Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity

Besides creating electricity, there are many potential industrial uses of magma:<p>&quot;Magma serves as a heat source, replacing fuel in magma smelters, magma forges, magma glass furnaces, and magma kilns...Other uses for magma include obsidian farming, trap design, melting ice, igniting fires, and even garbage disposal.&quot; [1]<p>[1] <a href="http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Magma" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;dwarffortresswiki.org&#x2F;index.php&#x2F;DF2012:Magma</a>

The problem with geothermal power is access. It&#x27;s the reason why Iceland is almost entirely powered by renewables, and why the rest of the world isn&#x27;t.<p>So if Iceland finds pockets of magma at 5km, it&#x27;s only really a breakthrough if you can access magma at shallow depths in other regions.

I&#x27;d love to see an xkcd &quot;What if&quot; follow up to this article exploring the idea of pin-holing the planet with these vents, the peak PW output, and the effects of the resulting cooling.

About about using the $1 Billion in natural gas they burn off every year in North Dakota for electricity instead of just heating the atmosphere.<p><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2269517/The-picture-space-shows-U-S-oil-field-burning-gas-power-Chicago-AND-Washington-cheaper-selling-it.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dailymail.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;article-2269517&#x2F;The-picture-...</a><p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/business/energy-environment/in-north-dakota-wasted-natural-gas-flickers-against-the-sky.html?_r=0" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2011&#x2F;09&#x2F;27&#x2F;business&#x2F;energy-environmen...</a>

For many years I imagined that space faring future humans would depend on hydrogen gas clouds as the source of their energy. Think: intergalactic highways with gas-stations at such formations. But this brings another resource to mind: In the future, we might view planets, not merely for their mineral resources, but also for the heat that may be trapped within them (AFAIK not all planets have a hot, molten core).<p>Autonomous planetary settlement bots; colonizers of planets. Harnessing the energy trapped within the planet to refine minerals on the surface or terraform the surface.

It sounds like they didn&#x27;t intend to drill into magma, but is it possible to survey the land and intentionally find magma near the surface to exploit in this manner?<p>If not, isn&#x27;t the question of whether you can effectively harness the energy or not moot?

Tap Yellowstone&#x27;s geothermal. See if we can&#x27;t get greedy enough for energy extraction that we end up preventing a supervolcano.

<i>According to the International Geothermal Association, 10,700MW of geothermal electricity was generated worldwide in 2010</i><p>I doubt they said that.

Old trick. The USSR built geothermal power plants since 1966. But this tech is only available in very specific geological conditions. What is more energetically interesting in Scandinavia is their experimental thorium reactor.

Would mining too much geothermal energy hurt the earths dynamo like in the movie The Core :)?

&quot;Drilling opens door to volcano-powered surprise&quot;<p>Sounds like somebody&#x27;s hit the Happy Fun Stuff. Everybody watch out, FPS is about to hit the floor.

I am not sure if it&#x27;s a good thing that I saw this headline and immediately thought of Dwarf Fortress.

Why is it so much harder to drill a hole 10-20 km deep (where the mantle is predictable) than 2 km deep?

What could possibly go wrong :)