Monday, January 28, 2013

Fracking Wastewater RADIOACTIVE

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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