melting hole in earth with liquid iron

I saw an interesting science story about investigating earth’s core.

I was wondering how the mass of iron could be heated. How much energy does it take to melt a gram of iron?

I was thinking about a “China Syndrome” method: Mix some uranium in with the iron, make a critical mass that melts the iron as it fissions. How much heat is released by a gram of uranium fissioning?

That’s some chunk of molten iron. 10,000 cubic meters would be a block about 70 feet on a side. You would have to build dozens of huge foundries at the launch point to produce that much and keep it molten at one time. I don’t think much of the China Syndrome approach, it would release huge volumes of radioactive gas into the atmosphere at the beginning.

Thermit (also known as thermite powder) is a mixture of powdered aluminum and powdered iron oxide. When the powder is ignited, the aluminum is oxidized and the iron oxide is reduced to molten iron. It seems to get the amount of iron required in that article, you would need a LOT of thermite powder.
Just thought I’d post a different approach to the problem.

(Just guessing, it would probably require more thermite than ever produced in the history of civilization).

It doesn’t look very feasible to me. For one thing, they’d have to be non-standard foundries; normal ones produce pig iron (Fe - 4% C) at around 1600K. This won’t melt rock (in fact they cast it in sand beds) as silica melts at 2000K. So we’re talking special handling to heat the iron to well over this. And then, as the OP says, how is it supposed to stay hot in the ground as its heat is dissipated by melting the rocks around it?

You couldn’t heat it too much over that. Iron boils at ~2470K.

Count me amongst the skeptical. He wants to start with a crack 1000 feet deep, 1000 feet long and 4 inches wide. You’re not going to excavate something like that with existing technology, but that’s OK, there’s always “several million tons of TNT or a single modest hydrogen bomb.” That might do it, but it’s going to be irregularly shaped.

If you get your hydrogen bomb crack made and figure out both how to build a survivable measuring device as well as how to deliver the molten iron, then you’re off. Provided you’ve concocted a sufficiently benign environmental impact statement.

Then just stand back and see what happen when this thing hits the first natural gas sand.