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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @09:44PM
I would identify the problem as "sunk investments", an overlapping element.
With (Capitalist) megacorporations so heavily invested in gouging into Mother Earth and looting her carbon which she has sequestered for eons, the notion of maximizing profits--and privatizing those--based on already-spent money (while, of course, externalizing costs--making sure that those are public costs--e.g. air pollution, global warming, water and land pollution from irresponsible equipment rupture incidents that spew the previously-sequestered poisons into the biosphere) remains attractive to the Capitalist Ownership Class.
Capitalism is indeed destroying our ecosystem.
I'm reminded of John Carpenter's "They Live" and the realization about the alien invaders:
"They are turning our atmosphere into their atmosphere." [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [conspiracy-cafe.com]
a government beholden to "donations"
You got it in 1.
...though I would have said "politicians".
Until we have publicly-funded election campaigns, we will continue down this road to self-inflicted oblivion.
volcanoes [...] in the USA that [...] have the right conditions ?
The Pacific Rim, to include the USA's West Coast is called "The Ring of Fire".
The resource absolutely exists.
...and a lot of folks do ecosystem-friendly energy extraction on much smaller scales with heat pumps.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]