The continuing lava flow from Holuhraun eruption has begun to flow into the watercourse of the glacial river Jökulsá á Fjöllum and to obstruct its waterway. Interestingly enough, the lava is flowing into the river at the exact spot where, in 1970, plans were to construct the country’s largest damn.
The project, dubbed LSD which was an abbreviation for Langstærsti Draumurinn (meaning the ‘the biggest dream’ and referred to how crazy the idea was thought to be), involved building a 6 kilometre (3.7 miles) long and 70 metre (230 feet) high damn across Dyngjusandur sands in the central highlands. The idea was to pipe water from Jökulsá and Kreppa rivers to the Kárahnjúkar area in order to generate massive amounts of electricity.
A reporter from Channel 2 News asked volcanologist Þorvaldur Þórðarson whether the current lava flow could naturally create a dam similar to the LSD plan.
“I doubt it. It would take a much larger eruption to from such a large dam,” he explained.
The continuing lava flow from Holuhraun eruption has begun to flow into the watercourse of the glacial river Jökulsá á Fjöllum and to obstruct its waterway. Interestingly enough, the lava is flowing into the river at the exact spot where, in 1970, plans were to construct the country’s largest damn.
The project, dubbed LSD which was an abbreviation for Langstærsti Draumurinn (meaning the ‘the biggest dream’ and referred to how crazy the idea was thought to be), involved building a 6 kilometre (3.7 miles) long and 70 metre (230 feet) high damn across Dyngjusandur sands in the central highlands. The idea was to pipe water from Jökulsá and Kreppa rivers to the Kárahnjúkar area in order to generate massive amounts of electricity.
A reporter from Channel 2 News asked volcanologist Þorvaldur Þórðarson whether the current lava flow could naturally create a dam similar to the LSD plan.
“I doubt it. It would take a much larger eruption to from such a large dam,” he explained.
