Why Scientists Plan to Drill into an Active Volcano

Right here, in this rugged, otherworldly terrain, a team of scientists have set their sights on a crazy goal. Drilling straight into the magma chamber underneath an active volcano. These researchers aren't afraid to get up close and personal with molten magma bubbling just beneath the Earth's surface. But why would anyone risk causing an eruption? The effort is part of a grand plan called the Iceland Deep Drilling Project. Its participating scientists aren't just looking for thrills. They're on a mission to understand the physics deep within the Earth that could revolutionize our energy future. But this is no ordinary project. Here in Iceland, discovery and danger go hand in hand. The potential rewards are huge. But so are the challenges they'll face. My question is, why? Why do this? Why spend so much money and time to try to drill into an active volcano? What are scientists hoping to discover? And how will they prevent the borehole from triggering an eruption? We're heading to Iceland to find out. This is New Nature. Where a volcano has erupted. Is a new volcanic eruption. West has got erupted. In decades of volcanology research, nobody has ever drilled into an active magma chamber successfully. This is about to change. And it all starts right here at Krafla, a volcano in the northeast part of Iceland. It is here where this revolutionary scientific effort will kick off in 2026. The science that will come from the project will be nothing short of groundbreaking. Because for the first time, researchers will be able to get direct measurements of the conditions inside the extremely hot and pressurized chamber deep underground. But before we can look closer into the drilling attempt, we need to understand Iceland's geology. This incredibly beautiful country, located in a cold climate just south of the Arctic Circle, has almost no trees. And some of its water is unusually warm. This allows for outdoor swimming, even in the cold winter months. A good example of this is what Icelanders call the Secret Lagoon, Iceland's oldest swimming pool. Hot water from deep within the earth makes its way to the surface, shooting out of a nearby geyser and other hot springs nearby and warming up this natural pool. People are swimming here since 1891, despite freezing weather conditions. Pure bliss, if you ask me. And this is not the only hot spring in Iceland. But why does heat from deep within our planet seem to travel to the earth's surface here more easily than everywhere else on the planet? Iceland formed at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates are spreading apart. Over time, this movement has sculpted the island's landscape, leaving behind visible rifts and valleys that trace the ongoing separation. You can even swim or snorkel in these cracks. But let's look further back in time. What happened in Iceland over millions of years is a prime example of seafloor spreading that forms new land. But how come land is formed when you would expect a crack to open up between the shifting plates? What happens beneath the crust is quite fascinating. As the plates spread, rock from the mantle rises towards the surface below the ridge. This causes the pressure to be lowered, and the hot rock starts to partially melt. This happens because the pressure decreases as the magma gets closer to the surface, causing it to expand and push upwards. Imagine it a bit like a gigantic pimple. And when this magma reaches the surface, it can erupt in all kinds of ways, forming different types of volcanoes depending on the material and unique conditions. Over millions of years, repeated volcanic eruptions along this ridge built up the island we know today as Iceland. This is one of the world's prime examples of land formation at a tectonic plate boundary that you can watch pretty much as it happens. So it is no surprise that scientists have laid their eyes on Krafla to conduct their research, one of the most active volcanoes on Iceland. Between 1975 and 1984, Krafla put on quite a show, erupting an impressive nine times. The high frequency of eruptions at Krafla over time allowed researchers to use seismic data to triangulate its magma chamber's location. The ongoing seismic activity helped them track the magma's path and locate the chamber approximately 1.2 miles beneath the caldera. Despite having a geothermal plant at Krafla since the late 1970s, none of its 33 boreholes go all the way down to where magma can be found. But since scientists now know where exactly the magma chamber is located, they are now ready to drill down in the right spot. But as they gear up to drill, they confront the question, what happens when their drilling equipment reaches the boiling, possibly pressurized, pot of the magma chamber? To understand this, we have to rewind and go back to 2008, when Lance Vercun, Iceland's main power company, started drilling at the Krafla geothermal plant. They aimed to reach