Posted on 10/04/2013 10:44:00 AM PDT by Olog-hai
Scientists have for the first time found dangerous levels of radioactivity and salinity at a shale gas waste disposal site that could contaminate drinking water. If the UK follows in the steps of the US “shale gas revolution”, it should impose regulations to stop such radioactive buildup, they said.
The Duke University study, published on Wednesday, examined the water discharged from Josephine Brine Treatment Facility into Blacklick Creek, which feeds into a water source for western Pennsylvania cities, including Pittsburgh. …
Elevated levels of chloride and bromide, combined with strontium, radium, oxygen, and hydrogen isotopic compositions, are present in the Marcellus shale wastewaters, the study found.
Radioactive brine is naturally occurring in shale rock and contaminates wastewater during hydraulic fracturing—known as fracking. …
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Where did the radiation come from? You Brits burying waste?
They admit it was already there, but somehow fracking makes it worse when it’s already there. Gotta love the Guardian’s logic.
What many do not know is that radioactive isotopes are found with most fossil fuel sources.
Utilities cannot co-locate coal burning facilities with nuclear power plants because the burning coal will set off the nuclear plant’s alarms. No kidding.
.........Well you learned me something... :-) I never knew about setting off their alarms.
Bent the needle on my BS detector!
O noes.
We’re DOOMED.
Need graphics!
Wait till the stupid bastards find out that normal cinder blocks used to construct buildings can elevate normal gamma ray background by factors of 2 and above.
A big "OH NOOOOOOES" on all that crap.
Just wait until they discover that the earth is constantly being irradiated by an ongoing nuclear explosion (the sun).
Don’t tell liberals that coal fly ash is increasingly used to make cement.
We have an aquifer that has enough uranium in it that a Canadian company wants to in-situ mine it. The Luddites are totally against it because “reinjection (after extraction) will contaminate the (unusable radioactive and arsenic & selenium-loaded) water”. Just mention the words “radioactive” or “radiation”, and they come unglued.
I have no problem with it in principle: we need robust extraction industries in this country, and this is a MUCH cleaner process than the pit mining that was done 50-70 years ago in the same area. It will, if done as proposed, actually reduce the natural contamination of the aquifer in question.
However, I’m against this project, as proposed, because the company has never done this type of operation before; has a record of sleazy operations, of screwing up other projects, and of leaving messes in their wake. Also, all the product would be for sale overseas, not for domestic supply; and with most of the profits leaving the U.S. I also don’t believe their true purpose is uranium at all.
They want unrestricted and resalable rights/permits for 551 GPM from the regions only uncontaminated, high water quality aquifer, in addition to the permits for 8,500 GPM of the contaminated, deeper, aquifer that’s actually to be mined. They admit this is 100-1,000 times more clean water than they need for their actual operation...bu want it ‘just in case’.
The real fear is that the “excess” permitted water is what they really want to “mine”. It amounts to nearly 800,000 gallons a day, or more than 850 acre-feet/year, over a several years period, of water from the regions main drinking & irrigation aquifer in a drought-prone agricultural area.
I’ve seen similar scams used in Nevada & northern/central California to obtain water rights, then bleed the local area dry-literally-to sell the water either to the L.A. area water districts; or as bottled water.
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