
Iceland drills 4.7 km down into volcano to tap clean energy - dnetesn
https://phys.org/news/2017-05-iceland-drills-km-volcano-energy.html
======
chris_va
I'd be careful about getting too optimistic.

Conventional geothermal is about 4-5 cents/kWh, on par with natural gas in the
US. The dominant capital cost is drilling a large well (you need volume), and
so geothermal plants are generally only built in areas that require shallow
(1km) wells.

Well costs are ~quadratic in depth. Given how much money has already been
spent optimizing drilling for the oil&gas industry, along with how cutthroat
that market is, I don't see the cost coming down significantly. As a result,
deep geothermal will likely be limited to niche regions like Iceland. And you
need deep geothermal to scale it past the existing locations.

I would love to be wrong, since geothermal checks all the boxes for renewables
and is also suitable for base load power, but I don't see an obvious path
forward short of a drilling tech miracle.

(source: Climate and Energy R&D group)

~~~
Beltiras
Don't bill deep geothermal as any sort of green. There are usually emissions
that have health consequences for the population around the power plant. The
corrosion of the pipes bringing steam from the drill site to the turbines is
massive. Drilling that deep and pumping water into the hole ups the risk of
earthquakes.

(source: I live in Reykjavík and have witnessed first-hand the increased
stench from the Hellisheiði geothermal plant)

~~~
mrbabbage
I don't disagree with you—I've been to an 800 MW geothermal facility in
northern California and was taken aback by the giant heaps of sulphur
everywhere—but other renewables come with their own downsides.

\- contemporary photovoltaic panels require all sorts of strange metals to
make, which have environmental impacts via mining. This might change with new
materials. Solar also tends to have quite high carbon dioxide impacts due to
the manufacturing process. These are obviously way less than gas or coal, but
about double compared to other renewables and nuclear.

\- hydroelectric is notorious for destroying huge ecosystems stretching far
above and far below the dam and its reservoir. Hydro is so bad that California
doesn't let large projects count in the Renewable Portfolio Standard.

It's tough; there's no perfect energy source.

~~~
crdoconnor
"contemporary photovoltaic panels require all sorts of strange metals to make"

Certain kinds do (e.g. CdTe and CIGS), but not the kind that you'd put on your
house. If modern solar panels required significant amounts of rare earths they
wouldn't be as cheap as they are.

"Solar also tends to have quite high carbon dioxide impacts due to the
manufacturing process."

About 30g/kwh of CO2 vs. coal's ~900g/kwh, and a lot of that is simply because
it is usually currently made without green power (i.e. it will go down).

"It's tough; there's no perfect energy source."

There's a lot of half truths told about really good energy sources.

~~~
mrbabbage
Yeah, coal is obviously WAY worse than solar vis a vis carbon dioxide. I'm not
disputing that. But compared to other renewables, it doesn't do as well as
you'd expect:

\- wind: 11 g / kWh [1]

\- nuclear: 12 g / kWh [2]

\- solar PV: 45 g / kWh [3]

\- gas: 450 g / kWh [4]

Of course, 12 g vs 45 g is NOTHING compared to 45 g vs 450 g (and coal is
another 2x atop gas!), so I'm making a bit of a mountain out of a molehill.

[1]
[http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/sustain_lca_wind.html](http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/sustain_lca_wind.html)

[2]
[http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/sustain_lca_nuclear.html](http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/sustain_lca_nuclear.html)

[3]
[http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/sustain_lca_pv.html](http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/sustain_lca_pv.html)

[4]
[http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/sustain_lca_ngas.html](http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/sustain_lca_ngas.html)

~~~
crdoconnor
Gas actually contributes more to global warming even than coal does because of
the methane (~100x as powerful a warming gas as CO2) also released during
extraction:

[http://inhabitat.com/updated-cornell-study-shows-fracking-
ca...](http://inhabitat.com/updated-cornell-study-shows-fracking-causes-more-
global-warming-than-coal/)

~~~
Filligree
On the other hand, methane breaks down fast. It's only an immediate problem;
if we didn't release more CO2 than could be absorbed, then we'd have a fairly
decent methane budget as well.

As it stands, of course, it makes everything worse.

------
Robotbeat
And geothermal energy is a too-often-overlooked technology. It's not
intermittent like wind and solar. It's more like nuclear but without the
emotional baggage. As we try deep decarbonization, we're going to need more
things like geothermal (or nuclear) or we'll end up spending like 2 or 3x as
much money over-building solar to provide enough power even on cloudy winter
days, building many more wind turbines, etc.

