The Gateway to Hell is CLOSING: Fire in mysterious giant crater that has been burning for 50 years after blundering Soviet scientists set it alight is reduced to 'faint' blaze
The infamous 'Gateway to Hell' crater in Turkmenistan has been burning non-stop for the last 50 years.
But scientists now say that the gateway is finally closing.
This blazing pit was formed in 1971 when blundering Soviet scientists accidentally drilled into an underground pocket of gas and decided to light it on fire.
Since then, the gateway has become both one of the reclusive nation's leading tourist attractions and a major source of polluting methane emissions.
According to scientists, the flames in the crater are beginning to dim due to a reduced flow of natural flammable gas.
Officials say the fires are now three times smaller than in the past and can only be seen in the immediate vicinity.
Irina Luryeva, a director at state-owned energy company Turkmengaz told a fossil fuel conference this week: 'Before a huge glow from the blaze was visible from several kilometres away, hence the name "Gateway to Hell".
'Today only a faint source of combustion remains.'
The 'Gateway to Hell', known officially as the 'Shining of Karakum', is a 230-foot-wide (70m) sinkhole located in Turkmenistan's Karakum desert.
Located above a vast pocket of natural gas which continuously seeps towards the surface, the crater is lined with hundreds of gas fires which give it an unearthly glow.
The exact origin of the pit was covered up by officials when the country was part of the Soviet Union, leaving behind no official record of the incident.
However, the most commonly accepted theory is that the pit was created by a natural gas prospecting accident.
During the 1970s a rogue soviet gas drilling station punctured a gas pocket and collapsed through the ground, forming a crater which began to leak gas into the air.
The scientists decided to ignite the crater to prevent the toxic gases from escaping and spreading further.
While these scientists might have expected the blaze to last for a few days before going out, the fires of the Gateway to Hell have been burning ever since.
Turkmenistan is estimated to have the world's fourth-largest reserves of natural gas, largely scattered in pockets beneath the desert.
What is the Gateway to Hell?
The Gateway to Hell, officially known as the Shining of Karakum, is a sinkhole located above a large pocket of natural gas in Turkmenistan's Karakum Desert.
As this gas seeps through the ground, it feeds fires which have been burning since the 1970s.
The pit is 230 feet wide (70m) and 98 feet deep (30m).
The Gateway to Hell is visited by an estimated 6,000 foreign visitors per year.
In 2013, Canadian explorer George Kourounis descended into the crater to collect soil samples.
His study revealed that simple organisms have been able to survive within the burning pit.
The crater is likely connected to this vast underground store of methane, giving it an almost unlimited supply of gas to burn.
This burning pit caused by a Soviet-era disaster has become something of an unlikely national treasure.
Turkmenistan's few tourists flock to the site to camp by the warmth of the burning methane and, in 2019, national leader Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov filmed himself driving a rally car around the pit to dispel rumours of his death.
However, in 2022 Berdymukhamedov announced that he wanted to be remembered as the leader who closed the gates to hell and launched a project to cut off the fires.
Speaking at the time, Mr Berdymukhamedov said: 'We are losing valuable natural resources for which we could get significant profits and use them for improving the well-being of our people.'
Since then, at least two new wells have been drilled around the pit to capture excess methane which would otherwise leak to the surface.
Older, decommissioned gas pumps in the area have also been reactivated to help draw away the natural gas.
According to the evidence from these nearby wells, the crater has seen a significantly reduced supply of gas.
This, in turn, has led to the infamous flames dwindling in size.
The announcement will come as good news to environmentalists concerned about Turkmenistan's record of natural gas leaks.
Methane is a highly potent greenhouse gas which contributes heavily to climate change.
A recent study published by the International Energy Agency found that Turkmenistan was the world's largest emitter of methane through gas leaks, although the country disputes this claim.
Likewise, intelligence company Kayrros found that leaks from two fossil fuel fields in the country contributed more to global warming in 2022 than the UK's entire carbon emissions for the year.
