Tapping natural gas could unleash uranium

Plans to tap one of the largest sources of natural gas in the United States could release naturally trapped uranium into the environment

, researchers say. Proposals to drill into the Marcellus shale -- a massive rock formation that stretches from New York through Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia -- have critics focusing on the effects of pumping millions of gallons of water and chemicals deep underground to fracture rocks to release the natural gas.
Researchers at the University of Buffalo in New York say the process, known as hydraulic fracturing or "fracking," could force uranium in the rocks to move into groundwater, a university release said Monday.
"Marcellus shale naturally traps metals such as uranium and at levels higher than usually found naturally, but lower than man-made contamination levels," Tracy Bank, UB assistant professor of geology

, said. "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?"

Related articles

• 'Fracking' mobilizes uranium in marcellus shale (eurekalert.org)
• Gas Shale and Hydraulic Fracturing Work for Our Nation (environmentalleader.com)

Without cap-and-trade, here's what's needed By Dana Milbank

There is a hole in the Democrats' plan to fight global warming. A .270-caliber hole, to be specific.
"I'll take dead aim at the cap-and-trade bill, because it's bad for West Virginia," Gov. Joe Manchin, the Democratic candidate for Senate, says in an ad put out last week. To demonstrate, he pops what appears to be a .270 cartridge in his Remington 700, then shoots a bull's-eye through a piece of paper reading "Senate of the United States" and "Cap and Trade Bill."
If you look closely, you can see that the bullet tears through the word "jobs" in the sentence "to create clean energy jobs."
This was unsporting of Manchin. The bill was dead before he shot it. If it couldn't pass with 60 Democrats in the Senate, it surely isn't going to pass in the next two years.
But Manchin's shot should ring in his fellow Democrats' ears, warning them that it is time to come up with an alternative to regulating carbon, a Plan B for climate change. I suggest they try smoke and mirrors -- literally.
Scientists are already pondering the use of smoke (sulfur dioxide injected into the stratosphere) and mirrors (installing reflectors made of metal or lunar glass a million miles from Earth) to cool the planet. It's time for policymakers to get serious about these and other "geoengineering" proposals to cool the Earth and remove excess carbon. More at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/15/AR2010101504205.html