20 Radioactive Dangers We All Face
1. Nuclear reactors crashing on Earth from space  and fallout from: 2. Pacific nuclear testing 3. the Nevada Test Site 4. High-altitude nuclear tests  5. Project Rulison 6. Mighty Oak nuclear test 7. North Korea's nuclear tests 8. Global nuclear testing 9.  'Project 57' (Area 13)  10. Trinity, WSMR & Steel	11. Hanford & INL & LANL 12. Nuclear Power 13. DTRA's Divine Strake's babies  14. Fallout resuspension: Milford Flat Fire  15. Australia's fallout and duststorms 16. Hiroshima & Nagasaki -and- 17. Low-level radiation impacted viruses 18. Radioactivity in drywall (dust)  19. Nuclear waste transport 20. Greenham Common

• Home
• About▼
• Assessing the damage ▼
• Help out!
• Trivia ▼

Table of Contents:

December 2009 Update: Garfield County Commissioners reject DOE's 'Plan Forward,' and suggest compensation for mineral rights owners within 1/2 mile radius of Rulison GZ - read article December 2009 Update: the Bureau of Land Management announced on December 21, 2009, that it approved Noble Energy's plan - outlined in the Cache Creek Master Development Plan Environmental Assessment - that calls for drilling up to 79 gas wells located as near as 1.5 miles and as far as 3.0 miles from the Rulison ground-zero.  This is according to the Denver Post, which added in a December 24, 2009 article that residents in the area had filed in court "to get a hearing before the oil-and-gas commission on drilling in the area. The case is pending before a state appellate court. "    Deceptively, Noble Energy plans for directional drilling, aka 'slant drilling,' which would be mean that the company could penetrate several hundred feet closer to the Rulison nuclear blast cavity than originally stated.   The Rulison cavity is located 8,425 feet below the surface and is 140 feet wide and 270 feet high.  So, the cavity extends to 70 feet out in all horizontal directions from the imaginary vertical line of the ground-zero.  If you consider that Colorado geology professor Geoffrey Thyne (who worked for Garfield County in 2008) believes Rulison's radioactive gas could have migrated as far as 1,750 feet at the time of the blast, then we can extend the 'danger zone' to 1,820 feet.   If Noble Energy decides in the future - which is to be expected - to apply for a permit to drill at the 1/2 mile radius, which equates to roughly 2,700 feet (over 1/2 mile) from the ground-zero, then they could be drilling less than 1,000 feet from the 'danger zone.'   Noble Energy plans to utilize fracking and slant drilling.  Garfield County Commissioner John Martin has said that the 'reach' of fracking "goes from 1,300 to 1,500 feet."  So, with or without the slant drilling, Noble Energy, if it drills anywhere near the 1/2 mile radius, could hit radioactive gas.  Even if Noble tries to drill straight down, it might miss by a few hundred feet: High Country News noted in a 2005 article a study (by a large Oklahoma gas exploration company) that found 'some of the company’s gas wells missed their target by 300 to 400 feet.'   The BLM's approved Master Plan (Environmental Assessment) notes that Noble Energy will be the only entity that will do 100% monitoring of its own samples for tritium for the proposed drilling.   There will be no independent analysis and (if you consider DOE to be 'objective') it may end up that just one Noble well out of 79 will be monitored by the DOE.  The BLM Master Plan notes that "some or all" of Noble's wells may be included in the long-term DOE sampling program, but realistically the BLM has formally requested monitoring for "at least one of the Noble’s wells..."  Noble's plan doesn't call for sampling of solid radionuclides, like Strontium-90, or all the other radioactive vapors such as argon-39 gas, carbon-14 gas, krypton-85 gas, and tritiated water vapor.  All of these could contaminate drilling equipment, the workers and float into the aboveground air where it will descend and/or precipitate onto the ground.  How will Coloradans know when radioactive gas is (again) spewing from Rulison into their communities? They probably won't. Are there tritium-gas samplers downwind?   How will Noble Energy customers know if their natural gas contains radioactive traces of strontium-90 or radioactive argon gas?  They might never! July 2009 Update: A COGCC informal hearing on July 15 revealed that the DOE's models of radioactive migration at the Rulsion Site was based on modeling studies at Nevada Test Site (NTS).  This should raise red flags in two ways.  First, the geology at the Nevada Test Site is not the same as the geology in the Rulison district!   Second, geology aside, there is no similar past underground test scenario at the NTS that can compare to Rulison, and even if one could find a vaguely similar test for comparison, there is no underground test area at the NTS that has be verified as to the 'limits of influence' by comprehensive drilling studies.   The bottom line: the DOE has no idea of where the Rulison contamination spread, and has no TESTED MODEL rooted in factual data.     Read a well-informed perspective on Rulison written as a comment in July 2009(scroll to comment section) to a recent Denver Post article. Excerpt: "The public can't evaluate the issues at hand if a federal agency [DOE] retains the right to hide data, using secrecy laws, that have potential environmental impacts....many of the details of the buried blast contamination radioactive debris remains classified Secret, Restricted Data. The DOE insist this is necessary to protect our national security....Fundamental details of the off-site tests remain cloaked in secrecy such as quantities of radioactive plutonium-239 in the blast debris area. The DOE prevents monitoring well drilling into such areas which prevents open, external, peer reviewed analysis. Instead, the distant, very expensive, sampling allowed is a bit like trying to describe an elephant by feel alone...the public has been shafted for millions in surface cleanup efforts and in distant monitoring which always results in 'no contamination detected' results."

