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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: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @01:13PM (6 children)
clean energy offered by things that AREN'T coal and oil and nuclear
You seem to imply that nuclear energy isn't clean. That is objectively false, nuclear reactors are closed systems and do not output anything except for harmless water vapor through their run cycle. The waste fuel is of course dangerous, but it's fairly easy to store due to it's low volume and low penetrative ability of the products of U235 fission.
But that's what we get for being a nation that thinks race and gender aren't social constructs.
You have that ass-backwards.The USA is the nation with the most proponents of the cult of social justice and the science denialist bs it entails. I'm from Eastern Europe and I can assure you that the concept of social constructionism is nigh-nonexistent beyond the borders of the Germanic linguistic group.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @09:12PM (5 children)
That's all you needed to say.
The rest is fanboy spin.
The waste fuel is of course dangerous
...and no permanent solution has yet been implemented for that.
Every bit of nuclear waste produced in the USA since 1943 remains within a few hundred yards of where it was produced.
...and that stuff remains dangerous for thousands of human generations.
harmless
Not at all.
...and you haven't accounted for some human screwing up--or purposely cutting corners and falsifying the reports.
- X rays of welds in power plants that are just dups of existing x rays.
- Buying not-fit-for-purpose cooling tubes then applying for a permit to run at high power in a let's-see-if-anything-blows-up gamble (San Onofre).
- Completely inadequate designs (TMI instrumentation; Fukushima located on the Ring of Fire but not rated for a Magnitude 9 seismic event; etc. etc. etc.).
- Operator screwups: A let's-try-this-and-see-what-happens attitude of operators at Chernobyl; the Simi Valley contamination event; include here as well TMI's operators poor interpretation of instrumentation readings, causing them to take exactly the opposite of the correct action.
social justice
...as opposed to Capitalists' short-term "thinking" and wealth extraction with no consideration for their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
"The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil."
...and let's not forget the dirtbags who started building these things in order to make the most heinous weapons ever devised on the planet--meant to obliterate cities full of civilians.
(This is called terrorism.)
Sociopaths.
As long as humans are anywhere in the loop, nukes are NOT an acceptable way to produce energy.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by fnj on Saturday May 06 2017, @11:07PM (1 child)
I don't disagree, but just to point out: humans are ALWAYS somewhere in the loop. Always were, and always will be. If operation, is 100% robotic, humans designed and built the robots. Or the robots that made the robots. Or ... you see where this is going.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @12:40AM
It's been running, sans any human attendants, for billions of years.
It's 93 million miles away and its energy takes 8 minutes to get here, but that really isn't a big problem
Not only is all the sequestered fossil fuel on Earth a consequence of that not-built/maintained-by-humans thing, we're only now figuring out that it can meet pretty much all our energy needs without our burning/"burning" stuff and constantly producing life-threatening byproducts.
Terrestrial nukes and fossil fuels are redundant.
Renewables are the future (and even the present in a bunch of places).
Get with the program and embrace them.
Stop excusing flawed humans and their flawed energy paradigms from previous centuries.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @01:15AM (2 children)
...and no permanent solution has yet been implemented for that.
You don't need a permanent solution for a non-permanent measure. Nuclear fission is the only viable replacement for fossils right now. Arguing against the adoption of nuclear energetics as part of our energy strategy is implicitly supporting the status quo. This is what green nutters like you fail to understand - solar and wind CANNOT viably replace fossils and we are rapidly running out of time to stop the INEVITABLE cataclysm if we fail to act quickly and decisively. There is simply no other long term sustainable replacement for fossils.
I'm not against using solar and wind when possible, but your obstinate luddetesque rejection of fission is going to cost the very future generations about which you morally grandstand so much.
Every bit of nuclear waste produced in the USA since 1943 remains within a few hundred yards of where it was produced.
I fail to see how that is a problem. Do you have any specific reasons to move them?
...and that stuff remains dangerous for thousands of human generations.
So what? In a few hundred generations, we won't even prefer to live on the surface of the planet anymore. Once we develop an effective orbital manifacturing capabilities, it will only be a matter of time until humanity migrates to habitats orbiting the Sun and harvesting all that fusion energy you love so much. In the time it would take a few thousand natural generations to come to pass, you probably wouldn't even be able to recognize whatever humanity has become by then.
...and you haven't accounted for some human screwing up--or purposely cutting corners and falsifying the reports.
- X rays of welds in power plants that are just dups of existing x rays.
- Buying not-fit-for-purpose cooling tubes then applying for a permit to run at high power in a let's-see-if-anything-blows-up gamble (San Onofre).
- Completely inadequate designs (TMI instrumentation; Fukushima located on the Ring of Fire but not rated for a Magnitude 9 seismic event; etc. etc. etc.).
- Operator screwups: A let's-try-this-and-see-what-happens attitude of operators at Chernobyl; the Simi Valley contamination event; include here as well TMI's operators poor interpretation of instrumentation readings, causing them to take exactly the opposite of the correct action.
No, I just disagree with your risk assessment and overall cost-benefit analysis.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @02:11AM (1 child)
Your stuck-in-the-last-century denialism is noted and rejected.
There's LOTS of unused surface area (rooftops) available to collect the non-polluting energy.
That's also available when demand is greatest.
For the rest, battery technology has made giant leaps and continues to do so.
Nukes remain the most expensive way ever devised to boil water.
Trusting their design, operation, and upkeep to humans has already shown itself to be a horrible idea.
Just stop already.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @01:33PM
Your stuck-in-the-last-century denialism is noted and rejected.
At least we could have avoided mass starvation last century. I'm not so sure we can anymore.
There's LOTS of unused surface area (rooftops) available to collect the non-polluting energy.
Surface area isn't really the problem. The problem is sustainability, production capacity and the need to stop burning fucking coal last fucking century. And fission is no more polluting than the toxic crap that goes into building panels, the only difference is that the former is easier to contain because it all gets dumped from the reactor instead of all over everyone's poorly maintained rooftop installations.
For the rest, battery technology has made giant leaps and continues to do so.
I'd rather not gamble urgent issues on technology that might not be invented in a 100 years if it's even physically possible.
Nukes remain the most expensive way ever devised to boil water.
Cost is irrelevant. Fission is the only non-polluting means of sustained energy generation right now. We need sustained energy generation right now.
Trusting their design, operation, and upkeep to humans has already shown itself to be a horrible idea.
No it hasn't. Nuclear accidents are big and attention grabbing but the negative effects of them in the last few decades have been insignificant. Furthermore, among both of our examples, the problems that allowed them have been solved decades ago. In the case of Fukushima, the only reason we had to use the old reactor design was because people like you keep whining when we try to build better reactors.
Just stop already.
Is your brain starting to hurt yet? That's called cognitive dissonance. The cure is admitting the truth, the pain is not going to stop no matter how hard you try to reject reality.