USSR megaprojects: Kola superdeep SG-3

Fig.1 Title image of the Kola Superdeep

Any mega-project starts with a mega-idea. For a long time, only science fiction writers could describe the deep structure of the Earth. Scientists, having scanty and unreliable data, were forced to build hypotheses, which were hardly possible to confirm or refute due to the lack of factual material. A real breakthrough in this area occurred only in the nineties of the last century, when the drilling of the Kola superdeep well (SG-3), which began exactly 50 years ago, was completed.

Background of the megaproject

Why the construction of such a significant facility was postponed for decades is generally understandable. Such work required fabulous funds, and it was unthinkable to undertake them without proper technical equipment.

In the early 1960s, an interdepartmental scientific council for the study of the earth's depths was formed under the USSR Council of Ministers, bringing together two hundred major experts. Thus began the formation in the USSR of a whole network of reference wells, each of which was the "brick" from which the first reliable model of the structure of the lithosphere was formed (necessary, we note, for the creation of predictive geological maps). The location of each well was determined after heated discussions. The first-born of this network, SG-1, was registered, for example, in the Caspian lowland: the Aralsor well "went" 6.8 km underground. And Saatlinskaya, which appeared in Azerbaijan, was even deeper - 8.3 km.

Meanwhile, the rivalry with the Americans, who set a world record (their Bertha-Rogers well "looked" at 9.5 km in Oklahoma), continued in a kind of drilling race. And it was possible to overcome this mark only at SG-3, the construction of which, stretching over two decades, was supervised by none other than the USSR Minister of Geology Yevgeny Kozlovsky.

Implementation of the megaproject

The bottom of the Kola superdeep well, which was included in the Guinness Book of Records as the most active human invasion of the earth's crust, turned out to be a kilometer below the Mariana Trench, the deepest oceanic "chasm" on the planet. But what is more surprising is that it was drilled not in comfortable weather conditions, but in the Arctic, where a terrible cold rages: in the northeast of the Baltic Shield, a place quite convenient for reaching ancient deep rocks.

Fig.2 DRILLING LOCATION SG-3 ON THE MAP

Drilling of the historic ultra-deep well started on May 24, 1970 in the north of the Kola Peninsula, approximately 100 km from Murmansk near Lake Vilgiskoddeoaivinjärvi.

About 150 scientific and industrial organizations in the country were involved in this mega-project at various stages, including the Leningrad Central (now All-Russian, VSEGEI) Research Geological Institute, which was responsible for studying cores extracted during drilling of rocks. A number of research institutes were responsible for drawing up the schedule network model of the project.

An interesting detail that I tell the participants of the megaproject about. When organizing all the work, a special task was set - not a single foreign device. Everything from the drilling rig to the electronic control systems had to be developed in the USSR.

Fig.3 KOLA SUPERDEEP

The construction of the well, laid for the 100th anniversary of Lenin's birth, was carried out since 1970 by the Kola Geological Exploration Expedition (GRE), which was created for this purpose, headed by the famous geologist David Guberman.

One of the legends says that at a depth of 12 km. The drill string microphone recorded strange sounds that sounded like moaning.

The legend was not confirmed, but the leader of the research team, academician David Guberman, admitted that several explosions occurred in the mine shaft for unknown reasons. By the way, the temperature at a depth of 12 km. was 220 degrees Celsius.

"Iron" for the SG-3 was also prepared by the whole world, most often by trial and error. After all, almost nothing that fell into the polar ultra-deep well was mass-produced by the domestic industry. The first thousand meters, while the drill passed through a homogeneous granite layer, however, were provided by a standard drilling rig. But when they came to less durable layered rocks, where the wellbore began to crumble, it was replaced.