Welcome to Colorado: AEC's Playground

The protestors

Low-tritium strategy backfires

Tritium in hiding

Raiding the radioactive tomb

DOE's 'Plan Forward' is Backwards

Activists sue again

Reclaiming your voice under NEPA

Rio Blanco in their 'sights'

Welcome to Colorado: AEC's Playground

In 1957, the nuclear weapons establishment in the United States conceived of a program that sought beneficial, peace-time applications of the atomic bomb.  At that time in American history, peaceful uses of the 'atom' comprised of non-explosive (non-supercritical) nuclear applications in medicine, electrical generation, steel making, exploration spacecraft, etc...  But the mega-explosive device of the atomic bomb was only a military 'asset.'  It was used in war and would only be used again only in war.  Looking into the future, the U.S. government's nuclear establishment likely worried that the 'bomb' would not always be largely supported by the American public since, inevitably, people would catch on to the lunacy of the strategy of 'deterrence' or wise up to the dangers of the fallout nuclear radiation created in military accidents and negligent testing.  Thus, the 'Project Plowshare' - officially 'Operation Plowshare' -  was introduced as a way to show the public that the A-bomb wasn't just a tool of destruction, but rather also one of 'advancement.'   It would transform society through monumental public works never before possible.  The A-bomb would be used to blast new harbors out of coastlines, dig new inter-oceanic canals, extract 'trapped' natural gas, even control hurricanes and create (radioactive) diamonds from coal. 

Plowshare experiments were conducted with unvarying levels of failure in New Mexico, west-central Colorado and at the Nevada Test Site from the early 1960s through 1973.  Although the Nevada Test Site and two test areas in New Mexico chosen for the Plowshare tests were distant from populated areas, the great problem then and now with 'Plowshare' nuclear testing in the State of Colorado has been that the test sites chosen were significantly closer to communities.   This analysis focuses on one Plowshare experiment in Colorado called 'Rulison.'

Rulison was the first nuclear test in Colorado.  The aim of 'Rulison,' an underground nuclear experiment, was to stimulate natural gas production.  The ideas was the power of Rulison's enormous atomic blast - conducted 8,426 feet underground - would free natural gas (trapped in spaces like tight sands) and produce huge quantities of radioactive-free gas.  The test was financial backed by corporations - a first in nuclear testing history - including Austral Oil Company, a natural gas concern in Texas, and Nevada-based CER Geonuclear Corp. (as project manager). The latter was a joint venture of EG&G and Continental Oil.   The test was planned for mid-1969.

The protestors

When Coloradans found out about 'Project Rulison,' not many were too pleased with the idea of a nuclear blast in their backyard. Concerned activists came together with grassroots groups and state chapters of national organizations - including the Colorado Committee for Environmental Information, the ACLU and the Open Spaces Coordination Council - to file a lawsuit to force an injunction to stop the test in a Denver federal court.  The lawsuits contended that the blast would threaten the safety of locals and possibly contaminate water supplies and residents' air.  Testimony in a federal court hearing included a Denver geologist named David E. Evans who proposed that [the atomic blast from] Rulison could trigger major earthquakes.  Evans presented his theory that waste that was injected into a 2-mile-deep well in the Rocky Mountain Arsenal had caused Denver-area earthquakes; he qualified that Rulison's risk for tremors was not probable, but was an 'unnecessary risk.'  

