Iceland - possible eruption due near the Blue Lagoon

[KenAdams]

Is anyone following this?

https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/news/2023/11/03/coming_close_to_an_eruption/

The main concern is the power plant next to the lagoon.

There are constant mini eruptions happening too - https://vafri.is/quake/

Have just binged watched on ff that guys feed to watch the trucks dig and the lava moves so fast!

I guess the issue of the towns loses heat even for a day, then all the water in the pipes freeezes and ruptured all the pipes in the houses and towns and it takes months to get a supply back. Something we can’t even imagine running on gas central heating etc, a shared hot water supply

It's thousands of people, @Seeingadistance - so a pretty big deal.

Yeah Svartsengi serves Suðurnes, which includes Keflavík, Njarðvík, Vogar, Sandgerði... as well as Grindavík which is obviously uninhabited right now but still not good if the pipes freeze. It's definitely not a good time of year for this to happen!

There's now a small amount of ash. Apparently lava is reacting with the ground water to create a small explosive eruption. You can see the darker cloud.

This has not been seen on Reykjanes previously, but did happen in the Krafla fires, which had a lot in common with recent events on Reykjanes.

Presumably there must be some form on contingency plan for this scenario with the hot water pipes?
This volcanic system has been threatening Svartsengi and the hot water pipes since activity began back in November. It seems almost inevitable that at some stage the hot water system beyond Grindavik would be affected!

Well yes but there's a limited amount they can do. They are trying to connect a back up pipe.

Thanks for feedback re the heating situation. I did wonder if it covered Reyjavik as well, but looks like pretty most of the Reykjanes peninsula - as pp says, a lot of people affected.

I saw one report which said they have a replacement pipe ready, but the connecting of it could take a bit of time. Dangerous work for sure. I noticed the men working in the sports hall in Grindavik were roped to harnesses, which I'm guessing is a new precaution after that poor man was lost down the fissure in Grindavik before the last eruption.

I hope things aren't serious after this latest eruption. Fun for me of course but not for anyone whose life was disrupted by it . I can't find much news but it does seem to have settled a lot.

I think it just depends how quickly they can connect the pipe. If it's only a day or two without hot water it should be OK I think. People can use electric heaters or gas heaters, although they've been asked to take it easy with electric heaters as the system isn't set up to handle everyone heating their house that way and it could cause power cuts if people use too much extra electricity.

I read on the RUV news site that they had assessed whether they could protect the pipe but had concluded that any protections might actually channel the lava flow towards the power station (make sense I guess, as the pipe runs to / from the station and any berm / wall next to it would direct the lava along the pipe rather than across it). Also, they'd assessed whether they could bury the pipe but that itself might have led to it rupturing. So they have laid this second pipe, ready connect up PDQ...

I'm not questioning the lack of hot water. That was impossible to prevent.

What surprises me is the fact that they haven't seemingly made plans for the potential increase of electricity usage. Or plans for if the power lines go down too.
I've seen so many warnings today about the high risk of power shortages and outages.
It seems mad that they wouldn't have at least made sure there were generators in the north west of the peninsula to keep the power on and sufficient capacity for a basic level of electric heaters.

How exactly do you do this?

The area that might be affected is huge, because they've not known where an eruption might occur in the next few years. So whilst they knew there was an issue a couple of years ago, it's still very difficult to accommodate.

And say they saw the issue with the location by the time of the November eruption you can't just lay miles of contingency pipes in winter in Iceland.

This is miles and miles of fairly remote land which is difficult to access on foot never mind with equipment in summer. It's not remotely flat. It's lava fields.

@RedToothBrush did you actually read what I wrote?
I wasn't talking about pipes I was talking about electricity!

All electricity generation on Reykjanes is geothermal. Almost all electricity generation in the entire country is geothermal or hydroelectric. I don't know if we have industrial size generators or how many you'd need to provide extra electricity for the whole of Reykjanes but I assume that was not considered a cost effective option?

Just speculating, but I would think there are other aspects that we don't realise or fully understand.

On the ground report from the Rejkyavik Grapevine.

I heard that generators and electric heaters were supplied to the nursing home, so sounds like there was a plan and resources in place for the most vulnerable anyway.

They are apparently optimistic about getting the hot water supply reconnected this afternoon or this evening.

I don't see much to criticise in the emergency response myself.

Well, seems like this one's over. Maybe a repeat in another month.

It manages to do enough damage to be a significant headache each time, but not enough to eg bury the Blue Lagoon forever and make a name for itself. The ongoing uncertainty must be so stressful for all the Grindavik residents and local business owners.

I was on Twitter and got this and thought “aye, right”. Amazingly, it’s almost true. Blue lava

never heard of this one.
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/piWPSHExcJ5oyRkh/?mibextid=KsPBc6&startTimeMs=24000

The Icelandic met office site is reporting the resumption of inflation and seismic activity near Svartsvengi. Also the risk has been updated for the zone around Grindavik for sinkholes amongst other risks. 😞 It’s hard to see that residents can return for the foreseeable future.

Þorvaldur predicts a new eruption on 1 March. So if there's one thing we can be sure of, it's that nothing will happen on 1 March!

If inflation continues at the rate it's currently going at another eruption could occur as early as the 26th feb according to discussions I've read today.

A really interesting graph posted on the Iceland Met Office site yesterday, one I'd not seen before. Is shows the rate of magma accumulation after each erruption / magma propagation, looks like there may be a few more days before the level might trigger another event:

https://en.vedur.is/about-imo/news/a-seismic-swarm-started-north-of-grindavik-last-night

Interesting, thank you.

They are thinking the next one might be within the week. I hope it is away from Grindavik again.