While the fires at the Gateway to Hell did help burn off some of the escaping gas, the pit still leaks vast quantities of gas into the atmosphere.
Drawing off the natural gas into other wells where it can be safely stored and used to make energy would help the country cut its outsized carbon footprint.
Methane is a colourless, odourless flammable gas, and the main constituent of natural gas.
Methane is a greenhouse gas, and the second biggest cause of climate change after carbon dioxide.
It is also the primary component of natural gas, which is used to heat our homes.
When methane is burned as a fuel, it gives off carbon dioxide (CO2), and so is not directly emitted at that point.
However, across all points of the extraction, transport and storage processes there are leaks of natural gas that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.
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The Sun
a day ago
- The Sun
Gateway to Hell is CLOSING: Giant 1,000C burning desert crater finally reduces to ‘faint flames' after nearly 50 years
A NOTORIOUS 1,000 degree desert crater dubbed the "Gateway to Hell" is finally closing as the fiery inferno has died down to mere "faint flames". The infamous pit's blaze has been raging on for 50 years without dying down - but boffins have now said the nightmare hole is closing. 9 9 9 9 Formed in 1971 in Turkmenistan, the Darvaza crater is said to have come from curious Soviet scientists who drilled a hole into the ground and hit a gas pocket. The bumbling researchers then decided to set it alight, giving birth to the nightmare formation. Located in the Karakum desert, the 230ft-wide sinkhole has become one of the former Soviet nation's most popular tourist attractions. About 65ft deep, the formation is known officially as the "Shining of Karakum". Researchers said the flames started to die down because all the flammable gas in the crater was nearly used up. Officials said that fires are now three times smaller than their original intimidating size. Previously visible from a distance, the fires are now only seen in the crater's "immediate vicinity". Director at state-owned energy company Turkmengaz Irina Luryeva said: "Before a huge glow from the blaze was visible from several kilometres away, hence the name 'Gateway to Hell'. "Today only a faint source of combustion remains." The exact origin of the pit was covered up by Soviet officials who left behind no official record of the ordeal. Shocking moment 1,000ft fiery lava jet erupts in 6-hour volcano frenzy as scientists warn of wind spreading toxic gas But the most commonly accepted theory is that scientists drilled into natural gas and then set it alight. It is speculated that they ignited the crater to prevent toxic gases from escaping into the air. Rather than petering out within a few days like the geologists predicted, it instead went on to rage for another five decades. The crater emitted a continuous stream of fire, with bright orange and red hues, which became especially dramatic at night. The heat from the flames were said to be intense, and the sight of the monstrous flame pit in the middle of the desert was otherworldly, contributing to its ominous nickname. Animals reportedly fell into the hole on occasion and met a grisly end. 9 9 The hole's death comes after the Turkmenistan government repeatedly raised the prospect of possibly sealing the blazing furnace, according to CNN. In August last year, Dylan Lupine, one of the pioneers of tourism to Turkmenistan with his UK-based company Lupine Travel, said: 'I would say it's only burning at around 40% of the level I first witnessed there in 2009." Nobody had ever dreamt of venturing into the blazing crater, until George Kourounis' expedition in 2013. The fearless explorer was the first person to descend into the "Gates of Hell", and discovered something which could help prove the existence of aliens. Jaw-dropping images showed George rappelling down into the 1,1000 degree inferno. What caused the Darvaza crater inferno? by Harvey Geh The Darvaza crater was caused by a Soviet gas drilling accident in 1971. Geologists hit a gas pocket when drilling into the ground, and then lit the leaking gas, thinking it would burn out in weeks. Instead, the crater has burned non-stop for over 50 years, earning the nickname the 'Gates of Hell.' Flames shoot up high with intense heat and a roaring sound day and night. It is located deep in Turkmenistan's Karakum desert. Tourists camp nearby to witness the eerie glow and take jaw-dropping photos. It is now reportedly petering out - but continues to burn as the gates slowly close. The Canadian could be seen dangling above molten rocks spewing hot gases while he descends into the blazing furnace dressed in a protective silver suit. The intention of his trip to hell and back was to gather more information about extreme environments. George said: 'The most important part of the mission and the whole thrust behind this entire expedition was to take some samples of the soil at the bottom—sand, basically—and see if there is any extremophile bacteria living at the bottom that could give us clues to basically life in these extreme environments.' He added: 'There are planets that have been discovered outside of our solar system that have a very hot, methane-rich environment kind of similar to what is in the crater. "So, in essence, we were looking for alien life right here on Earth.' 9 9 9
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Daily Mail