Another geologist testified that the explosion could force radioactive materials into underground water draining into the Colorado River System, affecting communities and cities all the way to Los Angeles.   (Another threat of Rulison, although barely mentioned in the press, was the possibility that it could have vented, like the 'Baneberry' accident at the Nevada Test Site in 1970, releasing significant amounts of radiation into the atmosphere.)

The Rulison test was initially planned for May 22nd, 1969, then delayed to September 4th over safety reasons including concerns on the possibility of damage to a local dam.  Meanwhile, a lawsuit filed in a Denver federal court was dismissed on August 27, 1969, and [the ruling was] affirmed on September 2nd, 1969, by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.   A last-minute appeal by the conservation groups to the U.S. Supreme Court was rejected by Justice Thurgood Marshall, who refused to overturn the lower court's decision.   Simultaneously, another lawsuit had been filed in early September by the Open Spaces Coordination Council in a Colorado district court in Glenwood Springs. 

Imagine you're in your kitchen, addressing mid-day hunger pangs with that good-but-quick pasta dish you like to make, and make pretty well!  You walk over to your reliable four-burner gas-stove and light the front-right burner.  Hissssss.... click..click...click...pfummm.  You place a shiny two-quart sauce-pan half-filled with your favorite pasta sauce on the burner and slowly stir the chunky tomato goodness with a long wooden spoon.  Breathe in the savory spice-filled aroma!  Yummmm!   As the natural gas into your stove burns happily away, there's something else dispersing into your kitchen's air.  Minute amounts of non-combustible 'contaminants' of the gas.  Why, it never occurred to you that the natural gas stored in a tank outside your house could be slightly radioactive.  Well... not to worry.  It isn't now.  But what if... sort of like the Wall Street greedy-banker saga... gas developers cut corners to get rich by evading regulations?  Or perhaps because the regulators stopped regulating?   There are gas developers currently proposing to drill for the same gas used in your kitchen in an area of Colorado where long-lived radioactive gases from nuclear tests - yes, nuclear tests in 1969 and 1973 in Colorado!! - contaminate underground gas-rich areas.   In 1971, the gas that companies drilled was indeed slightly radioactive.  What stopped them was the city councils in Aspen and Glenwood Springs in Colorado who prevented distribution of the gas.   In 2009, drilling is about to resume.   What if city councils and federal agencies fail to stop the distribution of the radioactive gas?   What if it evades regulators?  What if the gas in your kitchen is....?

Protest within legal channels wasn't the only method used by the Rulison opposition.  There was an unsuccessful petition and letter (and telegram)-writing campaign to get Colorado Governor John A. Love to stop the test and also an unsuccessful telegram plea to President Nixon by Rep. Frank Evans (D-Colo.) to order "at least a temporary halt in the firing" so more studies could be rendered.  

A last ditch activist effort came in the form of an on-site sit-in protest by members of such groups as Citizens Concerned About Rulison, Students for a Democratic Society and People United to Reclaim the Environment (PURE).  Beginning just over one week before the blast date, protestors in five groups scattered into the wilderness near the test site, hoping their presence would encourage others to take a stand against the nuclear test.  The protestors felt that their presence had something to do with a 'weather' delay that postponed the test from Sept. 4 to Sept 10, 1969.  

The protestors declined to tell reporters where they were camped, and noted to the press that their camps were camouflaged.   Rob Prince, one of the protestors, told The Colorado Independent in a 2007 interview: "There were federal agents in helicopters and bull horns flying around us calling on us to leave, but that was about it. They never landed (to my knowledge) and never actively tried to clear us from the spot where we were camped. We did break up into small groups with the idea that if we did, the federal agents would get some, but not all of us, but nothing came of that."

A spokesperson for CER Geonuclear told the AP a few days before the Sept. 10th test: "We don't know where the protestors are, but we know where they aren't.  They aren't close to the site."  

