Scientists are trying to determine the potential dangerous effects of introducing water into a pressurized pocket of magma underground.
drradonsays...

I'm sorry, this is silly science. Maybe I'm jaded, but if you want to study the reaction of lava going into water, this is happening every day (now) at Kilauea. But the ending piece of alarmism over phreatomagmatic explosions being triggered by water injected into magma is nonsense - researchers and private sector drillers have drilled into magma in Hawaii and in Iceland with no adverse affect at the surface.

Mordhaussays...

Because phreatic eruptions can be initiated accidentally by drilling or failure of a casing in a geothermal well (Bixley and Browne, 1988), these events must be considered potential hazards during the drilling and production processes.

Volcanology and Geothermal Energy

Kenneth Wohletz
Grant Heiken

It's not a guaranteed problem. But if proper precautions are not taken, then it could happen.

drradonsaid:

I'm sorry, this is silly science. Maybe I'm jaded, but if you want to study the reaction of lava going into water, this is happening every day (now) at Kilauea. But the ending piece of alarmism over phreatomagmatic explosions being triggered by water injected into magma is nonsense - researchers and private sector drillers have drilled into magma in Hawaii and in Iceland with no adverse affect at the surface.

drradonsays...

Understand that there is a difference between phreatic and phreato-magmatic eruptions... Wohletz and Heiken are referring to well blow-outs that can occur when the well casing or cement bond between the casing and the formation fails (it's also true that, if the well is cemented in poorly consolidated formation, the formation around the cemented well can fail and allow steam to rise to the surface). Those events could, arguably, be referred to as phreatic eruptions. But most geothermal wells are not drilled into molten magma - as I noted in my original comment, that has occurred rarely but, when it has, it has not triggered a phreato-magmatic eruption.

siftbotsays...

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