The Gateway to Hell is CLOSING: Fire in mysterious giant crater that has been burning for 50 years after blundering Soviet scientists set it alight is reduced to 'faint' blaze
The infamous 'Gateway to Hell' crater in Turkmenistan has been burning non-stop for the last 50 years. But scientists now say that the gateway is finally closing. This blazing pit was formed in 1971 when blundering Soviet scientists accidentally drilled into an underground pocket of gas and decided to light it on fire. Since then, the gateway has become both one of the reclusive nation's leading tourist attractions and a major source of polluting methane emissions. According to scientists, the flames in the crater are beginning to dim due to a reduced flow of natural flammable gas. Officials say the fires are now three times smaller than in the past and can only be seen in the immediate vicinity. Irina Luryeva, a director at state-owned energy company Turkmengaz told a fossil fuel conference this week: 'Before a huge glow from the blaze was visible from several kilometres away, hence the name "Gateway to Hell". 'Today only a faint source of combustion remains.' The 'Gateway to Hell', known officially as the 'Shining of Karakum', is a 230-foot-wide (70m) sinkhole located in Turkmenistan's Karakum desert. Located above a vast pocket of natural gas which continuously seeps towards the surface, the crater is lined with hundreds of gas fires which give it an unearthly glow. The exact origin of the pit was covered up by officials when the country was part of the Soviet Union, leaving behind no official record of the incident. However, the most commonly accepted theory is that the pit was created by a natural gas prospecting accident. During the 1970s a rogue soviet gas drilling station punctured a gas pocket and collapsed through the ground, forming a crater which began to leak gas into the air. The scientists decided to ignite the crater to prevent the toxic gases from escaping and spreading further. While these scientists might have expected the blaze to last for a few days before going out, the fires of the Gateway to Hell have been burning ever since. Turkmenistan is estimated to have the world's fourth-largest reserves of natural gas, largely scattered in pockets beneath the desert. What is the Gateway to Hell? The Gateway to Hell, officially known as the Shining of Karakum, is a sinkhole located above a large pocket of natural gas in Turkmenistan's Karakum Desert. As this gas seeps through the ground, it feeds fires which have been burning since the 1970s. The pit is 230 feet wide (70m) and 98 feet deep (30m). The Gateway to Hell is visited by an estimated 6,000 foreign visitors per year. In 2013, Canadian explorer George Kourounis descended into the crater to collect soil samples. His study revealed that simple organisms have been able to survive within the burning pit. The crater is likely connected to this vast underground store of methane, giving it an almost unlimited supply of gas to burn. This burning pit caused by a Soviet-era disaster has become something of an unlikely national treasure. Turkmenistan's few tourists flock to the site to camp by the warmth of the burning methane and, in 2019, national leader Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov filmed himself driving a rally car around the pit to dispel rumours of his death. However, in 2022 Berdymukhamedov announced that he wanted to be remembered as the leader who closed the gates to hell and launched a project to cut off the fires. Speaking at the time, Mr Berdymukhamedov said: 'We are losing valuable natural resources for which we could get significant profits and use them for improving the well-being of our people.' Since then, at least two new wells have been drilled around the pit to capture excess methane which would otherwise leak to the surface. Older, decommissioned gas pumps in the area have also been reactivated to help draw away the natural gas. According to the evidence from these nearby wells, the crater has seen a significantly reduced supply of gas. This, in turn, has led to the infamous flames dwindling in size. The announcement will come as good news to environmentalists concerned about Turkmenistan's record of natural gas leaks. Methane is a highly potent greenhouse gas which contributes heavily to climate change. A recent study published by the International Energy Agency found that Turkmenistan was the world's largest emitter of methane through gas leaks, although the country disputes this claim. Likewise, intelligence company Kayrros found that leaks from two fossil fuel fields in the country contributed more to global warming in 2022 than the UK's entire carbon emissions for the year. While the fires at the Gateway to Hell did help burn off some of the escaping gas, the pit still leaks vast quantities of gas into the atmosphere. Drawing off the natural gas into other wells where it can be safely stored and used to make energy would help the country cut its outsized carbon footprint. Methane is a colourless, odourless flammable gas, and the main constituent of natural gas. Methane is a greenhouse gas, and the second biggest cause of climate change after carbon dioxide. It is also the primary component of natural gas, which is used to heat our homes. When methane is burned as a fuel, it gives off carbon dioxide (CO2), and so is not directly emitted at that point. However, across all points of the extraction, transport and storage processes there are leaks of natural gas that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.
