Can we solve the problem of waste by throwing it into volcanoes to burn?

Other than temperature, there are other good reasons not to burn our waste in volcanoes.

It is true that lava is hot enough to burn some garbage, but it is not hot enough to melt many other common materials, and it also threatens to cause very dangerous explosions, plus to do so would be a great insult to some cultures.

Says writer Juergen T in an article with the location of "The Konfrsishn" (The Conversation) when the volcano erupted Kilauea (Kilauea) Big Island of Hawaii in 2018, the lava flows of volcanic hotter than 1100 degrees Celsius, which is hotter than the surface of the planet Venus, and enough To melt many rocks. It is also as hot as waste incinerators, which usually burn garbage at 1000-1200 degrees Celsius.

But not all lava is the same temperature. Eruptions in Hawaii produce a type of lava called basalt. It is hotter and more liquid than the lava that erupts at other volcanoes, such as the thick lava "dacite" that erupts on Mount St. Helens in Washington state. For example, the 2004-2008 eruption of Mount St. Helens produced a lava dome with surface temperatures below about 704 °C.

Do not dissolve all materials

Other than temperature, there are other good reasons not to burn our waste in volcanoes. First, although lava at 1,100°C can melt many materials in our garbage — including food scraps, paper, plastic, glass and some metals — it is not hot enough to melt many other common materials, including steel and nickel. and iron.

Second, there aren't many volcanoes on Earth that have lava lakes, or bowl-like craters filled with lava, that let us dump our trash. Of all the thousands of volcanoes on Earth, only 8 are known to have lakes of active lava. They include Kilauea and Erebus in Antarctica and Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Most active volcanoes have craters filled with cooled rock and lava like Mount St. Helens, or water like Crater Lake in Oregon.

Very dangerous work

The third problem is that dumping garbage into the eight active lava lakes would be a very dangerous business. It is covered with a crust of cooled lava, but beneath that crust is molten and extremely hot. If rocks or other materials fall on the surface of a lava lake, they will break the crust, disrupt the underlying lava and cause an explosion.

This happened in Kilauea in 2015, as blocks of rock from the edge of the crater fell into a lava lake and caused a massive eruption that ejected rocks and lava up and out of the crater. Anyone who throws trash into a lava lake must escape and avoid burning trash and lava.

Suppose the trash could have been safely dumped into the lava lake: what would happen to the trash? When plastics, garbage, and metals burn, they release a lot of toxic gases. Volcanoes are already releasing tons of toxic gases, including sulfur, chlorine and carbon dioxide.

Volcanic fog

Sulfur gases can be acidic mist, which we call "volcanic fog". They can kill plants and cause breathing problems for people close to them. Mixing these already dangerous volcanic gases with other gases from burning waste will make the fumes more harmful to people and plants near the volcano.

Finally, many indigenous communities view nearby volcanoes as sacred places. For example, the Halema'uma'u crater in Kilauea, home of Pele, the indigenous Hawaiian goddess of fire, and the area around the crater, is sacred to the indigenous people. So throwing garbage into volcanoes would be a great insult to those cultures.