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Iceland is a country of volcanoes. The island lies on a mid-ocean ridge, which results in increased volcanic activity. Thanks to this location, Icelanders have rich geothermal energy resources. Over 25 percent of the country’s energy comes from geothermal energy. In addition, almost 90% of hot water from geothermal sources is used for heating. Buildings on the island.
Iceland is dotted with thousands of deep geothermal wells. Another will soon join them, but he will be different from the others. Icelandic engineers want to drill into the magma chamber of the Krafla volcano complex. In fact, there will be two boreholes – one will enable the first direct measurements of magma, the other will enable the extraction of geothermal energy.
Drilling in the heart of the volcano
“We will drill a magma chamber,” says Hjalti Páll Ingólfsson from the Geothermal Research Cluster (GEORG) in Reykjavík. “This is the first trip to the center of the Earth,” adds his colleague Björn Þór Guðmundsson. However, the hole will not be that deep. Some magma chambers, or underground reservoirs of molten rock, lie just a few kilometers below the Earth’s surface and are within reach of Icelandic engineers.
The problem is that we usually don’t know where the magma chambers are. Currently, no geophysical technique allows the location of magma reservoirs. But in this case it is different. Ingólfsson and his colleagues know where such a magma chamber is and have bold plans for it.
Krafla is one of the most active volcanoes in the world. Between 1975 and 1984 it erupted a total of nine times. At that time, scientists used seismometers to determine the location of the magma chamber – about 2 km below the caldera.
In 2009, a geothermal drilling project conducted for the Icelandic energy company Landsvirkjun unexpectedly struck a magma chamber near the Krafla volcano. The fact that the crew was not immediately wiped out by the volcanic eruption is evidence that drilling into magma can be safe.
In 2013, the same team that made the discovery launched the Krafla Magma Testbed (KMT) project in Landsvirkjun, led by Bjarni Pálsson. Project scientists had already announced a few years ago that they wanted to drill into the volcano (more on this in the text: Scientists want to drill into the volcano). According to current plans, drilling is scheduled to begin in 2026, with the main goal being to deepen knowledge of magma.
“We have no direct knowledge of what magma chambers look like, which is obviously crucial for understanding volcanoes,” said Pao Papale of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Italy.
Magma research and geothermal development
Scientists associated with the KMT project plan to place a series of sensors in the magma that will measure the magma. “We hope that we can at least measure the temperature directly, which has never been possible before,” admitted Ingólfsson. The key, however, will be watching the rock melt into magma and looking for clues that could indicate an impending volcanic eruption, which is extremely difficult to predict.
Scientists also want to use the well for energy research. Scientists hope to develop technology that harnesses the extreme heat of molten rock, which will make it possible to extract more energy from the magma chamber than from geothermal sources.
Iceland has long been a pioneer in the use of geothermal energy. The islanders use it to generate electricity and heat their homes. There are already geothermal wells in the immediate vicinity of the Krafta complex. There are 33 of them in total and they supply a geothermal power plant that has been in operation since the late 1970s. However, none of them reach the magma chamber.
The drilling itself is currently not a challenge. Deeper holes have been drilled in Iceland itself. Rather, the question is what happens to the drilling equipment when it reaches the magma chamber. Magma reaches a temperature of around 1,300 degrees Celsius. Guðmundsson emphasized the need to develop tools that can withstand the extreme conditions in the magma chamber. The same applies to sensors that are supposed to measure magma. They have to withstand enormous pressure and extreme temperatures.
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