Iceland drills deep for magma's heat

• Autores: Fred Pearce
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3097, 2016, pág. 10
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Drilling into hot rocks to tap geothermal energy is one thing. Drilling deep enough to tap the blazing heat from magma oozing into volcanoes is quite another, offering a huge increase in the potential to exploit Earth's energy. That is the task of a rig now drilling 5 kilometers into the rugged landscape of old lava flows in Reykjanes, at the south-west corner of Iceland. By the end of the year, the Iceland Deep Drilling Project hopes to have created the hottest hole in the world, hitting temperatures anywhere between 400°C and 1000°C. The drilling will penetrate a landward extension of the Mid-Atlantic ridge--a major boundary between Earth's tectonic plates--says Albert Albertsson of HS Orka, an Icelandic geothermal-energy company involved in the project