BBC News
24-05-2025
- BBC News
The Soviet plan to reverse Siberia's rivers with 'peaceful nuclear explosions'
In the 1970s, the USSR used nuclear devices to try to send water from Siberia's rivers flowing south, instead of its natural route north. The project was a grand failure – but 50 years on, the idea still won't completely go away. To the west of Russia's Ural Mountains lies a picturesque body of water called Nuclear Lake. It's difficult to access, and visitors have to travel north by boat along the Kolva and Visherka rivers from the small town of Nyrob, where the tsars once exiled their political opponents. The lake itself, which is about 690m (2,300ft) at its widest point, is not linked directly to the dozens of nearby waterways, and the final approach is on foot along a boggy track. To get to its shores, you have to pass rusting metal signs warning you are entering a "radiation danger zone" and that drilling and construction are forbidden. Large earth mounds snake around the edge of the lake. "The water was transparent," says Andrei Fadeev, a Russian blogger from the city of Perm, who travelled to Nuclear Lake on a sunny day in the summer of 2024. "I liked it," he says, even though his dosimeter showed spots where radiation levels were higher than usual. "There wasn't an atmosphere of a threat or something. On the contrary… I think the northern taiga [boreal forest] has just recaptured the place." Nuclear Lake was formed on 23 February 1971 when the Soviet Union simultaneously fired three nuclear devices buried 127m (417ft) underground. The yield of each device was 15 kilotonnes (about the same as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945). The experiment, codenamed "Taiga", was part of a two-decade long Soviet programme of carrying out peaceful nuclear explosions (PNEs). In this case, the blasts were supposed to help excavate a massive canal to connect the basin of the Pechora River with that of the Kama, a tributary of the Volga. Such a link would have allowed Soviet scientists to siphon off some of the water destined for the Pechora, and send it southward through the Volga. It would have diverted a significant flow of water destined for the Arctic Ocean to go instead to the hot, heavily populated regions of Central Asia and southern Russia. This was just one of a planned series of gargantuan "river reversals" that were designed to alter the direction of Russia's great Eurasian waterways. Redirection was intended to alter not just the Volga, but also several Siberian rivers, sending water thousands of kilometres southward via canals and reservoirs. Years later, Leonid Volkov, a scientist involved in preparing the Taiga explosions, recalled the moment of detonation. "The final countdown began: …3, 2, 1, 0… then fountains of soil and water shot upward," he wrote. "It was an impressive sight." Despite Soviet efforts to minimise the fallout by using a low-fission explosive, which produce fewer atomic fragments, the blasts were detected as far away as the United States and Sweden, whose governments lodged formal complaints, accusing Moscow of violating the Limited Test Ban Treaty. Fifty years later, Nuclear Lake is a half-forgotten tourist curiosity. But it is also a physical reminder of one of the Soviet Union's last megaprojects – river reversal – and the extraordinary lengths to which the Kremlin was prepared to go to make it happen. The idea of using canals and dams to redirect freshwater from Russia's north-flowing rivers had been around for a century by the time of the blasts, tempting successive Russian regimes. Perhaps most famously, it was proposed by writer Igor Demchenko in an 1871 booklet called: "On flooding the Aral-Caspian lowlands to improve the climate of adjacent countries." Later, it was raised as a possibility by Soviet planners under Stalin in the 1930s. The appeal was simple: some of the huge volumes of water flowing through Siberia and northern Russia could be "utilised" by sending them to the more arid lands of Central Asia and southern Russia. Agriculture is a lucrative prospect in the Eurasian heartlands, where there are many more people than the freezing Russian north. The redirected water, planners hoped, could also help save the Aral Sea, which had seen catastrophic water loss in recent decades because its tributaries were over-exploited for agriculture. For Russia's rulers, "this huge flow of water into the Arctic Ocean was going nowhere useful", says Douglas Weiner, an historian at the University of Arizona specialising in Soviet environmental policy. "It's this big bauble of a resource that's not being used. It's a huge resource. So, there is always this tempting idea that we can somehow find a way to use it. The