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Supervolcano Drilling Plan Gets Go-Ahead

Posted by Soulskill on from the what-could-possibly-go-wrong dept.

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."

6 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. Dear Syfy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The Italians would like to give you the plot and backdrop for your next movie. Add a giant creature (maybe it's den was in a cavern above the caldera.. or even better it lives in the magma) and there you go, instant movie.

  2. In Italy? by jesseck · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is this the same country that sued scientists over not predicting natural disasters last year? Who gets sued if / when the Volcano erupts (regardless of the cause- natural or drilling)?

    1. Re:In Italy? by khallow · · 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.

  3. In other news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    In other news, geologists from Naples saw a wild dog outside their lab. In order to see if it was rabid or not, they decided to poke it with a pointy stick.

  4. Eh by tmosley · · Score: 5, Informative

    If a single borehole into a magma chamber were all it took to trigger an eruption, we wouldn't have supervolcanoes, as they would have all bled out their pressure long ago. You might get a tiny earthquake, or an explosion large enough to collapse the borehole, but the it is very unlikely that anything worse than that would happen. If something that small could cause it, it would have been triggered naturally.

  5. Re:Bad Idea? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    That wasn't lava, that was mud. It's still active and it's in Indonesia.

    Sidoarjo mud flow