Inside the hole, water will be superheated by the planet to 190C to produce renewable steam
Sandwiched between a scrapyard and a roofing supplier on an industrial estate outside the Cornish town of Redruth, lie two circular grids sunk in the ground. They conceal a little-known feat of engineering – the deepest hole ever dug on British soil.
Plunging to a depth of just over 5km through layer upon layer of obdurate Cornish granite, shaft UD-2 has taken seven months of painstaking drilling to create.
At the bottom of the borehole – the deepest of two drilled on the site and equivalent to 16 of London’s Shard skyscraper laid end-to-end – is the holy grail sought by its creators: a constant flow of water superheated by the surrounding rock to 190C.
Once the flow is harnessed to a turbine power plant it is strongly hoped that the project – United Downs Deep Geothermal Power (UDDGP) – will provide the first electricity in the United Kingdom to be generated from the perpetual heat of the Earth’s core.
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