Nuclear Fracking?
Craters from Underground Nuclear Tests - Not from Fracking!
Obviously, when President Obama said in his State of the Union Address that drilling companies would have to disclose what was in the fracking fluid they pump into the ground, he didn’t have in mind that it would be nuclear.
This afternoon, I was reading through ProPublica’s chart of the history of government regulation, “From Gung-Ho to Uh-Oh“. I was very surprised that the first effort at releasing tight natural gas came from a nuclear bomb in 1969. The chart says that in 1969 “The government detonates a 43-kiloton nuclear bomb deep underground in an effort to get at natural gas deposits in Colorado.”
I suppose they shouldn’t have been surprised when it turned out that the resulting natural gas was too radioactive to use. The AP story which ProPublica links, “Legacy of nuclear drilling site in Colorado still lingers“, goes on to describe the 1969 explosion as causing the ground to roll, “Like a wave coming through.”
The government is going to regulate fracking ingredients more closely, but I don’t think we’re going to see drillers using nuclear weapons any time soon!