The hard part isn't getting to 60-80% clean energy, it's getting that last
20%. Geothermal helps a LOT with that. (As does nuclear, which is why we
should be protecting existing nuclear assets until fossil fuels are
eliminated... The existing ~20% of our electricity in the US produced by
nuclear will make deep decarbonization multiple times cheaper than relying
solely on wind and solar alone, plus accelerate deep decarbonization by a
decade.)

An interesting idea is to build geothermal and solar at the same site.
Consider areas where these two maps overlap in high potential for both:
Geothermal:
[http://www.smu.edu/~/media/Site/Dedman/Academics/Programs/Ge...](http://www.smu.edu/~/media/Site/Dedman/Academics/Programs/Geothermal%20Lab/Graphics/SMUHeatFlowMap2011_CopyrightVA0001377160_jpg)
and Solar:
[http://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/map_pv_us_june_dec2008.jpg](http://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/map_pv_us_june_dec2008.jpg)

Places like New Mexico and southern Colorado are good fits for this.

A problem with geothermal is if you draw heat too fast from the ground, the
output will decline over the years. If you stop drawing heat, the ground will
warm back up and then when you start again, output will be higher than it was
when you stopped. So there is some sense in conserving geothermal power when
demand for it is low.

So the idea is, you draw from solar when the Sun is shining and draw from
geothermal when it's not. By being co-located, you can use the same grid
infrastructure and get higher utilization out of your powerlines. You've
essentially converted some of your solar energy into a baseload power source.
Or you can think about it as enhancing the output and lifetime of your
geothermal power source.

(And it's possible that if you have a LOT of extra solar power, you could run
a resistive load underground, using the ground as a makeshift thermal
battery.)

~~~
Declanomous
From what I understand, the big hurdle for 100% renewable is not replacing the
power stations that provide base load power, but rather replacing peak load
power stations. Hydro is often used for that, but in the Midwest the peaker
stations are almost entirely run with natural gas.

Replacing those often involves some way of storing energy that you've
generated in a renewable fashion. The issue is that storing large amounts of
energy is not easy, especially when you live in an area that could be
described as flatter than flat.

~~~
Diederich
Mr. Musk said that the world would need about 100 gigafactories in order to
produce enough batteries to level out solar production off hours.

One factory is producing batteries now, and Tesla is announcing three or four
new gigafactory locations by the end of the year.

It's a start.

~~~
adrianN
Do we even have enough Lithium to supply 100 gigafactories? Recycling Lithium
batteries is still quite difficult.

~~~
Robotbeat
Yes we do, and no it's not, at least not the way Tesla is doing it. Because
they're using a standardized cell and standardized packs, they can easily
automate the careful recycling of a lithium cell.

~~~
hwillis
Tesla actually does a single/two step recycling process that
incinerates/electrolytically separates the metals from the
graphite/hydrocarbons/lithium. The lithium containing fraction is sold as
clinker or aggregate. Rocks, basically. Only the steel, nickel and cobalt are
really recycled.

~~~
Robotbeat
I'm talking about the newer process they're developing at the gigafactory. But
you're right that lithium is so cheap at the moment (getting it from salty
brines) that you don't really need to recycle it. The other metals, sure. But
push comes to shove, you could pull it from ocean water. Won't ever be
economically competitive with brines, but it's also not too expensive if that
were the only option.

~~~
hwillis
copying my other comment:

>Lithium is one of the most prevalent elements on earth. Spodumene (rocky
lithium ore) is likely to be a very important economic source in the future as
it is much more common than the brine currently used to manufacture batteries.
Brine requires a water pump to extract, spodumene requires mining like any
normal mineral, but it's found in extremely high quality deposits in the US
including single crystals up to 47 feet across. That means higher quality
lithium in addition to greater availability.

>Spodumene is ~6-7% lithium by mass and is mined in an open pit, so no worries
about soil or water pollution. It's separated from other rocks by grinding,
flotation, and then acid. Very few people like acid in their industrial
processes but I will note that lithium production uses way less hydroflouric
acid than oil refining. The final stage uses sulfuric acid and while again
acid is never good, sulfuric acid is one of the most-used and most-produced
chemicals. Most minerals require sulfuric acid for extraction. It comes in a
bottle of drain cleaner. Mining lithium rock is as economically painless as
buying blasting powder and excavators, and as environmentally painless as...
well nothing. The pollution is basically negligible.

I didn't know the gigafactory was gonna do component-level recycling, that's
pretty cool. I think it should be relatively easy to separate the metals from
the SEI and graphite/lithium in a recoverable way, but processing the SEI has
to be pretty complex. Maybe acid would do it- at that point it would probably
be worth it to recycle the lithium but you'd have to set up an entire process
line just to be able to add it to raw feedstock ore. It'll take a LOT of
battery recycling before that's more profitable than selling it as clinker.

------
tonystubblebine
When I was in sixth grade I entered a science contest to invent a new form of
clean energy. Mostly I entered because I was getting a B in my science class
and needed extra credit to get up to an A.

And the thing I "invented" was literally what's in this article, geothermal
power. Pump water down near magma, have it turned to steam, have that steam
come rushing back up to power turbines.

The problem with my invention was that the company sponsoring the contest was
a geothermal energy company.

I'm still proud of myself though, because I thought of the idea independently
and it is a pretty damn cool idea for how to get energy.

------
rconti
Iceland has discussed building a ~7TW (I think?) cable to transmit power to
the UK.

At least in Reykjavik, hot water is piped directly into homes and used for
heating (radiators) as well as hot water (with attendant sulfur smell). My
host there told me "my wife doesn't like the smell so, we use heated cold
water instead". I had to think for a few seconds to parse the phrase "heated
cold water". Oh, right, that's what I call "hot water" :)

It's so abundant, they don't mind the waste. Just leave the windows above the
radiator open, the radiator keeps the room warm, you get fresh outside air
inside, and the convective flow keeps the air moving. That chilled water is
sent back to the geothermal plant and pumped back into the ground to replace
the water taken out. IIRC there are definitely been geological issues
(earthquakes) as a result of this whole process.

