Scientists in Iceland have come up with an ambitious plan to drill into a volcano's magma chamber to source an abundant amount of clean, super-hot geothermal energy.

The project, which would be a scientific first if successful, would see boreholes drilled about 1.3 miles down through the earth’s crust at a volcano known as Krafla, located in the northeast of Iceland.

With over 200 volcanoes, Iceland is already a leader in geothermal energy where heat or hot water vapor is extracted and separated into liquid water and steam. The steam is then run through turbines that produce electricity used to power and heat its many greenhouses, used for its high levels of local food production, as well as for heating. Around 90% of homes in Iceland are heated by geothermal energy, according to Energy Transition, a green energy website.

However, geothermal energy is cooler than steam at fossil fuel power plants, about 482°F and 842°F, respectively, and so tapping into the magma chamber could unleash a far powerful energy supply and boost the nation’s overall energy stock.

"It's quite inefficient at those low temperatures, so there's an interest in trying to develop super-hot geothermal," John Eichelberger, a volcanologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, told New Scientist.

"The purpose of producing energy from near magma super-hot geothermal is that these wells are up to an order of magnitude more powerful in terms of producing energy than conventional wells," project manager Björn Þór Guðmundsson, told the Daily Mail.

"We can drill one well instead of 10 for the same power output."

The project, being undertaken by Krafla Magma Testbed (KMT), an Icelandic magma research organization, will build on a 2009 effort to drill close to one of the Krafla magma chambers by a team from a nearby power plant that has churned out geothermal energy from the volcano since the 1970s.

The intent with that project was only to get near to the chamber to explore geothermal energy options, but the chamber was not as deep down as expected, and the project accidentally broke through into the magma vault. Read More...