nuclear-news

Radioactive waste from oil and gas fracking found in landfill

Radioactive Waste Found at Oil Field Landfill in North Dakota, Oil Price By Irina Slav – Sep 01, 2016, North Dakota has had a problem with the inappropriate disposal of this radioactive waste for years. This time, the State Health Department of North Dakota is probing an oilfield waste landfill operated by IHD Solids Management after the detection of a significant amount of illegal radioactive matter.

The radioactive material was detected twice in two separate inspections that took place in May and June. Now the HD has ordered a third-party inspection of the landfill and instructed the operator to remove 950 tons of waste and take it out of the state, after radioactivity checks of all 12 oilfield waste landfills in the state revealed levels of between 5 and 80 picocuries, the latter standing 30 picocuries above the new maximum allowed for oilfield waste…….

The company will not be fined for the transgression because it dealt with the problem by removing the suspicious waste, as did two other landfill operators in North Dakota, Secure Energy and Gibson Energy. They too had to remove over-radioactive material from their landfills and ship it to special nuclear waste facilities.

Prudently, if not a tad belatedly, North Dakota will soon start requiring oilfield waste landfill operators to verify the radioactivity level of every load that arrives, rather than taking the word of the company generating the waste for it.

The waste from oil and gas wells include uranium, thorium, radium, a radioactive isotope of potassium, as well as isotopes of lead and polonium. These are naturally occurring elements that are brought to the surface through fracking. http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Radioactive-Waste-Found-at-Oil-Field-Landfill-in-North-Dakota.html

September 2, 2016 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, USA, wastes