Fracking Wastewater Can Be Highly Radioactive By Rachel Morgan, Times Online 28 January 13
[excerpted] Its contents remain mostly a mystery. But fracking wastewater has revealed one of its secrets: It can be highly radioactive. And yet no agency really regulates its handling, transport or disposal. First of a four-part series on radiation in fracking wastewater.
....Studies from the U.S. Geological Survey, Penn State
University and environmental groups all found that waste from fracking
can be radioactive - and in some cases, highly radioactive.
A geological survey report found that millions of
barrels of wastewater from unconventional wells in Pennsylvania and
conventional wells in New York were 3,609 times more radioactive than
the federal limit for drinking water and 300 times more radioactive than
a Nuclear Regulatory Commission limit for nuclear plant discharges.
And Mark Engle, the USGS research geologist who
co-authored the report, said that fracking flowback from the Marcellus
shale contains higher radiation levels than similar shale formations.
"There (isn't) a lot of data but in general, the
Marcellus appears to be anomalously high," Engle said. He said the USGS
had agreements with a handful of oil and gas companies to sample the
flowback from their wells for this particular report. These companies,
he said, did not wish to be identified.
Engle also says that both the Marcellus shale itself
and the wastewater generated from fracking are both radioactive, but he
doesn't know just how much radium the shale contains. He said it "may be
fairly small, since radium is so soluble." But he also said this
solubility would make it easier for the radium to dissolve into the
brine itself - and come to the surface.... [end]
READ entire article linked above.
SOME PREVIOUS POSTS ON FRACKING
Dec 04, 2012
Below
are two articles that explore two ways fracking is destroying our
environment. The first concerns the role of fracking in producing
massive sink holes that may contain dangerous waste. This first article
also addresses the ...
Dec 05, 2012
A
year-old Texas law that requires drillers to disclose chemicals they
pump underground during hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” was
powerless to compel transparency for EXP- F0173-11. The solvent and
several other ...
Dec 01, 2012
Published
on Friday, November 30, 2012 by The Nation Fracking Our Food Supply
http://www.thenation.com/article/171504/fracking-our-food-supply. by
Elizabeth Royte. [Excerpted] Ambient air testing by a certified ...
Oct 11, 2012
Though
the fluids were natural and not the byproduct of drilling or hydraulic
fracturing, the finding further stokes the red-hot controversy over
fracking in the Marcellus Shale, suggesting that drilling waste and
chemicals could .
Oct 24, 2012
Earthquake-Causing
Fracking to Be Allowed within 500 FEET of Nuclear Plants. Posted on
October 22, 2012 by WashingtonsBlog. Posted by Majia's Blog at 9:40 AM ·
Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to Facebook ...
Aug 15, 2012
Transparency
in Natural Gas Fracking: NOT! Fracking Hazards Obscured in Failure to
Disclose Wells By Benjamin Haas, Jim Polson, Phil Kuntz and Ben Elgin -
Aug 14, 2012 ...
Jul 10, 2012
Though
the fluids were natural and not the byproduct of drilling or hydraulic
fracturing, the finding further stokes the red-hot controversy over
fracking in the Marcellus Shale, suggesting that drilling waste and
chemicals could ...
Jan 05, 2013
Below
are two articles that explore two ways fracking is destroying our
environment. The first concerns the role of fracking in producing
massive sink holes that may contain dangerous waste. This first article
also addresses the ...
May 08, 2012
But
in a significant concession to the oil industry, companies will have to
reveal the composition of fluids only after they have completed
drilling — a sharp change from the government's original proposal, which
would have ...
Dec 09, 2011
Fracking
Headlines Predict A Future Without Potable Water. The Wall Street
Journal has ran 2 important articles on fracking over the last few days
in its print edition. Oil's Growing Thirst for Water by R. Gold and A.
Campoy on ...
May 10, 2012
[Excerpt]
"Last week's media coverage of the Obama administration's
newly-proposed fracking rules focused so heavily on how drilling
companies would have to disclose the chemicals they use that it largely
overlooked the ...
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