Water Supply at the South Pole

As an essential ingredient for life, water is a primary concern for any Antarctic expedition. In the past, expeditions would store water on-board a ship for the voyage and, upon arrival, melt snow by a variety of means for drinking. Various energy and labour-intensive approaches of gathering and melting surface snow were in use at most polar research facilities until the the recent past. At the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, heavy machinery was used to gather snow and dump it into a mechanical ice melter until 1995.

In the mid 1960's, US Army Engineer Corps Raul Rodriguez developed a new approach to the ice melters that had been in common use. The Rodriguez Well has since become the dominant method of obtaining water in polar environments. A well shaft is sunk about 250 feet beneath the surface where heat is used to create a bulb-shaped pool of warmed water. Typically steam is generated in a sub-surface compartment and piped down to the well pocket. Water in the well cavity is always kept above zero degrees with the use of steam, and thus the well cavity and reservoir expand over time to provide drinking water.

A typical Rod Well lasts approximately 7 years, or until the base of the bulb reaches around 500 feet below ground level. When the well becomes too deep it becomes more energy intensive to extract the water than to develop a new well. It is estimated that a typical Rodriguez Well can provide up to 1 million gallons of fresh water before it becomes too deep to economically extract the water.

Those who drink from a Rod Well are partaking of water that was trapped in ice in the distant past--the deeper you go the older the strata. According to John Rand, an engineer at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, the well is currently providing water that was frozen around 500CE.

Recent innovations in Rod Well technology are the introduction of in-line heat exchangers to remove the warmth in the extracted water and return it to the well for greater energy efficiency. It is estimated that Rod Wells are about 80% more efficient than their predecessor technology of surface snow melting which requires a constant snow-gathering effort.