Iceland drillers hit 1,000°C magma by accident with 10 times more geothermal energy

Krafla Magma Testbed (KMT) in Iceland. Image Credit: KMT/Youtube In 2009, a drilling operation in northeast Iceland unexpectedly punched into molten rock at Krafla, revealing one of the hottest geothermal resources ever reached by a borehole. The Iceland Deep Drilling Project(IDDP) had been searching for high-temperature geothermal energy, but instead of finding only hot water and rock, the drill encountered magma at about 2.1 kilometres below the surface. Temperatures there were estimated at roughly 900–1,000°C. What followed turned an accident into an extraordinary energy experiment. Engineers managed to complete the well and draw superheated steam from the area around the magma, showing that heat close to molten rock could deliver far more energy than geothermal wells. The result also gave scientists a unique glimpse into a part of Earth that is almost impossible to reach, setting the stage for a more ambitious attempt to study and use magma.1000°C magma encounter become an energy experimentInstead of simply abandoning the well, the project team decided to find out what the unexpected magma encounter could actually do. The engineers installed a steel casing in the well, with the...