Helicopters and law enforcement patrolled the area in case protestors got near the site.  (Read part II of the interview with Prince, who blogged extensively in 2007 on Rulison and on the DOE's lack of transparency of the information and data in its possession on Rulison contamination).¹

On September 10, 1969, the actual date of the Rulison test, parts of nearby Interstate-70 were closed, as were some local schools.  Residents within a few miles of the ground-zero were asked to evacuate for the day and those who left - not all did - were compensated for leaving.  

The blast site was a location (map) eight miles southeast of the town of Grand Valley in Garfield County, about 150 miles west of Denver.  (Coordinates: 39.40566, -107.948631, aerial map, close-up).   The atomic blast was set off at 4 p.m. EDT.

As described in the book 'Nuclear Witnesses, Nuclear Insiders' (by Leslie J. Freeman, 1982): 'The test proceeded on schedule, throwing some of the demonstrators up into the air.'  The 5.5-magnitude earthquake from the blast threw one group of about 25 protestors about half-a-foot into the air.   The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), the federal agency behind the test, stated that no radioactivity escaped accidentally during the underground blast.

'Welcome to Colorado: AEC's Playground' was depicted on a popular bumper sticker in Colorado in the years following the test.

Low-tritium strategy backfires

Rulison's bomb yield, of 43 kilotons, was three times the yield of the Hiroshima blast, larger than the combined yield of New Mexico Plowshare tests (in 1961 and 1967) and even surpassed the average yield of above-ground tests at the Nevada Test Site from 1951 to 1962.  Project Rulison "produced a shock wave that damaged the foundations of buildings, irrigation lines, mines and an industrial plant." (Freeman).  

The AEC's Plowshare Project's scientists planned such a large yield atomic blast in order to reduce the amount of radioactive tritium, which had plagued a previous New Mexico gas stimulation test also under the Plowshare Program.  But Rulison, which had stimulated less gas than expected, produced a lot more tritium than expected.  Although the Rulison experiment succeeded in freeing the 'trapped' natural gas, because of the radioactive contamination it was unsuitable for sale. 

So, what happened to all that radioactive gas?    DOE documents state that Rulison was accompanied by an 'operational release of radioactivity detected offsite.' (DOE/NV-209).   What that means is twofold: First, some radioactive gases escaped right after the test into Colorado's air when samples were collected.   Second, the 'fouled product,' the contaminated natural gas was 'flared.'  Flare is a fancy term for burning it into the air.   

On three occasions over a 10 month period in 1970 and 1971, the DOE flared about 455 million cubic feet of radioactively contaminated gases into Colorado's atmosphere where it 'dissipated.'  (Note: dilution is not a solution to pollution.)  Radioactive gases from the flaring were detected up to 50 miles from the Rulison blast site.  

Coloradans protested these flaring actions over concerns that their exposure to the radiation could increase their cancer risk.   An activist's lawsuit asserted in 1969 that any plan by the AEC to flare off the 'atomic gas' would cause radioactive elements to "collect in consumable food and water, and eventually cause infant mortality in a scientifically measurable ratio to the amount of krypton-85 and tritium released."  (These are two common radioactive gases also associated with emissions from nuclear power plants.)  Environmental groups had filed an injunction to prevent re-entry into the test cavity and stop these flaring actions  but that injunction was denied; the District Court judge found that the flaring would not 'present a danger to life, health or property,' however the court retained jurisdiction (more on jurisdiction below). 

Why did the AEC flare off gas into Colorado's air?  Why did they declare it to be 'safe' when it was determined that the gas was too radioactive for use in peoples' homes?  It is assumed that some of the radiation entered the food supply.  

Wade H. Nelson reported in 1999 in his article 'Nuclear Explosion shook Farmington' on the venting of the Plowshare experiment Gasbuggy in New Mexico: 'Among the hundreds of declassified records are memos and reports discussing increased tritium levels in surrounding vegetation, the release of radioactive Krypton-85 gas...'  He noted a New York Times investigative piece that stated that, as a result of the flaring of nearly 300 million cubic feet of Gasbuggy's contaminated gas, 'Tritium would combine with Oxygen to make tritiated (radioactive) water which would rain down somewhere downwind from the Gasbuggy site. Undoubtedly some of it would enter the food chain.'  