a depth of 4,000 meters, or 13,000 feet, where they expected the magma was located. But at around 2,000 meters, or at approximately 6,500 feet, the drill unexpectedly plunged down 100 meters. After retracting the drill and facing resistance, they found that obsidian, a very hard volcanic glass, had blocked the borehole. This was a sign that the drill had actually breached a magma chamber, allowing molten rock to flood in and solidify, effectively sealing the opening. And that is one of the primary challenges when it comes to drilling into a magma chamber, the extreme heat. The temperatures are so high that conventional drilling equipment cannot withstand the conditions. But scientists have a solution. They plan to freeze and solidify the magma ahead of the drill bit to form a protective sock of sorts. This sock of hard, glassy rock would protect the equipment and allow for the drilling process to proceed without melting the equipment. Pretty smart. The most obvious risk when drilling deep into a volcano is triggering an eruption. As magma rises from deep underground towards the surface, the pressure decreases, and the gases dissolved in the magma are able to expand. This is similar to how a carbonated drink fizzes more when opened due to decreased pressure. This decrease in pressure can make the magma more volatile, sometimes leading to more violent eruptions. Now, here's where things get interesting. When magma reaches the Earth's surface, the sudden pressure decrease causes the gases within it to expand rapidly, shattering the magma into fine particles, also known as ash. This ash, mixed with hot gases, is then propelled high into the atmosphere, forming an ash cloud, a sight to behold. But don't be fooled by their fluffy appearance. Ash clouds mean serious trouble, especially for aeroplanes. The microscopic ash particles can wreak havoc on aircraft engines and equipment as the ash can clog up the turbofan engines of aeroplanes. Take, for example, the eruption of Heyjafjallajökull, another volcano in Iceland, back in 2010. That ash cloud stretched for miles and miles, shutting down airspace and grounding planes across Europe, leading to empty shelves in some supermarkets as planes were grounded. And another dramatic incident involved British Airways Flight 9 from London to Auckland in 1989, which, at night, flew directly into an ash cloud from Mount Galunggung in Indonesia. It lost all four engines but managed to glide and land safely. And ash clouds aren't just bad news for aviation. They can seriously mess with the Earth's climate, too. 252 million years ago, massive volcanic eruptions from the Siberian Traps released huge amounts of volcanic ash and gases into the atmosphere. This altered the planet's climate so much that it blocked sunlight across the globe. The result was a mass extinction event that wiped out 90% of sea creatures and 70% of land animals. But coming back to the present, we're in a somewhat safer scenario with the magma at Krafla. This magma here is likely older and contains fewer gases. This significantly reduces the risk of explosive eruptions and the chances of ash clouds is minimal. This makes studying Krafla not only fascinating but also less dangerous and enables the experimental drilling to be safer and more predictable. But a non-zero chance remains for things to go wrong. With all these risks, why would anyone want to drill into a volcano? As we now understand the unique geological conditions around Iceland, it becomes clear that beneath its surface lies a substantial underground asset, heat radiating from various magma chambers. Potent enough to power and heat every home and building in the country. And now Icelanders are gearing up to tap into this geothermal gold mine. In principle, this is nothing new. Iceland has a rich tradition of harnessing geothermal energy to produce electricity. Geothermal energy is a clean and sustainable way to generate power by tapping into the Earth's internal heat. It is usually harvested from areas where hot water and steam are trapped in rocks several kilometers beneath the surface. Drilling down to these thermal reservoirs pulls the steam to the surface and drives turbines that produce electricity. This method offers a steady supply of power, unlike the more variable outputs from solar and wind energy. It's always nice weather inside the Earth, so to speak. But now researchers have found a way to make this process even better. The answer lies in the technique called supercritical geothermal energy. This method uses water in a supercritical state where it exists under extremely high pressures and temperatures, conditions typical for magma chambers. Supercritical water can reach temperatures as high as 450°C or 842°F. It can exist in a unique state that's both gas and liquid. This is what it looks like. It's neither gas nor liquid and both at the same time. This weird state in between phases allows the water to hold more heat, making it a more