closest the Soviet Union came to realising river reversal was in the 1970s and early 1980s. In this period, hundreds of millions of rubles were poured into developing the project, which involved nearly 200 scientific research institutes, enterprises, and scientific production organisations, and, according to some estimates, 68,000 people. Not only did Soviet ideology suggest that nature could be transformed into a rational tool to help build socialism, but prestige projects were a key part of Cold War competition with the West. Plus, demand for water was skyrocketing. "This period saw the active development of irrigated agriculture, it became clear that our own resources of water were insufficient, populations were growing, and existing production technologies were quite water-intensive," says Mikhail Bolgov, a surface water expert at Russia's Institute for Water Problems (this Institute, which still operates in Russia today, was a leading advocate for river reversal during the Soviet period). "And there was already an understanding that the Aral Sea would disappear if irrigation was continued at such a scale." Soviet planners were inspired by history's great water amelioration projects from history (including Roman aqueducts), and claimed they did not want to redirect whole rivers, just a small percentage of the water in Siberian river basins. Finally, they believed that they might be able to save not only the Aral Sea, but also the Caspian Sea and the Azov Sea, which were both also recording significant drops in water level. At the same time, river reversal was a colonial project, appealing both to those in the Kremlin with imperialist views, as well as local leaders in the Central Asian republics who believed it would be a way of channelling money and influence. "[It] was connected with bringing modern technology and Slavic settlers to those regions as a way of incorporating them," says Paul Josephson, a professor of Russian and Soviet history at Colby College in Waterville, Maine Many were bewitched by the sheer ambition. "The same magic of its big scale was supposed to infinitely inspire its advocates and belittle its opponents," wrote the leading Soviet opponent of the scheme, hydrologist and writer Sergei Zalygin, in his 1986 book Turnabout. "We are the greatest and you are against us – how could that be?!" In addition to the Volga, those labouring over river reversal in the 1970s focused on two Siberian rivers – the Ob and Irtysh. They planned the construction of a 1,500km-long (930-mile) canal using hundreds of PNEs that would, when completed, channel up to 10% of the water from the basins of the Ob River and Irtysh River to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. A Communist Party resolution in May 1975 envisaged Siberian water would first arrive in Central Asia in 1985, and that the whole project would be completed by 2000. It wasn't to be. From the moment serious discussions about river reversal began, there was opposition from scientists and experts. In the early 1980s, however, this opposition spiralled into the sort of broad-based public campaign that was highly unusual in the tightly controlled Soviet Union. There were essays in journals, letters to officials, even novels and poems about the folly of the project. In Ballad About Freedom, Soviet poet Fazil Iskander wrote: "It's completely impossible to know what's going on in the head of the regime / whether they want to wring the neck of the northern rivers, or steal the Gulf Stream!" Intellectuals like Zalygin raised a whole series of objections – from the project's eye-watering cost that may have run to the hundreds of billions of dollars, to its wastefulness, settlements and culturally significant sites that would have been flooded, the flawed science they alleged lay at its heart, bureaucratic self-aggrandisement, along with a myriad of potentially devastating environmental consequences. Historian Josephson says that, when he did research at the Institute for Water Problems in Moscow in the late 1980s, he was permitted by the then-director, Grigory Voropaev, a leading advocate for the scheme, to see the official environmental impact report. It was, Josephson realised, completely inadequate. "It boggled my mind to see such conclusions as 'we anticipate local and manageable environmental impacts'," Josephson says. In fact, there were concerns that diverting the water southward could mean anything from the destruction of unique habitats, to dangerous climatic change, says Josephson. "Ice would set on southward into the rivers earlier and deeper into Siberia. There would be flora and fauna that would transfer from Siberia to Central Asia. There are just so many things that could