Shale gas well. Image via Wikipedia
The Department of Energy and General Electric will spend $2 million over the next two years to remove naturally occurring radioactive materials from the fracking fluids produced by America's booming shale-gas industry.
The New York State Department of Health has identified Radium-226 as a radionuclide of particular concern in the Marcellus Shale formation deep beneath the Appalachian Mountains.
In hydraulic fracturing operations, drillers force water and a mixture of chemicals into wells to shatter the shale and free natural gas.
The brine that returns to the surface has been found to contain up to 16,000 picoCuries per liter of radium-226 (pdf). The discharge limit in effluent for Radium 226 is 60 pCi/L, and the EPA's drinking water standard is 5 pCi/L.
Uranium and Radon-222 have also been found in water returning to the surface from deep shale wells.
In Pennsylvania, produced water has been discharged into streams and rivers from the state's 71,000 wells after conventional wastewater treatment but without radiation testing, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The New York Times, which drew attention to the radioactive contamination earlier this year after studying internal EPA documents:
The documents reveal that the wastewater, which is sometimes hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these treatment plants to handle. via The New York Times
GE's Global Research lab in Niskayuna, NY has proposed removing radioactive elements from produced waters and brine using a membrane distillation system similar to conventional reverse osmosis, but designed specifically to capture these radioactive materials.
GE will spend $400,000 on the project and DOE will supply $1.6 million. The Energy Department announced the project Monday.
The process will produce concentrated radioactive waste, which will be disposed of through conventional means, which usually means storage in sealed containers for deep geological disposal.
The government is seeking to address environmental concerns without stemming a boom in cheap gas unleashed by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in shale formations.
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