The book 'The American West at Risk' (Oxford University Press, 2008) cites DOE-made measurements of radioactivity released into the environment during Rulison's flaring:  'Radioactivity showed up in three separate flaring tests, which burned gas at the well head. The total radioactivity released included 1,064 curies of Krypton-85, 2,824 curies of radioactive hydrogen-3 (tritium), and 2.4 curies of carbon-14.'²  

Despite the dismissal and denial of both injunctions - of the test and the flaring - activists felt partially victorious.  As noted in the article 'Colorado Environmentalists: Scientists Battle AEC and Army' that appeared in Science in June 1970, the plaintiffs succeeded in establishing that they had a right to sue the government and had legal standing in the matter.  Richard Lamm, the plaintiff's attorney, told the AP in March 1970, "We've now set the groundwork for people to question the Atomic Energy Commission.  That in itself was worth trial."  They also forced the AEC to disclose much more information on the project, and got the District Court judge in Denver to supervise the testing of the gas following the blast, the flaring actions and any additional testing.  

Probably the best outcome is that the coalition helped force the AEC to backtrack from its plans to carry out hundreds of more Plowshare nuclear tests in the gas fields of Colorado.  By 1974, Coloradans voted to amend the state's constitution so that voters would need to approve any in-state nuclear explosion: the referendum language read as follows: 'An act to amend the Constitution of the State of Colorado, to establish procedural steps to be complied with prior to the detonation of nuclear explosive devices, requiring prior approval of the detonation by the voters through the enactment of an initiated or referred measure.'  Just shy of 400,000 Coloradans voted for the measure, with 291,000 voting against it.   That came less than a year after the Plowshare program's last underground nuclear experiment dubbed 'Project Rio Blanco,' a 1973 triple-nuclear explosion near Rifle, Colorado.

Tritium in hiding

Although the flaring brought down the gaseous carbon-14 and krypton-85 levels to a mere fraction of the original concentrations, a large amount of the original tritium still exists.  As mentioned above, the amount of tritium produced by the blast exceeded Rulison's planner's estimates.  The amount of tritium flared made up only 28% of the total amount of tritium likely generated by the nuclear blast.   The reason why is that the remaining tritium had been converted into other forms such as radioactive methane (tritiated methane) and radioactive H20 (tritiated water).  Some of the tritiated water is now present in the gaseous form of tritiated water vapor, which is probably the greatest health threat.  Since the original tritium yield of Rulison was about 10,000 Curies, the amount that wasn't released during flaring consisted of about 7,000 Curies.   The DOE believes that the un-decayed portion of tritium 'in late 2009' will be about 700 Curies, and a portion of this is in vapor form, and some as tritiated water, which is a huge problem if it contaminates water supplies.  As for the remaining small quantities of krypton and carbon-14 in gaseous form, and the huge amounts of solid undecayed radioactivity in and near the blast cavity, the DOE's present hypothesis is that these are sealed underground, more or less within the 40 acres of the Rulison Test Site.   There are reasons to believe the DOE is wrong about this (more below).   Other nuclear tests of similar yields to Rulison at the Nevada Test Site produced quantities of other health-endangering isotopes; a 43-kiloton blast will create radioactive Iodine-131 (approx. 5.4 million Curies), which has by now completely decayed from Rulison, and Strontium-90 (about 15,000 Curies) and Cesium-137 (about 20,000 Curies).  About 40% of the Strontium-90 and Cesium-137 - two of the greatest long-lived radioactive threats from any nuclear blast - produced by Rulison remains trapped underground.   Strontium-90 mimics calcium and because of its water-solubility can easily enter our food supplies and when in our bodies is readily 'built' into our bones and teeth.  Cesium-137 has many of the same attributes and poses a similar danger despite its lesser 'biological' half-life (strontium won't be 'flushed out' from our bodies for decades, whereas cesium is ridded in mere weeks).  There is also the problem of radioactive gases produced by the blast.  The estimate of radioactive Argon-39 gas, with a half-life of 260 years, was 2 to 20 Curies, but the DOE doesn't know how much was flared, or is still in the ground.  

Raiding the radioactive tomb

About 35 years after the Rulison test, during the energy crisis of 2005, natural gas developers expressed interest in extracting gas from the 'Rulison district' of which the Rulison blast site is part.  Their aim was to 'attempt releasing gas with hydrofracturing in a very tight formation - but hoping not to tap into the nuclear dynamite's residual radioactivity.'  (The American West at Risk, p. 404)  This renewed commercial interest in gas on the Rulison site touched off a legal and grassroots battle between locals, the companies wanting the gas and county, state and DOE officials (with regards to placing restrictions on gas drilling around the site).  