have happened," he says. "The intellectuals, whether they were trained in biology and environment, or literary types, understood that the scale of the project made it impossible to contain in terms of its environmental impact." Perhaps the final nail in the coffin was the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, which not only consumed a huge amount of money, but pushed environmental concerns up the political agenda. Four months after the Number Four Reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded, Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev cancelled the river reversal project. While some have said this was the result of the public pressure, others believe it was the astronomical cost – at a time when depressed oil prices were causing financial problems for the Kremlin. "Everything was set to go," says historian Weiner. "But realistically I don't think they would have done it because they didn't have the money." It may have seemed that river reversal as a serious prospect died with the Soviet Union, which collapsed five years later. But advocates for the project in senior positions in the Russian government continued to speak out in its defence. In 2008, for example, then Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov published a book called "Water and Peace" that argued in favour of re-directing Siberian rivers to Central Asia. And, as recently as February 2025, two Russian scientists argued in an article in Russian daily newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta that technical advances since the 1980s make river reversal more feasible, and that it aligns well with Moscow's geopolitical "pivot to the East" that has followed the breakdown in relations with the West over the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Some academics in both Russia and the West have even suggested that reducing the amount of relatively warm water flowing into the Arctic Ocean could help mitigate the effects of global warming. But this is strongly disputed by others, who say it would have the complete opposite effect. Tom Rippeth, a professor of physical oceanography at Bangor University in Wales, published a paper in 2022 modelling the effects of Siberian river reversal, which showed it could have disturbed the structure of the Arctic Ocean, causing a warmer, saltier layer of water to rise, and dramatically accelerated the melting of sea ice. "If you upset nature's balance, there are a lot of unintended consequences," he says. Despite a present lull in political interest in river reversal, historian Josephson predicts that, one day, the idea will resurface – although perhaps with China substituted for Central Asia as a destination for Russian water. "The project will not die," he says. "Russia is a resource empire – it survives by selling its resources. So, it makes sense for Russia, ultimately, in some place and time, to work with the Chinese to transfer water from Siberia across the border to farming regions of northern China." Even some of those who successfully campaigned in the 1980s to stop the Soviet Union from diverting the great Eurasian waterways were never convinced their victory was final. In their book Lessons of Ecological Failures, Soviet academics Alexander Yanshin and Arkady Melua argued that river reversal would, one day, make a comeback – not least because of competition over water, and rising populations in Central Asia. More like this: • The dark WW2 history written into Germany's parks• The burning river that fuelled a US green movement• How 50 years of climate change has changed the face of the 'Blue Marble' "The question about diverting some of the sources of Siberian rivers to Central Asia will most likely be raised again in the third millennium," they wrote in 1991. "However, it's obvious that this will require the development of another project." Ultimately, the nuclear explosions that created Nuclear Lake, one of the few physical traces left of river reversal, were deemed a failure because the crater was not big enough. Although similar PNE canal excavation tests were planned, they were never carried out. In 2024, the leader of a scientific expedition to the lake announced radiation levels were normal. But blogger Fadeev says there were some places where the radiation was still significantly elevated – almost half a century after the blasts. After having done a lot of research into radiation, he decided to remain cautious. "I didn't go for a swim," he says. -- For essential climate news and hopeful developments to your inbox, sign up to the Future Earth newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights twice a week. For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