~~~
avar
Most of your comment is wrong. They've been discussing building a 1GW cable.
7000 times smaller than 7TW. A 7TW cable would be enough to transmit Iceland's
yearly electricity production 700 times over. It produces ~10GW per annum.

Hot water is not piped directly into the homes in Reykjavík, it's heated up
"cold" water, with artificially added sulfur. See another comment of mine
here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14274085](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14274085)

In Reykjavík the water you use is not recycled in any way, it's pumped into a
sewer from there into the ocean. It's definitely not pumped the >50 km back to
Nesjavellir for reprocessing.

~~~
rconti
Thank you for the corrections. I was in the datacenter but now I've googled it
and found the information about the 1GW cable:

[http://www.atlanticsuperconnection.com](http://www.atlanticsuperconnection.com)

I'm very surprised to find that the hot water is heated cold water. Where is
it heated? Offsite, with geothermal plants, I must assume? Otherwise I'd be
VERY confused about how my host would not know that he had 2 separate water
heaters. Seems quite odd that a local would not know this, but I guess that's
how rumors work. Is the hot water in radiators similarly offsite-heated water?

~~~
avar
I interpreted your comment as saying that hot water was piped directly into
homes from a natural source, but I see now that you may not have meant that.

There are exceptions, but generally hot water is piped directly into homes in
Iceland from municipal heating. There's no domestic water heaters. There are
dual hot & cold water pipes everywhere. The hot water that comes out of the
tap is from the same source that's in the hot water radiators.

In the case of Reykjavík the hot water is initially cold water heated at
Nesjavellir[1] and at [2] you can see an article in Icelandic about the pipe.
It's 27km of 80x90cm pipe that can transfer 1600 liters of 100 degree hot
water per second. Here's the pipe on Street View:
[https://goo.gl/jFzvYN](https://goo.gl/jFzvYN)

The reason they heat up cold water is simply because most of the time when you
find an abundant natural heat source it doesn't also come with an abundant
natural water source. Therefore you pump cold water in, mix it with the heat,
and pump out hot water.

I don't know what fancy technology they use for this at Nesjavellir, but in
some rural areas this setup is literally just a coiled pipe dropped into a hot
spring.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nesjavellir_Geothermal_Power_S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nesjavellir_Geothermal_Power_Station)

2\.
[http://www.verkis.is/verkefni/veitur/vatnsveitur/nesjavallar...](http://www.verkis.is/verkefni/veitur/vatnsveitur/nesjavallaraed)

~~~
rconti
I did understand the water to be piped directly into homes from a natural
source, which is what my original comment reflected. However, in retrospect,
that may have been a misunderstanding on my part rather than what my host
literally told me. I perhaps combined the concept of municipal hot water and
the sulfur smell into a concept where the hot water was actually geothermal
water -- rather than normal water heated by geothermal power.

I did see one of the very large geothermal plants, but am having a hard time
remembering where it was. Either on my way to/from Thórsmörk, along the golden
circle, or on a drive to Snaefellsnes.

Thanks again for your insight!

------
devrandomguy
That's pretty dwarfy! But, can they pump magma to the surface, to defend their
rocky fortress?

I just hope that they are being careful not to drill through any adamantine
formations.
[http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Raw_adamantine](http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Raw_adamantine)

~~~
logfromblammo
Praise the miners!