At its core, the feud centers on the lax restrictions of the 'regulators,' the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and the DOE.  In 1997, the Commission established a buffer radius of three-miles based on the fact that no existing gas well existed in the buffer zone.  The Commission's informal policy was to inform the DOE of any application to drill within that buffer zone.  Later, the Commission, in 2004, formally placed prohibitions at a half-mile radius from the site however said it will hold hearings if a company wants to drill within that radius.   As for the DOE, their original stance was that no drilling was to occur within a 3 mile radius, but later reduced the radius to one-half mile.  According to Cox News Service (April 2009), the DOE 'had opposed any other drilling closer than a half-mile from the blast site, although it would be up to the state to decide whether to approve such drilling should companies pursue it.'   In 2007, the DOE placed prohibitions on drilling below 6,000 feet within the 40-acre zone around the blast site.  In mid-2009, the DOE proposed a staged-drilling approach within the one-half mile radius of the blast site.   

Locals are increasingly worried as the DOE proposes allowing companies to drill test wells closer and closer to the blast site, up to within a half-mile radius, and then eventually straight up to its 40-acre boundary.   If the DOE and gas companies have their way, drilling will continue to encroach upon the lots immediately near the Rulison site until someone loses the game of 'radioactive roulette.'  The main concern is that present-day test drilling or hydraulic fracturing (or frac'ing) could either open fissures allowing some of the radioactive gas currently trapped deep underground to escape or free water or methane contaminated with tritium.   

All of this is incredibly worthy of public concern because radioactivity in fact traveled beyond the DOE's controlled 40 acres..  Geology professor Geoffrey Thyne revealed in his work for Garfield County in 2008 that radioactive gas could have migrated as far as 1,750 feet at the time of the blast.  Cox News Service on April 8, 2008 noted in the article State 'probably made a mistake' to allow drilling near nuclear blast, memo says: "That raises the possibility of it being tapped by hydraulic fracturing done to stimulate gas production in wells a half-mile from the blast site, he said."  Another fact to consider is that plutonium from an underground weapons test in Nevada migrated much faster than the DOE predicted.  The plutonium traveled - through underground rock on a substance called 'colloids' - almost 1.6 kilometers (about 1 mile) from the blast site in 30 years.  

DOE's 'Plan Forward' is Backwards

County and state officials have asked the DOE why they haven't collected real empirical data to determine how far radiation has traveled underground from the blast.  The DOE has opted for modeling and proposes to analyze material bought up by commercial drilling rigs at distances decreasing in a staggered fashion from the cavity.  This is what the DOE calls the 'industry plan,' wherein companies would drill closer and closer to the detonation site and if sampling and analysis 'confirm the lack of contamination' then wells closer and closer can be drilled.  When the drills get to the one-half mile radius, then a 'focused monitoring network' will be established that will monitor any future migration of radioisotopes.  Then drilling will be allowed straight up to the lots surrounding the Rulison site, at several hundred feet.   

Besides the danger of tritium gases escaping during drilling, there is the problem of conflicts of interest.  Since the DOE is having companies, with their obvious vested interests, drill the wells from which the DOE will sample for radioactivity, there is no way any scientist or citizen will and should believe the data.  The data gathering needs to be a strictly environmental investigation without gas companies involved.   County and state officials in Colorado have pressed the DOE over why it doesn't independently sink several exploratory shafts - with all the right safeguards for worker and community safety - to set up boundaries for where to drill and not to drill.   So far, the DOE notes in its draft 'Path Forward,' it has made only one test drill at 'Battlement Mesa 36-13' near the one-half mile radius.  The DOE's 'Path Forward' sounds a self-congratulating tone because sampling at that well has shown no contamination!  There is little reason to be optimistic about the 'industry plan' or even the DOE's plan, alluded to in the 'Path Forward' proposal, for 'developing it [sic] own sampling and analysis plan to supplement the industry plan.'  What is this dubious plan?   

The issue is that there needs to be a thorough independent investigation prior to any drilling at a considerable distance from the detonation site, (i.e., 3 mile-radius).  The reason why the DOE hasn't proactively pursed this is that the DOE-stated objective, cited in the 'Path Forward,' is company-focused, not safety-focused.  That objective is to adopt a 'staged-drilling approach...in a manner that minimizes the likelihood of encountering contamination.'  To be safety-focused, the objective needs to be revised so that the drilling approach is done in a manner that PREVENTS the likelihood of encountering contamination.  

