John Eichelberger

"An extreme planetary environment 2 kilometers beneath our feet"

ABSTRACT -- Beneath Krafla Caldera, a sort of basaltic crucible in the North Volcanic Zone of Iceland, lies a rhyolitic magma body at 900 degrees C and 40 Megapascal (MPa). Twenty-five meters above magma are rock and fluid at 500 degrees C and 16 MPa, not unlike the surface of Venus. We know this, not by the usual surface ruminations but by actual sampling and observation in situ. How can we drill molten rock and now, equally important, how can we design sensors to withstand these conditions? This has much in common with a space probe except that we are going down instead of up.

The journey began some half a century ago with DOE's Magma Energy Program using the Kilauea Iki lava lake as a surface proxy for deep, unerupted magma. The answer to the first question is that we can drill and even core magma to nearly 1200 degrees C simply be forcing water at a high rate through the drill bit, quenching the magma ahead of the bit to glass that is readily drilled, and preserving its chemical and physical characteristics, except that it is now solid. Although the ensuing experiments validated the feasibility of extracting energy from this proxy magma, finding real unerupted magma proved impossible with the geophysics of the day.

Then magma was encountered unexpectedly by geothermal drilling at the Krafla geothermal field (and elsewhere) at only 2100 meters depth. Unique samples of unerupted magma quenched in situ were recovered, revealing that some of the textbook concepts of magma-hydrothermal systems were wrong. Now with a development time and estimated budget that befits a space probe, we are trying to establish Krafla Magma Testbed, the first international magma observatory to observe, sample, and experiment with magma over time. Many materials and sensor challenges remain. But results may open the door to the ultimate in green firm power energy, to reliable forecasting of volcanic eruptions, and to how the crust evolves on terrestrial planets.

SPEAKER -- John Eichelberger's career spans a half century in volcanology, scientific drilling, geothermal energy, natural hazards, and international Arctic education. Educated at MIT and Stanford, he was on the research staff at Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories, New Mexico, from 1974 to 1979 (during the Hot Dry Rock geothermal energy research project), and 1979 to 1991 (participating in the Magma Energy Project), respectively. In 1991 he became Professor of Geology and Geophysics at University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), where he expanded the Alaska Volcano Observatory and pioneered collaborative volcano monitoring, science, and education programs with institutions in Kamchatka, Russia and Hokkaido, Japan. He then served as Program Coordinator for Volcano Hazards at US Geological Survey (USGS), Virginia beginning in 2007, but returned north in 2012 as Graduate School Dean of UAF and Vice President Academic of University of the Arctic. He received the European Geosciences Union's Soloviev Medal in Natural Hazards in 2015, and the Geological Society of America designated him Distinguished Lecturer for Continental Scientific Drilling in 2020. Eichelberger founded the Krafla Magma Testbed (KMT.is), Iceland, to be the world's first borehole observatory to study magma and apply that knowledge to vastly increasing both geothermal energy production and the reliability of eruption forecasting. His near-term goal is to core into the intrusive/magmatic complex under Augustine Volcano, Alaska, complementary to conventional geothermal development there. Eichelberger believes that magmatic energy is the best green, firm-power option for the future.

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