I firmly believe that the technology to pump water that turns the waterwheel
that powers the water pump (and also something else) _must be_ extracting
geothermal energy. We just don't see the details. %%

It would be a whole lot cleaner (and friendlier to the framerate) to have a
3x3 geothermal power plant building with a magma reservoir under one tile, and
a water reservoir under another, which transmits power to mechanisms or axles
touching it, and maybe also pressurized steam to any pipe touching it.

------
cmbuck
Yes, this seems much better than coal/oil, but isn't there a finite amount of
heat under Earth's crust? Have we studied what would happen if we cool Earth's
internal temperature by extracting heat in this way?

The Magnetoshpere which protects us from radiation is generated by the magma
under the crust[1]. Eventually, if we interfere with the magma currents too
much, don't we run the risk of damaging our magnetosphere?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_magnetic_field#Physi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_magnetic_field#Physical_origin)

~~~
rb808
Also excuse my ignorance - but does the heat released warm the Earth's
atmosphere? I realize it doesn't create greenhouse gases, but wonder if the
newly released heat would make a difference to sea & air temperatures, or just
gets radiated away.

~~~
hwillis
It actually warms the atmosphere infinitesimally _less_ than other methods of
generating power (aside from solar, wind or hydro). Normally when you burn
something to generate electricity the excess heat is released into the air.
The same process, with the same efficiency (in fact, slightly better), still
happens in geothermal but it also very very slightly reduces the amount of
heat coming up from the earths core elsewhere.

------
Reason077
_" The Institute of Economic Studies at the University of Iceland said in a
February report that the country will not be able to abide by the COP21
climate change agreement signed in Paris in 2015.

Greenhouse gas emissions are rising in all sectors of the economy, except in
fisheries and agriculture, it said."_

This is unfortunate. Given Iceland's cheap & abundant renewable energy (2X
Norway's electricity production per capita!), they really ought to be
following the example set by Norway and prioritising Electric Vehicles through
tax policies, etc.

It would be easy to build excellent charging infrastructure for EVs in this
island nation - instead you have hordes of tourists driving around the ring
road in smelly diesels.

I do see a few Nissan Leafs around Reykjavik and Akureyri, but there is barely
any public charging infrastructure for driving between cities and tourist
attractions.

------
NicoJuicy
Does anyone know where phys.org has their articles from? I suppose it has
something to do with Elsevier. Since a LOT of their articles has to do with
students and universities.

Overall, they publish a great amount of "copy-paste" articles, either from
other news sites and/or student papers. I am 100% sure their reports don't
write original articles, just rewrite from other sources. It looks to me that
Elsevier has found something new with the information they are tapping from
(students/universities)

PS. The source of their article now is :
[https://techxplore.com/news/2016-10-geothermal-power-
potenti...](https://techxplore.com/news/2016-10-geothermal-power-potential-
iceland-drilling.html)

PS2. Elsevier seemed my best guess, since a lot of articles discuss research
from students. Other articles are a rewrite

------
zoom6628
Interesting . NZ has had a geothermal plant for decades that is situated in a
volcanic area (and right next to tourist hotspots of Rotorua and Taupo). They
force cold water down and use the steam to drive turbines. No idea on the
efficiency but the fact its been operating for decades would suggest its good
enough to be viable.

------
Teknoman117
I'm at a loss a bit, are they directly tapping underground sources of hot
pressurized liquid and not using some form of heat exhanger? How would they
deal with various minerals dissolved in the water from gumming up their
turbines or heavy elements escaping into the environment? IIRC there was one
geothermal plant (in one of the nordic countries, i don't recall which)
sitting by hotsprings that had to replace their piping every few months due to
mineral deposits...

random thought: Could geothermal power be considered nuclear power considering
half of the Earth's internal energy comes from decaying radioactive isotopes?

~~~
perlgeek
> random thought: Could geothermal power be considered nuclear power
> considering half of the Earth's internal energy comes from decaying
> radioactive isotopes?

Only to the extend that all power is nuclear power. Solar power: the sun is a
huge fission reactor. Coal: ultimately got its energy from the sun. Etc.

~~~
IanCal
Nitpick: the sun is a huge fusion reactor.

