than an existing conventional gas or oil well, by generating electricity from the heat stored inside the earth: in this case, volcanic areas.
Launched in August last year, the drilling was completed on January 25, reaching a record-breaking depth of 4,659 metres (nearly 3 miles).
At this depth, engineers hope to access hot liquids under extreme pressure and at temperatures of 427 degrees C (800 F), creating steam that turns a turbine to generate clean electricity.
Iceland's decision to harness the heat inside the earth in a process known as geothermal energy dates back to the 1970s and the oil crisis.
But the new geothermal well is expected to generate far more energy, as the extreme heat and pressure at that depth makes the water take the form of a "supercritical" fluid, which is neither gas nor liquid.
"We expect to get five to 10 times more power from the well than a conventional well today," said Albert Albertsson, an engineer at the Icelandic energy company HS Orka, involved in the drilling project.
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Saturday May 06 2017, @03:46AM (8 children)
Don't those scientist watch old sci-fi movies?
We're all gonna die, I tell ya!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059065/ [imdb.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @03:54AM (3 children)
California falls into the ocean, wiping out the tech industry. The internet is rebuilt from Soylent, ad free but with lots of begging. Spare change, dude?
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Saturday May 06 2017, @03:57AM (1 child)
Maybe we should invest in beachfront property in Barstow.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday May 06 2017, @04:17AM
Lex Luthor already patented that in 1978 with infinite extension thanks to a senate donation..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @10:05PM
To (once again) be a wet blanket WRT to this (bogus) imagery, the motion is NOT VERTICAL.
California's faults are of the HORIZONTAL slip-strike variety.
The Pacific Plate is moving northward past the North American Plate and toward Alaska.
Accurate imagery would have L.A. as Anchorage-adjacent--in about a million human generations.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @09:34AM (3 children)
Hollywood aside... any geologist here who could say what would happen if all heat would be extracted and the centre of the planet would cool down to a steady state?
I guess we would loose our magnetic field? But also other changes? Are there any guestimates how much energy is stored there anyway?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday May 06 2017, @08:07PM (1 child)
There is no possible way this would exhaust any significant fraction of the earth's heat, and a 3 mile deep borehole isn't anywhere near the mantle let alone the core.
That said, yes, if the earth's interior were somehow to cool down to surface temperature, there would be no more geomagnetism, no plate tectonics, no carbon cycle save for the surface components...we'd be a dead world very soon (geologically speaking), deader even than Mars.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by fnj on Saturday May 06 2017, @11:11PM
Dude, without geomagnetism there would be no Van Allen radiation belts, hence the atmosphere would be blown away.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @10:25PM
Azuma did a good job on this one.
To think that our species would be able to extract enough energy from the core to make a dent is typical human hubris.
...and a lack of appreciation for just how BIG cosmological stuff is.
That said, the photos of the earth from space reveal just what a tiny portion of the whole deal Earth's biosphere is.
It's a thin, wispy band at/near the surface.
-That- is that part (our lifeboat) that's on its way to being unrecoverably altered by human actions.
.
...and it's "lose" that rhymes with "clues".
"Loose" rhymes with "moose".
(I used to get those wrong a lot too before I figured out the crutch).
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]