Volcano erupts in Iceland near a power plant: ‘Worst-Case Scenario’

A volcano in southwestern Iceland began erupting on Monday with lava fountains reaching up to 100 meters and the glow visible from central Reykjavik. The location of the gorge poses a risk to the nearby Svartsengi power plant and the town of Grindavík, which was evacuated in November after increased seismic activity.

“We are looking at a worst-case scenario,” said Thorvaldur Thordarson, a volcanologist in Iceland. “The eruption appears large and is only about 2 kilometers from major infrastructure.”

According to the Icelandic Meteorological Agency, the country’s weather service, thousands of earthquakes have been recorded in Iceland since late October. As a result, the authorities had declared a state of emergency and evacuated Grindavika town near the volcano with more than 3,000 inhabitants on November 11. Houses and roads in the city were damaged by the earthquakes.

In recent days, the Meteorological Office warned of a “significant probability of a volcanic eruption in the coming days.”

The weather service had said there was a “significant” risk of an eruption as underground magma moved to the surface.

The country has seen this before.

There have been three eruptions in the past two years on the Reykjanes Peninsula, Iceland’s most populous corner and home to the capital, and authorities and the public were “very well prepared for such events,” the government said in a statement on November 11. “Iceland has one of the most effective volcanic preparedness measures in the world,” the country said on its website.

Authorities had also set the aviation alert to orange because a volcanic eruption could pose a risk to planes flying in the North Atlantic Ocean if it spews ash into the air.

One of the most memorable volcanic eruptions in Iceland’s recent past was the Eyjafjallajokull volcano, one of the country’s largest, which erupted in 2010. Although that eruption was relatively small and caused no fatalities, the impact was widespread because there was a The ash cloud grounded a large part of European air traffic for more than a week.

The volcano Eyjafjallajokull (pronounced EYE-a-fyat-la-jo-kutl) was dormant for almost two centuries before coming back to life more than thirteen years ago.

Iceland has many volcanoes.

Volcanic outbursts are not uncommon in Iceland, which has fewer than 400,000 inhabitants and about 130 volcanoes. Since the 19th century, not a decade has passed without it, the Icelandic tourism website tells interested visitors. But the frequency of outbursts remains ‘completely random’.

The country lies on two tectonic plates, which are in turn separated by an undersea mountain range from which molten hot rocks, or magma, flow.

The current seismic activity has not affected one of Iceland’s most notorious volcanoes, Katla, which some scientists fear may erupt. Katla has erupted five times since 1721, with intervals ranging from 34 to 78 years. The last major one was in 1918.

Egill Bjarnason reported from Reykjavík, Iceland.