This year, I have written several stories about the volcanoes of the Cascade Range in the Pacific Northwest, including Mt. Adams, Mt. St. Helens, and Mt. Rainier.
Yet few people are aware of the largest volcano in the Cascades: Newberry Volcano, which is a volcanic arc that covers an area the size of Rhode Island. The United States Geological Survey considers it a “high threat volcano,” since it is still active and capable of producing explosive eruptions.
Throughout its lifetime, Newberry has been the most explosive volcano in the Cascades, with at least 5 caldera-forming eruptions in less than 300,000 years. The most recent caldera developed about 65,000 years ago, when explosive eruption of basaltic andesite to rhyolite created the current 6 x 8 km (3.7 x 5 miles) caldera.Several eruptions have occurred in the caldera since the last glacier melted nearly 12,000 years ago, the youngest of which, about 1,300 years old, produced the Big Obsidian Flow and a tephra that has been found in Idaho.
As I have mentioned before, new technologies built upon processes similar to fracking are being used to enhance the U.S. geothermal energy production capabilities. Recently, a start-up company announced it had made a breakthrough involving using magma under the Newberry volcano complex.
The plant will tap into the infernal energy of Newberry Volcano, “one of the largest and most hazardous active volcanoes in the United States,” according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It has already reached temperatures of 629 degrees Fahrenheit, making it one of the hottest geothermal sites in the world, and next year it will start selling electricity to nearby homes and businesses.But the start-up behind the project, Mazama Energy, wants to crank the temperature even higher — north of 750 degrees — and become the first to make electricity from what industry insiders call “superhot rock.”Enthusiasts say that could usher in a new era of geothermal power, transforming the always-on clean energy source from a minor player to a major force in the world’s electricity systems….Today, geothermal produces less than 1 percent of the world’s electricity. But tapping into superhot rock, along with other technological advances, could boost that share to 8 percent by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Geothermal using superhot temperatures could theoretically generate 150 times more electricity than the world uses, according to the IEA.
Geothermal energy focuses on the production of steam that powers turbines that generate electricity. In the case of “superhot rock”, instead of relying on the local water, energy companies inject water into areas with dry superheated rock that are at temperatures over 700 degrees Fahrenheit.
At this temperature, and also under a lot of pressure, water becomes supercritical and begins acting like a mix of a liquid and gas. According to The Washington Post, this supercritical water can hold more heat like a liquid but flow like a gas, providing five to ten times more energy than typical geothermal operations….Similar to Mazama Energy’s plans in Oregon, a 2024 report from the Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG) at the University of Texas at Austin similarly found that injecting water into superhot rock near the town of Presidio in southwestern Texas could provide a significant amount of electricity. In fact, according to a model produced by the Clean Air Task Force, 20 percent of the U.S.’s landmass, or around 750 thousand square miles, has superhot rock energy potential.But this energy doesn’t come without risks, the biggest of which being man-made earthquakes. Fracking for natural gas is known to cause tremors by changing pressure conditions along faults, and in 2018, South Korea experienced its second most-powerful earthquake in modern history due to a geothermal plant.These risks can be managed with robust monitoring and engineering, and additionally, pollution isn’t an issue since water recirculates in sealed wells and at distances below most groundwater reservoirs.
It will be interesting to see how this project progresses. Hopefully, the stories involving the Cascade volcanoes will be positive like this one, rather than something… more dramatic.
[Featured image via YouTube]
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