Supervolcano Drilling Plan Gets Go-Ahead 109
sciencehabit writes "A project to drill deep into the heart of a 'supervolcano' in southern Italy has finally received the green light, despite claims that the drilling would put the population of Naples at risk of small earthquakes or an explosion. Yesterday, Italian news agency ANSA quoted project coordinator Giuseppe De Natale of Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology as saying that the office of Naples mayor Luigi de Magistris has approved the drilling of a pilot hole 500 meters deep. The project’s organizers originally intended to bore a 4-kilometer-deep well in the area of the caldera late in 2009, but the plan was put on hold by then-mayor Rosa Russo Iervolino after scientists expressed concerns about the risks."
In Italy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:In Italy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually they won't. They'll be digging out from under 20+ feet of ash.
Re:In other news (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:In Italy? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm no geologist, but drilling into volcanoes to relieve the pressure seems like a good idea to prevent impending eruptions.
I think it depends on how and when you relieve that presure. Inducing a large volcanic eruption now instead of say, 10,000 years from now, might well be beneficial to those future inhabitants, but it would happen to us.
I think a better approach is to sap the heat of the volcano via massive geothermal energy. Our society really does use up a lot of energy (and it's growing considerably over time), and over geological periods of time, we probably could shut down most of the more dangerous volcanoes on the planet with very aggressive geothermal harvesting.
Re:In Italy? (Score:3, Insightful)
In the case of a supervolcano eruption I would like to think the locals would have better things to do in their remaining minutes of life than file lawsuits.
I think you may have some rather high expectations on this one...