potent carrier of energy. That's why supercritical geothermal systems can generate more power from a single well than traditional methods. This cutting-edge technology is particularly effective in areas where extreme heat and high pressures are present, for example, near active volcanoes. This is all very exciting, because it could be a game-changer in how geothermal energy is harnessed. By drilling deeper into the hotter sections of the Earth's crust, we can increase the amount of energy we get from geothermal sources. If we can reach these superhot areas more easily, we'd be able to produce a lot more electricity using significantly fewer wells, getting a better energy return for the drilling investment. This would make the whole process more efficient and also less intrusive. This here is the Blue Lagoon, a man-made lagoon and spa. It is famous for its warm, milky blue waters coming from the Svartzengi geothermal power plant nearby. As a byproduct of geothermal electricity generation, the power plant releases its hot wastewater into the lagoon. It is rich in minerals, silica, and microalgae, which are known to moisturize skin, ease joint pain, and support heart health. The perfect way to unwind, in my view. For comparison, a typical geothermal well at Svartzengi plant might generate around 5 megawatts of electricity, while a supercritical geothermal well could pump out a whopping 50 megawatts. That's a 10x increase from what regular geothermal wells can do, and enough to power about 50,000 homes. The ability to access geothermal reservoirs with temperature above the supercritical point of 374 degrees Celsius would give geothermal power a major upgrade. It would likely become a much bigger player in our energy mix and cut down the use of fossil fuels that pollute the planet. It's a pretty exciting step towards cleaner energy that lets us retrain people who already know a lot about drilling. Workers from the oil and gas industries can bring their skills over to geothermal projects, making it easier for them to switch to a more environmentally friendly type of work. The magic ingredient to all this is magma. Drilling into a volcano might have sounded like a crazy idea at the beginning of this video, it sure now seems like a brilliant move. Because these areas with molten rock create the perfect conditions for supercritical fluids to occur. We're on the cusp of unlocking a free source of clean, sustainable power right beneath our feet. So, what's stopping us? What's stopping us from drilling into all the known magma chambers to harness their energy and ditch fossil fuels entirely? The reality is, drilling into magma chambers presents a host of technical and financial challenges. And that's what the Iceland Deep Drilling Project aims to find out. We need to develop the technology that can withstand the extreme heat and pressures. Drilling into environments where temperatures can exceed 1,000 degrees Celsius or 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit requires engineering solutions that can handle these harsh conditions. All this costs time and a lot of funding to get to a point where it becomes economical. While the potential of supercritical geothermal energy from magma is huge, making it a widespread solution requires substantial investment to develop and scale up the production of the engineering solutions that can withstand the heat. What's for sure is that these scientists are at the forefront of the fight for clean energy. They are not just drilling holes, they're digging into the future, paving the way for a greener, healthier world powered by the Earth itself. And the upcoming drill into Iceland's Krafla volcano marks a major milestone in understanding the challenge of drilling into magma chambers. While there are valid concerns about triggering volcanic activity, the project's primary goal is all about understanding magmatic systems, improving volcano monitoring, and tapping into high-energy geothermal reservoirs. Tapping into magma chambers is a bold move, but it's packed with potential for clean energy. Just imagine, deep down beneath our feet, there's a powerful mix of heat and energy waiting to be used. By figuring out how to safely harness this energy, we're taking big steps toward a cleaner planet and a better future for our kids. It's about finding ways to power our lives today without compromising the world for future generations. Every step we take in this direction helps us live more in harmony with our planet, making sure we leave it in good shape for the next people that follow after us who will call it home. And did you know that Iceland is not the only place where researchers are drilling deep? China has started to drill one of the world's deepest holes. Are they also hoping to harness geothermal energy, or do they have other motives? What will they find even deeper within the Earth? Watch this video to find out. If you found this fascinating, please consider subscribing.