As Wall Street keeps pushing the Marcellus Shale “play” word now comes from University of Buffalo researchers that hydro fracking not only releases natural gas but is likely to release uranium as drilling companies our millions of gallons of water and fracking fluids into rock to force the gas to the surface. A University of Buffalo reports:
“Marcellus shale naturally traps metals such as uranium and at levels higher than usually found naturally, but lower than manmade contamination levels,” says Tracy Bank, PhD, assistant professor of geology in UB’s College of Arts and Sciences and lead researcher. “My question was, if they start drilling and pumping millions of gallons of water into these underground rocks, will that force the uranium into the soluble phase and mobilize it? Will uranium then show up in groundwater?”
As Wall Street keeps pushing the Marcellus Shale “play” word now comes from University of Buffalo researchers that hydro fracking not only releases natural gas but is likely to release uranium as drilling companies our millions of gallons of water and fracking fluids into rock to force the gas to the surface. A University of Buffalo reports:
“Marcellus shale naturally traps metals such as uranium and at levels higher than usually found naturally, but lower than manmade contamination levels,” says Tracy Bank, PhD, assistant professor of geology in UB’s College of Arts and Sciences and lead researcher. “My question was, if they start drilling and pumping millions of gallons of water into these underground rocks, will that force the uranium into the soluble phase and mobilize it? Will uranium then show up in groundwater?”
“To find out, Bank and her colleagues at UB scanned the surfaces of Marcellus shale samples from Western New York and Pennsylvania. Using sensitive chemical instruments, they created a chemical map of the surfaces to determine the precise location in the shale of the hydrocarbons, the organic compounds containing natural gas.
“We found that the uranium and the hydrocarbons are in the same physical space,” says Bank. “We found that they are not just physically — but also chemically — bound.
“That led me to believe that uranium in solution could be more of an issue because the process of drilling to extract the hydrocarbons could start mobilizing the metals as well, forcing them into the soluble phase and causing them to move around.”
“When Bank and her colleagues reacted samples in the lab with surrogate drilling fluids, they found that the uranium was indeed, being solubilized.
“In addition, she says, when the millions of gallons of water used in hydraulic fracturing come back to the surface, it could contain uranium contaminants, potentially polluting streams and other ecosystems and generating hazardous waste.” Read more at http://www.buffalo.edu/news/11885
