A project to drill deep into the heart of a “supervolcano” in southern Italy has received the green light.
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.
Researchers believe that if it erupted, Campi Flegrei – a geological formation just a few kilometers to the west of Naples – could potentially kill millions of people and have a major effect on the climate, but that such massive eruptions are extremely rare.
Ulrich Harms of the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam pointed out that many multikilometer wells have been drilled around the world in order to extract geothermal energy, and that these have not caused explosions.
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http://zen-haven.dk/supervolcano-drilling-plan-gets-go-ahead-what-could-possibly-go-wrong/