"Most of them?" when Bailey says "most" of the half-million I assume he includes non-fracking wells? Anyway, I think for the sake of those uncomfortable with fracking it would make sense to compare it to conventional wells rather than to lump them all together with vague non-statistics.

Perhaps I'm missing something. It's been done.

My husband and I overheard a couple complaining about fracking at a bar. Their real beef was that it might open up more cheap energy sources instead of making the unwashed proles get serious about cutting back on consumption. Then they drove off in their $80,000 Tesla.

Enlightening excerpt Amy, thanks. I would like to see some statistics on how many of these wells have construction problems, especially compared to conventional wells.

(Deep Water Horizon being another oil well with cementing issues).

There is some evidence too, that fracking isn't just letting natural gas come up, but radon as well.

I am still not sure that fracking should be allowed helter skelter under the land of residents that oppose it without more regulation, inspection, well testing and water testing.

That said, renaming the 90 is terribly idiotic.

I think Astra nailed it. The thing about drilling a water well is, you never really know what you're going to get. In a lot of areas, it's not the simple thing that it's made out to be, and the well users often wind up going into the water treatment business for themselves, so to speak. I was just reading last week about someone who died because he was poisoned by hydrogen sulfide that was in his well water.

Radon is present in conventionally drilled gas wells. However, it's easy for the refinery to remove. Jerry does have a good point about mineral rights -- a lot of people don't realize that they probably do not own the mineral rights under their property. State legislatures over the decades have been very sneaky about that.

Who gives a frack?

And every one of those opposed to fracking uses energy that was not produced by the beating wings of organically fed butterflies.

I live in an area where it is quite common for radon gas to accumulate in your basement.
The reason it does is because radon gas, is given off by decomposing granite.
Build your house over an underground granite formation, and it will be leaking radon.

A fan pulling air out of your basement will stop the buildup, and I am even less concerned about small amounts of radon leaking out of oil and gas wells, because generally no one lives in a concrete container directly over the wells, trapping radon, and allowing it to build up.

Also, over a million wells have been fracked in the last thirty years. It is nothing new, or particularly dangerous.

Also, over a million wells have been fracked in the last thirty years. It is nothing new, or particularly dangerous.

Yeah, it's funny how it grew to be a hot issue. My father was in the oil and gas industry his whole career and pointed out that we have been doing this for 40 years. I interned for Exxon one summer and we covered reservoir flooding, pretty much necessary in the Permian basin to get anything out. The innovation with fracking are the chemicals used and the fact that they can extend into shale they couldn't process before but the method is old hat. Accordingly, I can see objecting to fracking on water use grounds in drought-ridden areas, but most of the other arguments seem like finding issues with a method one is determined to reject from the start.

Maybe it can and has been done well, but it seems like it's being done badly in western Pennsylvania, with disastrous results:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/us/an-energy-boom-in-western-pennsylvania.html?_r=0

Google "western Pennsylvania fracking" and any if these terms:

Radioactive water
Water on fire
fluid pollution

Maybe Radwaste can reassure me that te recent study regarding the radioactive water in one of our streams is nothing to worry about.

Michelle - I wonder where you get that idea. I process radioactive waste, so I just already know about things that you could look up yourself if you knew where to start.

Lots of issues are sold to the public as disasters to sell tissue. Usually, the media exploits the public's ignorance of the issue at hand. It's important to get terms straight, especially those by which exposure is described, but many people do not want to learn the basics. What is Honey Boo Boo doing?

Industries routinely get in jams when they process in new areas or in new ways - or, simply assume that because they have not had an incident, they do not have to spend shareholder money on the idea that an accident/incident will happen. I do not excuse them. At SRS - until recently, when the Feds decided that radioactive waste can be turned off and not watched or processed - we've had the luxury of not caring about the bottom line, or educating shareholders about the necessity of establishing preventive safety measures.

What "recent study" are you referring to?

Maybe Radwaste can reassure me that te recent study regarding the radioactive water in one of our streams is nothing to worry about. -- Michelle at October 16, 2013 1:28 PM

If you take a hike along the Appalachian Trail, please take a Geiger counter along with you. There are many spots along it that you will actually find small chunks of radium laying along side the trail.

So blaming fracking for it is lack of prior knowledge.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/02/dangerous-radioactivity-fracking-waste-pennsylvania

Cannot get to the actual study - best I can do is links to articles that reference the study.

...and I wish we were paying you to do your job.

Maybe Radwaste can reassure me that te recent study regarding the radioactive water in one of our streams is nothing to worry about. -- Michelle at October 16, 2013 1:28 PM
If you take a hike along the Appalachian Trail, please take a Geiger counter along with you. There are many spots along it that you will actually find small chunks of radium laying along side the trail.

So blaming fracking for it is lack of prior knowledge.

Posted by: Jim P. at October 16, 2013 3:10 PM
Yes, and nuclear fuel is processed uranium, which is also a naturally occurring element.

As for natural gas, and crude oil leaking into the water supply, this has almost nothing to do with fracking. There are hundreds of thousands of places on the earth where petroleum products are found on the surface of the earth, and bubble up naturally into the water supply and everywhere else, without the evil Halliburton being even remotely involved.
What do you think the Le Brea tar pits are?