------
avar
There's an English language summary page from the company itself at
[https://www.resourcepark.is](https://www.resourcepark.is)

------
greatNespresso
This looks like the beginning of the shinra to me

------
thatwebdude
Makes sense, some neighbors in the Midwest have been heating their homes,
driveways, etc. with geothermal heat pumps. Same principle, I suppose.

~~~
Robotbeat
Not at all! Very different principle. "Geothermal" heat pumps are just using
the ground as a thermal mass. There's no extraction of the energy from the
Earth's interior, with such a heat pump, just using dirt as a thermal buffer
(between the seasons).

It's actually super annoying that the same word "geothermal" is used for both.
If I were emperor of the world, I'd ensure that the proper "ground-source heat
pump" were used instead of the criminally misleading "geothermal."

Ground-source heat pumps are not energy sources, they consume energy.

What Iceland is doing is actually developing an energy source.

~~~
Sharlin
Iceland has also been utilizing its geothermal resources for centuries.
Currently circa 22% of their electricity and 87% of the heating and hot water
needs are met using geothermal energy.

~~~
accountyaccount
The sulfuric smell in the hot water takes a little getting used to, but it's
pretty amazing that it's naturally heated in most places throughout the
country (though, a bit easier in such a tiny country).

~~~
avar
The sulfuric smell in the hot water has nothing to do with the use of
geothermal power. Most tourists think so because they've only been to or near
the capital area.

Reykjavík artificially adds sulfur to its hot water to reduce the corrosion of
their hot water pipes.

I can't find a source for that in English but there's one in Icelandic, it's
the "Vinnslutæknileg vandamál við vinnslu jarðhita" section.

1\.
[http://web.archive.org/web/20160813045634/http://www.samorka...](http://web.archive.org/web/20160813045634/http://www.samorka.is/doc/1368)

~~~
accountyaccount
This seems contrary to most tourism information, and that PDF is pretty much
the only source I can find... interesting. So they intentionally make their
hot water non-potable to prevent corrosion (the bulk of tourism info
recommends not drinking the hot water)?

Seems like Iceland could really use some sort of myth/fact information as they
continue look to grow their tourism.

~~~
baq
You should never drink hot tap water from any source unless you boiled it
yourself using cold tap water in a kettle somehow anyway. There's increased
likelyhood of bacteria and trace heavy metals from whatever heating equipment
was used. Totally not worth it.

~~~
robocat
Probably OK to drink if you use a gas or electric califont (zero hot water
storage).

------
idlewords
Do you want to get firemonsters? Because this is how you get firemonsters.

------
awqrre
It would be cool to 3d print rock structures using magma from below

~~~
hwillis
geothermal doesn't use magma, which would destroy the borehole. Its just a
hole into very hot rock somewhat near magma. It's still far enough away that
water/steam can flow in between the rocks. Steam is what comes up the hole.

------
mmwako
Someone more knowledgable than me, please correct me... if they are drilling a
hole in the ground and making steam come up from said hole, doesn't that heat
up the Earth's crust and atmosphere more than the previous condition without
the hole, therefore contributing to higher temperatures (and climate change),
making it not that "clean" after all? Maybe cleaner than carbon/petrol, but
not ideal for the current context.

~~~
devrandomguy
I'm probably no more knowledgeable than you in this area, but I have a free
morning, and this is interesting. My hypothesis, is that the heat that we
produce or release to generate usable energy, is an insignificant factor in
global warming, compared to the solar heat that we trap with greenhouse gases.
Let's find some quick simple stats and do some arithmetic, to figure out how
much we are directly heating the surface of the Earth.

According to Wikipedia, the global energy production for 2012 was about
5.616e+20 joules, or 156 petawatt-hours. The Earth has about 1.386e+21 liters
of water on it, and I will assume that that water represents the bulk of the
relevant thermal mass, when considering weather patterns and sea level.

Now, let's estimate the heating caused by that energy. According to
www.bickfordscience.com/03-05_State_Changes/PDF/Specific_Heat.pdf, 4,184
Joules of energy applied to 1 KG of water will raise its temperature by 1
degree Celsius, and this scales linearly with mass. Assuming that Earth-water
averages out a density of 1 KG per liter, our 5.616e+20 joules, applied over a
year to our 1.386e+21 liter water mass, would heat that water by 1.036e-38
degrees Celcius.

It has been a while since I've done a dimensional analysis, and the scale here
are so extreme that I can't tell if my result is sensible. However, if my
assumptions are reasonable and my math is correct, and the processes that I
have chosen to ignore are insignificant (i.e. radiation into space over one
year), then all of the heat that we release in the generation of the global
energy supply, has a negligible impact on the temperature of the planet.

~~~
ajnin
You multiplied instead of dividing somewhere, the result should be : dT =
5.616e+20 / 1.386e+21 / 4,184 = 9.684e-5, or about 1 ten thousandth of a
Kelvin. So still insignificant.

