UNLV volcano expert Adam Simon demonstrates the handmade furnaces he uses to duplicate conditions inside volcanoes. Photo by Gary Thompson. Click image for enlargement.

The location could be described as a sort of hell.

Plants don't grow there. Steam at 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit spews from the surface, sprinkling toxic minerals over the ground.

One false step could lead you to careen down into the green lake hundreds of feet below, which has water "like battery acid."

If those things weren't bad enough, consider that you're on top of the Mutnovsky volcano, which last erupted in 2000, in the Kamchatka peninsula of Russia -- a region with the highest concentration of active volcanoes anywhere in the world.

For UNLV assistant professor and geologist Adam Simon, a trip to Kamchatka, in the far eastern corner of Russia, is a golden opportunity -- "the mother lode" of volcanic activity on Earth, he says.

But Simon will be revisiting Mutnovsky for a once-in-a-lifetime experience: the chance to drill into the hot, molten core of an active volcano.

"It is dangerous," he said. "You're drilling into a volcano. Nobody's ever done this before."

Simon, along with scientists from Georgia Tech, the University of Oregon, the University of California, Riverside, and the University of Alaska at Fairbanks plan on drilling up to five miles into the core of the volcano in an attempt to gain a never-before-seen look at the inside of a volcano.

The 6,200-foot Mutnovsky is one of 29 active volcanoes on the Kamchatka peninsula. There are more than 100 other volcanoes in the area that are considered inactive.

The team, which also involves scientists from Canada, New Zealand, Germany, Russia and France, is working with a geothermal plant that currently is harvesting the volcano's heat and supplying power to 75,000 people in nearby Petropavlovsk.

The Mutnovsky power plant's goal is to expand their capacity to 300 megawatts, or enough to supply power to the peninsula's 300,000 residents.

After the plant expressed an interest to drill another geothermal vent closer to the volcano, scientists made a proposal: If the scientists could pony up the extra money, the team said, would the plant let them drill all the way to the volcanic core?

The plant agreed to the offer, and drilling could start as early as next year.

Both parties would benefit from the endeavor, Simon said. The plant still would get a valuable source of energy, and scientists would gain valuable insight into a part of the planet that nobody ever has seen.

"We don't really know what's down there," Simon said. "We can't see it."

Scientists currently estimate what happens in volcanoes through above-ground data -- they can see the ashes and lava that spew out of the volcano, and they have seismic figures that can show the interior shape.

Simon believes his experience and the research will yield valuable information about what causes volcanoes to erupt and how magma heats underground water.

Between 2 percent and 3 percent of Nevada's power is generated through geothermal power, he said, making the state second in the nation behind California in geothermal energy produced.

Nevada has no active volcanoes but large amounts of geothermal activity -- enough to supply power to between 2 million and 3 million people, Simon said.

Nevada has 14 geothermal plants, most of which are in the northwestern portion of the state.

Although such power plants have obvious benefits, start-up costs are substantial, and they're still more expensive than coal-generated power plants.

Simon said significant money is spent planning on where to place the plants.

Among the crucial factors is whether there is enough local water recharge to replace the escaping steam, which generates geothermal power. That recharge could come from rainfall, melting ice or plants that inject water back into the reservoir.

Simon, whose specialty is in high-temperature geochemistry, said there is also a challenge on how deep to drill.

Depending on how deep the team drills, the steam that escapes can carry higher levels of mineral deposits that can coat and clog the underground pipes.

At Mutnovsky, steam that escapes above the ground at temperatures of more than 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit is so dense with minerals that it hardens into rock within seconds.

"The water coming up has very high acidic content that can burn your skin," Simon said. "We're talking battery acid to lemon juice here."

But pipes clogged with mineral deposits could be the least of the team's concerns, Simon said.

There is the possibility that magma could escape to the surface through the hole, or worse, that the drilling could trigger an eruption.

The team will use a drill made to withstand extreme temperatures to drill a hole less than 6 inches wide, Simon said.

It's not the first attempt at drilling into an active volcano, but it could be the first successful attempt.

Scientists started drilling into the Unzen volcano in the southeastern corner of Japan in 2003, but found the plumbing in the volcano to be cold and solid when drilling stopped in 2004.

And the Iceland Deep Drilling Project aims to reach magma 5 kilometers below the surface of an Icelandic peninsula, but ground has not yet been broken on the project.

The Mutnovsky Scientific Drilling Project hopes to receive funds from the National Science Foundation, the International Continental Drilling Program and other countries' science foundations.

Kamchatka's volcanic activity is attributed to its position near the border of the Pacific and Asian tectonic plates. Like Mount St. Helens and the other volcanoes of the Pacific Northwest, Kamchatka's volcanoes receive their energy from the stress caused by the Pacific plate sliding underneath another tectonic plate.

When Kamchatka's volcanoes erupt, the ash they discharge frequently forces airline flights between the American Northwest and Asia to be rerouted or canceled.

Simon was asked to join the team last year, and he flew out to survey the region in September.

Simon, who started teaching at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2005, has convinced a few students in his beginning geology classes to take up the subject after showing them pictures from his trip.

Learning about volcanoes and other natural disasters is an easy sell to most college students, he said.

"This stuff is sexy," he said. "There's something about it that puts you in thrill-seeker mode."

The travel photos and experiences of a grizzly, bearded geology professor made him change his major to the subject when he was in college.

"My wife says there's two things a geologist likes to do," Simon said. "One is to drink beer, and the other is to go to remote places. This (project) has both, but with vodka."