Jim, not necessarily - at least one article mentions that the radiation was markedly higher downstream from the frack if facility than upstream.

- sorry, limited in what I can pull up with touch typing on a phone here and there.

Jim, not necessarily - at least one article mentions that the radiation was markedly higher downstream from the frack if facility than upstream. -- Michelle at October 16, 2013 3:38 PM

The one link you posted was to the NY Times. I trust the NY Times to be fair and balanced like I trust Obama to be looking out for my best interests.

But if it is true, why can't all the people or groups downstream use the EPA and the rest of the alphabet soup along with their own resources to prove it?

Then it would be a class action or a similar suit once they determine a source. But yelling "fracking caused the radiation" is like yelling "gays destroy marriage". Give me a cause and I'll back it up. Right now for all we know is that erosion has finally gotten down to a chunk of uranium or radium. Give a definitive source before blaming it on something; i.e. cause and effect.

As noted by Bailey above -- there were cases of fracking petroleum caused the issue, but was cross-posted to indicate it was natural gas.

Jim, after 3 swigs from the bourbon bottle, two pours, and one set from a sweet band, I am *thrilled* to be on what I am pretty sure is the bus home. I hope at 6 am I am indeed back in western Pennsylvania, and not too embarrassed by my thumb typing here.

That said, I think in the NYT article is a mention of a piece of legislation that, if passed, would have given the PA gov't the teeth needed to do something about this radioactive-water mess.

Maybe Radwaste can reassure me that te recent study regarding the radioactive water in one of our streams is nothing to worry about.
Posted by: Michelle

So are you equally worried about the huge source of radiation that takes up 96% of all matter in the solar system and microwaves our planet all day long?

No.

Is the risk to me and my neighbors - and folks downstream - equivalent?

No.

Is the risk to me and my neighbors - and folks downstream - equivalent?

Guys, do not use the TWO WRONGS fallacy to attempt a defense of increasing public health risks through industrial processes!

Also - it is fallacious to claim that information is incorrect based solely on where you see it. I have to say that, even as I must stress that an editorial is NOT an information source.

Now- strictly speaking, the statement, "There are many spots along it that you will actually find small chunks of radium laying along side the trail..." is incorrect at best. Radium is a metal, highly active chemically, easily oxidized, and its longest-lived isotope is an energetic gamma and alpha emitter. When you talk about a "chunk" of it, you are talking about quantities colloquially understood to be visible to the naked eye - and this is the material that burned Pierre and killed Marie Curie. Short story: if you can see Radium and there is no shielding between you and it, you are being killed. This, and Radon, are produced by the decay of heavier elements found in rock formations, but this process does not produce so much as a milligram in one place due to decay-chain action.

Now to the study cited at the link above. This passage appears: "Radium levels in samples collected at the facility were 200 times greater than samples taken upstream. Such elevated levels of radioactivity are above regulated levels and would normally be seen at licensed radioactive disposal facilities, according to the scientists at Duke University's Nicholas school of the environment in North Carolina."

Yet the numbers are missing. The article is undisciplined, because it does not use the proper terms (contamination is the presence of radioactive material, radiation or radioactivity is the transmission of energy from the contamination to its surroundings) or units to describe the contamination levels. For instance, the unit for the decay rate discovered in any liquid can be expressed in microcuries per milliliter (µCi/mL) or picocuries per millileter (pCi/mL).

Yes, the standard unit for the decay rate of radioactive material is the Curie.

I looked at 7 other Web pages reporting the event. All 7 reported basically the same thing, without any numbers to actually describe the event. If I come back to this, I may find a paper with the right information in it. I haven't.

"200 times" something should have generated more concern for reporting discipline. Sadly, it did not.

This risk must be compared to the ROI, not to other events or risk evaluations, and the method for reducing this risk will be different from that used for other activities.

Our principle at work is that there shall be no personnel exposure to radioactive material without a material benefit, and then, measures SHALL be taken to minimize exposure to those personnel. The release of this material to the grade, or to an aquifer serving a water treatment plant intended to produce potable water, is a mistake which should be punishable by law as negligence.

It would be where I work.

Fun stuff: in 2010, one of our waste tanks at SRS had a dose rate over 2000R/Hr at 1 meter above the waste level. If you were exposed, this would exceed your annual Federal dose limit for radiological workers in nine seconds.

Ten years ago, a friend of mine pulled a 200mL sample from that tank. It set a radiation alarm off that was 103 measured yards away.

This particular tank has not had new material added to it since about 1990, so it's actually not as "hot" as it once was.

Building atom bombs is tough. We sample the waste tanks to make sure we know as much about what's in them as we can...

Michelle, the reason we're dissing the source is because we've all been down a million rabbit holes that started with those same types of sources. They always end up being one of two things: (1) A bunch of lamestream media sources all citing each other in an endless loop; there is no original source. (2) The source is an activist group with an axe to grind, that either conducted a "study" designed from the outset to reach the desired conclusion, or they just flat made the shit up. And we're all sick of chasing these white rabbits. As Raddy pointed out, millions of pages of statute law and regulation already exist that would be more than sufficient to address the problem if a problem actually existed.