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.
The Newberry volcano in Central Oregon remains a geothermal research hotbed (no pun intended).
Mazama Energy is drilling two miles into the volcano to build a closed-loop “Superhot Rock” enhanced geothermal facility.
The pilot project is succeeding! https://t.co/jXcV8X78ng https://t.co/ICEmtR5mj5pic.twitter.com/vBddyCMHUv
— Andrew Damitio
(
) (@AndrewDamitio) October 6, 2025
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.
Drilling into a volcano? What could possibly go wrong?
ReplyDeleteThis reads like the beginning of a grade B disaster movie. Everybody in the audience is thinking, "You morons! What do you think is going to happen?" while "smart people - scientists" go about their business screwing with a geothermal pressure cooker. This is just prior to the first bunch of people (campers in a park in the great outdoors) being burned to death, shortly followed by buildings collapsing in the park office and small town just outside the park. It goes on and just gets worse . . .
ReplyDeleteYes, I saw the same movies.
DeleteGeothermal's been around a long time. Usually mineral scale being deposited on every internal surface is the problem.
ReplyDeleteYou are correct. This has been done for years around the world. I’ve not read the article but unless it’s a closed loop design where a heat transfer liquid is employed it’s same’ole same’ole.
DeleteWhat did the engineers call it on the Manhattan Project when they were experimenting with a plutonium pit using a screwdriver? Tickling the devil? Yeah, something like that but bigger.
ReplyDeleteTickling the tail of the dragon, IIRC.
DeleteGiven the small earthquakes attributed to oil fracking, gee Wally let's have a bonfire in between the gas station pumps.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.usgs.gov/faqs/does-fracking-cause-earthquakes
Now let's do it in an area known for serious volcanic activity....
Must be one of those great Green Projects...
Close, it's part of the depopulation project.
Deletei used to operate crane and other heavy equipment at The Geysers in north/central CA. I recall one well that was just left uncapped as the pressure was so great it couldn't be contained. It was very noisy to drive past. Interesting place to work.
ReplyDeleteWhen I read the article I wondered why they didn't just use the thousands of holes already in the ground rather than drill a brand new one right directly in the devil's duty hole? It's not nice to taunt mother nature because she always wins.
DeleteI wonder why they couldn't cap it. What you do is inject cold water into the well to stop it from geysering, then install an open valve on the wellhead, then close the valve. Maybe the casing wasn't strong enough to weld on a valve.
DeleteFor sure THEY will take NO RESPONSIBILITY if disaster strikes. THEY never do.
ReplyDeleteI hope a retired Navy BT will elaborate on super heated steam. Which was used to power ships until the turbines took over. Worked very well and with skilled BTs, safe.
ReplyDeleteDon't mess with Mother Nature.
ReplyDeleteAs long as you follow workplace safety rules and don't scald yourself, it should be okay. By extracting energy you might actually reduce the eruption potential although that's probably a miniscule effect.
ReplyDeleteIt would be a closed loop system with the cooled fluid being reinjected at a lower pressure location.
I did a feasibility study on a binary production plant in the Breitenbush Cascades geothermal area a decade ago. Resource temperature was too low so it didn't pan out.
Don in Oregon
Why the heck not. It is free for the cost of the taking for anyone willing to invest in it. Just goes to waste otherwise. Could minimally say keep a small town fed with hot water to heat homes, be a basic simple piping system, no complex costly turbines, a simple heat exchanger system. Energy is energy, got to have it got to make it one way or another. Reality cannot be ignored. Energy now, it is the supercritical element in the first world, an immutable truth. What's next? Some speckled microbe, or a bat species 59 miles away, faces extinction if a stainless steel pipe gets run into a chunk of hot rock? Starting to get ludicrous out there. Are Men with balls and the courage to take intelligent risk become extinct or something?
ReplyDeleteIt is max stupid can't be fixed for those afflicted, sorts of people start running to their ma ma crying oh it's so dangerous, it'll never work, we are all gonna die! The technology does not exist. It's too hard, whaaa! It is a lost cause before it is attempted. The sky is falling! The world is flat. (Amazing we got this far)
Oh my God. Limp dick pantywaist crybabies everywhere.
Power is never free. Wind cost 4x the cost of gas. Lots and lots of maintenance. Traditional geothermal has lots of mineral deposits, and things like sulfer oxide, which when combined with moisture, like humidity in the air, make sulfuric acid. Lots and lots of maintenance. A closed loops system? Then you need a heat sink and lots of maintenance.
DeleteNuclear was as close to free power as we are going to get, but we've worked hard to make all the wrong choices and make that expensive too.
Such a POWERFUL STATEMENT given by someone who doesn't SIGN HIS WORK.
ReplyDeleteSo brave "Anonymous December 2, 2025 at 1:13"
May ALL BRAVE MEN remember your wisdom and bravery.
Need I add a sarc tag here?
Not all technology has proven beneficial for mankind.
Fucking around with something we are STILL Learning stuff that Invalidates what we KNEW to be True yesterday is problematic.
We have plenty of good proven energy systems that can be deployed. Coal with the modern controls has proven cleaner than most systems that greenies scream about. Modular Nuclear reactors. Thorium reactors with USE the "dangerous" stuff from coal fired plants work.
We DON'T need to play with earthquakes (proven though fracking history) on Live Volcanos.
"Are Men with balls and the courage to take intelligent risk become extinct or something?
It is max stupid can't be fixed for those afflicted, sorts of people start running to their ma ma crying oh it's so dangerous, it'll never work, we are all gonna die! The technology does not exist. It's too hard, whaaa! It is a lost cause before it is attempted. The sky is falling! The world is flat. (Amazing we got this far)
Oh my God. Limp dick pantywaist crybabies everywhere."
Your bold statement given by someone who hides his face.
"yeh, what he said !" anon @6:37
DeleteSure, “Mike”.
DeleteMike is a very angry man for no reason.
DeleteHDR (Hot Dry Rock) geothermal energy has been a concept for decades. My Chemical Engineering PhD thesis was related to it, and that dated back in the 1980's. I believe it originated from Los Alamos National Laboratory.
ReplyDeleteIt was originally the offshoot of peaceful nuclear applications. It was thought super-deep boreholes could be created by allowing a nuclear package to melt it's way through the earth's core far deeper, faster, and cheaper than conventional drilling. Then two parallel boreholes could be connected by hydraulic fracturing to create a circulation path to heat water for power generation.
There have been other experimental programs. Los Alamos had the Fenton Hill project, drilling into a nearby old extinct volcano. The Camborne School of Mines had a similar project in a granite layer that underlies much of southwest England, in Cornwall. That granite had a steep geothermal gradient due to heat generated by natural uranium decay.
The biggest drawback is that this superheated water dissolves a lot of silica minerals, which then precipitate and quickly plug up process and heat exchange equipment, making these systems difficult to maintain.
So it isn't a new concept. Apparently technology has advanced enough to make it more feasible to try.