Reruns of The NORM Show
Yesterday the NYTimes published "Regulation Is Lax for Water From Gas Wells". It's the result of nine months of work and the review of 30,000 pages of documents, some of which were "leaked" by government insiders. The reporters' conclusion is that the gas exploration industry is inadequately regulated and that as a result people are at risk thanks mainly to radium (the biggest concern due to NORM, naturally occurring radioactive material) and to a lesser extent benzene from recovered drilling fluids being run through local waste treatment facilities.
The benzene levels were absurdly low (yes, it's a carcinogen and so is the sun but we're not vampires who burst into flames when exposed to the sun nor are we life forms that can do without the benzene ring). Meanwhile, the radon levels downstream of the waste plants were, well, undocumented. But that doesn't matter apparently because there were some data on the amount of NORM, recovered in fluids returned to the surface from gas wells, and some of the readings were up to 1,500 times higher than the permissible levels for drinking water. Thus, be afraid. Be very afraid because the waste is run through water treatment plants and so contaminates the water of those downriver who drink it.
But that's where the irony comes in. What's already one of the biggest sources of NORM (or TENORM, technologically enhanced radioactive material - i.e. concentrated NORM)? Drinking water treatment plants. According to EPA, thanks to regular old water wells 700 hundred treatment facilities produce lots of NORM already. Undoubtedly people on private well water, one flush at a time, have been producing NORM all by themselves and have been doing so since long before horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracking were invented (we're all frackers, actually).
According to the EPA's site on NORM from well water (Drinking Water Treatment Wastes) the amount of radionuclides in water treatment residue can vary by an order of six magnitudes. In all some 260,000 metric tons of TENORM are generated every year by U.S. water treatment plants. For a detailed overview of the issue see "A Regulators' Guide to the Management of Radioactive Residuals from Drinking Water Treatment Technologies".
So you see uranium has been decomposing into radon and dissolving into well water quite naturally and without causing alarm for as long as there have been wells producing water for humans.
Some other day I'll post funnies from the West Texas yellow cake litigation (teaser: "you mean there's uranium in the ground, around here?!" but for now I suggest you have a look at the Natural Gas Drilling Tip Line documents in the NYTimes article. There are lots of scared, lonely, confused and paranoid people out there (e.g. "Caller is the Wife of Jesus Christ and Billy Idol (the rock singer) is in fact Jesus Christ. Caller is thus co-owner of the earth and she is upset over the Marcellus Shale drilling..." What's more interesting are all the tips/calls from the media; several of which the NYTimes redacted extensively. It's obvious that the media is trying to fan the flames by provoking the sorts of people prone to be provoked. The question is, why?
