North Dakota Finds Itself Unprepared To Handle The Radioactive Burden Of Its Fracking Boom

[n2doc]

North Dakota recently discovered piles of garbage bags containing radioactive waste dumped by oil drillers in abandoned buildings. Now, the state is trying to catch up to an oil industry that produces an estimated 27 tons of radioactive debris from wells daily.

Existing fines have apparently not been enough to deter contractors from dumping oil socks — coiled filters that strain wastewater and accumulate low levels of radiation.

“Before the Bakken oil boom we didn’t have any of these materials being generated,” the state’s Director of Waste Management Scott Radig told the Wall Street Journal. “So it wasn’t really an issue.”

The state is in the process of drafting rules, out in June, that require oil companies to properly store the waste in leak-proof containers. Eventually, they must move these oil socks to certified dumps. However, North Dakota has no facilities to process this level of radioactive waste. According to the Wall Street Journal, the closest facilities are hundreds of miles away in states like Idaho, Colorado, Utah, and Montana.

more

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/16/3427345/north-dakota-radioactive-waste-fracking/

[phantom power]

1. Perhaps Japan will halt burning the oil it's using to replace the nuclear reactors it shut down.

I kid, of course.

[2naSalit]

2. Ms. Maddow

had a lengthy piece of this several weeks ago.

They have been dumping filter bags on the reservations and in any place that nobody will notice right away... all because the landfills require a fee and have a limit of the number of these things they will allow for reasons of environmental safety.



Perish the thought that environmental safety might inhibit this industry!!

[Champion Jack]

3. Issues with radioactivity and landfills down here

Bill Hughes, chair, Wetzel County Solid Waste Authority, said tests on water leaching from the Meadowfill landfill near Bridgeport show widely varying levels of radioactivity, sometimes spiking to 40 times the clean drinking water standard. The radioactivity occurs naturally in the drill cuttings and brine that come from Marcellus gas wells, he said, so it is in the waste dumped in Meadowfill and other landfills. "We are putting radioactive waste in a bunch of landfills in large quantities, and we don't yet know the long-term danger of doing this," Hughes said. Water leaching from Meadowfill averaged 250 picocuries per liter last year. The clean drinking water standard is 50, Hughes explained, adding that at times Meadowfill spiked as high as 2,000 picocuries or dropped below 40. Wetzel - the other landfill taking large amounts of the waste - also showed radioactivity.

- See more at: http://www.publicnewsservice.org/2014-04-21/environment/marcellus-waste-radioactivity-in-water-leaching-from-landfills/a38864-1#sthash.tL3UGfSu.Z08dlEIf.dpuf

http://www.publicnewsservice.org/2014-04-21/environment/marcellus-waste-radioactivity-in-water-leaching-from-landfills/a38864-1

[Nihil]

4. "produces an estimated 27 tons of radioactive debris from wells daily"

It's OK: They can just ship it over to the repository at Yucca Mountain ... oh, wait ...

Radioactive waste from the fossil fuel industries obviously produces a "kinder, gentler" radiation
or there'd be a huge outcry wouldn't there?