Let's go down under! Beware of magma...or use it?

Well, days have been quite warm here in Prague in the past few weeks... what came to my mind was... warm, hot...and then I discovered on the Net something VERY hot! :-)

What can you imagine, when you see this?

 Many people can think of magma only as a means of destruction, anihilating anything living what comes into its way... but recently, not surprisingly as a result of an accident, scientists have explored sites on Iceland near the freezy North Pole and while drilling a 15,000 ft deep hole, magma appeared at 6,900 ft there.

The Geothermal energy has been known for many years. However, what remained under the sheet of secrecy had been the characteristics of magma, which, as many people wouldn't really say, are very suitable for energy use!

In ordinary geothermal plant, people naturally use the geothermal water, which is located directly above the magma and is also heated up by the magma. A really nice video of how geothermal powerplant works can be found here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjpp2MQffnw :-)

In fact, the geothermal energy is 5x times lower then the energy of   “supercritical water,” a dense, hot and clear fluid which is located lower than the underground water reservoir. Scientists were overwhelmed by the temperature, which is about 900 degrees of Celsius, and the pressure of magma, which is together with temperature higher as we go more and more beneath the surface.

In general, ''magma plants'' are similar to geothermal plants but with greater production efficiency. However, the problem of constructing them is still arduos engineering task due to the temperature of magma (900 celsius) and high-pressure dry steam originating from a zone on top of the magma (400 celsius)

On the other hand, there has been some studies which revealed geothermal energy as the cheapest one among renewable sources of energy! Compared to nuclear fusion, which has been funded for 25 years and there are still no industry-usable results, Magma plants seem like a essential idea for our future predicted vast energy consumption...

In summary, magma is interesting idea for energy production, but it is still a very hot stuff! So when there is magma around you, like near active Krafla volcano on Iceland or near active Etna volcano in Italy, forget the research and run away! Better safe than sorry :-)


sources:
http://www.greenoptimistic.com/2011/04/29/magma-geothermal-discovery/
http://www.magma-power.com/pages/magma_power.html
http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/atlas/Images/Glossary/Magma.jpeg
http://www.connect-green.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/magma.jpg
http://www.earthtechling.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/krafla.jpg
http://science.jrank.org/kids/article_images/earth_p27.jpg
http://www.decadevolcano.net/photos/europe/etna/2004/etna_46225.jpg