The beautiful rivers and stream provide more in Iceland than a place for tourists to visit. The waterfalls are spectacular, pouring down from the mountain glaciers. Another bonus is that they simply filter any dirt debris from the water and send it to their taps.

The tour guides tell you don’t buy the bottled Glacier Water. Their secret is they just fill the bottles from any tap because it is some of the cleanest water on the planet. The restaurant server joked with us when he brought glasses of water by saying special glacier water and it is free.

Water also provides hydro power to the country. About 40% of the power used in the entire country comes from the hydro plant along the river. However, it is the second source which provides the remaining 60% of their power that struck me profoundly. See Perspective from last week There She Blows

Steam is an unusual source of power because it cannot be found in places away from a combo heat/water source. If you did not guess it, I am speaking about water runoff from the glaciers coming too close to the extreme heat from lava. It is like a tea kettle the size of a stadium with the steam being forced into a spout with a 4 foot diameter. You cannot attach a hose to that to capture the steam, so they use large pipes. Iceland discovered a tremendous source of steam when they drilled about 2 miles down and unexpectedly reached a lava chamber.

I want to think the process here.

You drill down. Steam comes pouring up the hole around your drill, so much that you must remove is before it is completely damaged.

You lay pipe up to the hole.

Who do you get to drop that last pipe on which covers the hole and forces the steam into your tube?

So early in their learning process they ran the pipe straight to their power plant. Big mistake as the steam travelled at excessive speeds through their pipes now damaging instruments and machinery in their plant. So they learned to weave the pipes across the land for a mile or so with 90 degree turns every hundred feet, which is approximately 50 or 60 turns in order to slow the steam down enough to enter the plant. Yet it still provides enough heat source to run the power plant. When they capped the special hole I mentioned which hit the lava, the claim is this hole provides 10 times the power any other hole does which only goes down to reach heated water sources.

By the way, the power plant had to be evacuated when the volcano started erupting. See Perspective Raging River

Kind of a bummer I would think. Have a Happy Friday.