Wells plugged as lava flows Hawaii
Authorities were racing yesterday to close off production wells at a geothermal plant threatened by a lava flow from Kilauea volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island.
Workers were capping the 11th and last well at the plant to prevent toxic gases from wafting out after lava entered, then stalled, on the property near one of the new volcanic vents.
‘‘Right now, they’re in a safe state,’’ Mike Kaleikini, senior director of Hawaii affairs for the Puna Geothermal Venture plant, said of the wells. There also were plans to install metal plugs in the wells as an additional stopgap measure.
The wells run as deep as 2438 metres underground at the plant, which covers around 16 hectares of the 329.8 hectare property. The plant has capacity to produce 38 megawatts of electricity, providing roughly one-quarter of the Big Island’s daily energy demand.
Lava destroyed a building near the plant, bringing the total number of structures overtaken in the past several weeks to nearly 50, including dozens of homes. The latest was a warehouse adjacent to the Puna plant, covered by lava on Tuesday, Hawaii County spokeswoman Janet Snyder said. The building was owned by the state of Hawaii, and was used in geothermal research projects in the early days of the site.
Puna Geothermal, owned by Nevada’s Ormat Technologies, was shut down shortly after Kilauea began spewing lava on May 3.
The plant harnesses heat and steam from the earth’s core to spin turbines to generate power. A flammable gas called pentane is used as part of the process, though officials earlier this month removed 190,000 litres of the gas from the plant to reduce the chance of explosions. – AP North Korea yesterday allowed South Korean journalists to join the small group of foreign media in the country to witness the dismantling of its nuclear test site this week, Seoul officials said.
North Korea had earlier refused to grant entry visas to the South Korean journalists, raising worries about the prospect for recently improving ties. Their exclusion followed Pyongyang cutting off high-level contact with Seoul to protest joint US-South Korean military exercises that it calls an invasion rehearsal.
The dismantling of the North’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site, where all of its six nuclear bomb test explosions occurred, is expected to happen today or tomorrow depending on weather.
Seoul’s Unification Ministry said North Korea accepted the list of eight South Koreans to attend via a cross-border communication channel yesterday morning.
A special South Korean gov- ernment flight was to take the journalists to North Korea later yesterday. The other journalists from the United States, the UK, China and Russia had arrived Tuesday.
When North Korea announced earlier this month it would dismantle the Punggy-ri site, it said it would invite foreign media outlets from five countries including South Korea to observe the event. But the country had until yesterday morning not responded.
The South Korean journalists were left in Beijing and eventually returned to Seoul as the North refused to grant them visas.
It was unclear why the North changed course and decided to let South Korean journalists in the country. The development came hours after President Donald Trump met South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Washington seeking to keep the highly anticipated US summit with North Korea on track.
The summit, planned for Singapore on June 12, could offer a historic chance for peace on the Korean Peninsula. – AP