At a depth of 7.2 km, the new Uralmash-500 installation continued to dig into the ground. In a number of operating parameters, it was inferior to foreign analogues, but had a more powerful pump than before, as well as a high-speed winch and an automatic elevator for connecting 36-meter pipes made of light aluminum alloys: a steel column would simply burst from its weight. But this whole colossus, which its Sverdlovsk creators affectionately called the "northerner", could only operate in "set" with the drilling technology developed for SG-3, which became Soviet know-how.

Fig.4 CORE SAMPLES SG-Z IN THE MUSEUM

Under the influence of mountain structures, the column kept jamming; part of it had to be broken off, cementing the emergency section, and drilled higher with a slight deviation. Over time, the overall pattern of the trunk thus began to resemble the branched crown of a tree.

But the journey to the center of the Earth was worth it: SG-3 radically changed the scientific picture associated with the origin and appearance of the earth's crust, especially its lower layers. Every meter of rocks removed from the core receiver, which shed light on hitherto vague questions, was priceless. Moreover, in the interval from one and a half to two thousand meters, drillers discovered large deposits of copper-nickel ores there.

Making a new branch of the trunk (the maximum deviation from the mouth was already 840 meters), in 1990 the team descended another almost 200 meters. At this point, after another accident, drilling finally stopped and was no longer carried out due to lack of funding. Ten years later, scientists from ten countries began studying the Kola core, a global treasure, within the framework of a UNESCO project (the work was carried out under the auspices of domestic academic centers), but in 2005 this mega-project ended.

Significance of the megaproject

The point, of course, is not about the records, but about the colossal significance of the "underground space" that was revealed to scientists. When foreign guests asked Vladimir Belousov, a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, at the drilling site what the Kola well had produced, the venerable geotectonist replied: the main thing is that it showed that we really don't know anything about the continental crust. In the sense that this area keeps many mysteries even now, after new information received thanks to SG-3.

These discoveries were mentioned in a collective work dedicated to her, to the preparation of which Leningrad geologists contributed. Thus, it was believed that at a depth of 7 km granites are replaced by basalts, but instead of them gneisses, metamorphic rocks consisting of quartz and feldspars, were found, VSEGEI experts note. And below, highly mineralized waters were discovered, which no one expected either. It was believed that with each kilometer traveled the temperature would rise by 10 degrees, but it increased in leaps and bounds.

Fig.5 SECTIONAL IMAGE OF THE EARTH

Research on SG-3 brought amazing discoveries in the theory of the development of earthly life. At a depth where scientists did not even suspect organic content, they discovered 14 species of fossilized microorganisms, and the age of the deep layers exceeded 2.8 billion years. It turns out that life on planet Earth arose 1.5 billion years earlier than expected.

Another amazing revelation occurred when samples of lunar soil were examined at the Kola Science Center. It turned out that its chemical composition is almost identical to the rocks extracted from the well from a depth of about 3 km. The theory of the "terrestrial" origin of the Moon has gained further confirmation.

As a summary

Since 1995, drilling has been stopped: there is no one to finance the megaproject. The depth mark at this moment is 12,262 meters - humanity has not yet reached great depths. In 1997, the object was included in the Guinness Book of Records.

Fig.6 REMAINING ARTIFACT

Wells following the Kola:

• Bertha Rogers, USA, depth - 9,583 m.
• Bayden Unit, USA, depth - 9,159 m.
• KTV Hauptbohrung, Germany, depth - 9,100 m.
• University, USA, depth - 8,686 m.

Sources of information

1. Litigation with Pluto. How the Kola superdeep well was drilled. https://spbvedomosti.ru/news/country_and_world/tyazhba-s-plutonom-kak-burili-kolskuyu-sverkhglubokuy...
2. Why did Russian scientists drill a well to the center of the Earth, and how did it all end? https://dzen.ru/a/Xsv8wICna20QthPt
3. What did the world's deepest well tell us about? https://nplus1.ru/material/2016/08/06/Kola-Superdeep-Borehole
4. The cries of sinners and the escaped demon. https://life.ru/p/1326223
5. Jules Verne. Journey to the center of the Earth.
6. Personal diaries.