This DOE-styled don't-sample-don't-worry policy, replacing achievable empirical data with hyper-vigorous modeling, reminds us at Idealist of the efforts of the DOE with the Divine Strake test in 2006 (and 2007).   The DOE took only 26 samples at depths of 5 to 6 inches deep of soils that were exposed to atmospheric fallout and would have been disturbed by the 700-ton blast of Divine Strake.  Yet the area of sampling exceeded 3 million square feet (Minnesota's "Mall of America" has a gross area of 4.2 million square feet), and was the equivalent of taking one soil test per football field.  The DOE could easily have missed 'hot spots' of high concentrations.   The sampling also did not explore below (more than 6") the ground of the blast site.  This was of concern because the 700 tons of ammonium-nitrate fuel-oil used for 'Divine Strake' would have been detonated in a 36-foot deep hole and the blast - equivalent to a 0.6 kiloton TNT explosion - would have forcefully ejected all of the dirt around the pit.  Divine Strake was cancelled in February 2007.

If these gases escape above the surface, there is the likely possibility that they can be absorbed by anyone downwind via the lungs (Krypton-85 absorbed via the lungs will deposit in areas of the body's fatty tissues and emit X-ray like radiation causing damage to the gonads).  If the contaminated gas or water gets into wells, then it will become an omnipresent danger to the population.  In March 2005, High Country News (HCN) reported in an article titled 'Drilling Could Wake a Sleeping Giant' that in the spring of 2004 there was 'the discovery of a gas seep that was contaminating West Divide Creek, along with drinking-water wells near the town of Silt, just east of the Project Rulison site. The seep percolated from a natural gas well [at a nearby drilling site] to the water through the same type of sandstone found around Project Rulison.'  There are three radioactive gases present in the Rulison underground area that can similarly seep into drinking water-wells if 'disturbed' by drilling.  (In drinking water, tritium and carbon-14 can enter into the bloodstream and cause cancer.)  

HCN also referenced another concern that had at the time 'bubbled to the surface': a study by a large Oklahoma gas exploration company that found that 'some of the company’s gas wells missed their target by 300 to 400 feet.'   HCN noted, regarding the claims of one gas developer, called Presco, Inc., that was aspiring in 2004 to drill as close to one-half mile from the Rulison site: 'But more importantly, Garfield County critics say, it undermines Presco’s assurances that "pinpoint drilling" will keep wells safely outside the half-mile radius of the Project Rulison blast site.'  Also, Garfield County Commissioner John Martin has said DOE should expand the 40-acre no-drill zone because that limit was first established when the DOE "thought that the fracking could only go about 200 feet to 300 feet..It goes a lot longer than that; it goes from 1,300 to 1,500 feet."

So, many questions remain.  What will happen when a test drill encounters radioactive tritiated water vapor?  Page 5 of the DOE's draft 'Rulison Path Forward' report states that the gas would 'be captured at the wellhead where the water vapor condenses and is removed from the gas prior to entering the gas distributing system.'  What is the confidence that tritiated water vapor will be removed, and not escape into the atmosphere?  What methods of gas-capture will be used?  What safeguards will be put into place to measure radioactive water vapor in the event of an accidental release?   Why doesn't the DOE array tritium and other gas samplers in Garfield County to determine, if there is a release, how much leaked?  Does the DOE want a replay of Three Mile Island - when the monitoring network completely failed and so no one to this day knows how much radiation leaked?  What will the DOE do with contaminated gas that is 'removed from the gas prior to entering the gas distributing system'?  Will it be flared?  Will locals have to file a federal injunction again?  What will happen, under the DOE's 'staged approached' of sampling and analysis, if a company drills and encounters solid radioactivity 'stuck' onto drilling equipment?  What will the DOE do with contaminated equipment?  Where will it go for burial?  What safeguards are in place so that radioactive solids brought to the surface by drilling equipment don't contaminate workers, get tracked around town, disperse into air, etc...?   What will happen if tritiated water contaminates water supplies, wells, the surface, etc...?  What is the worst-case scenario of radioactive gas exposure to the more than 17,300 vehicles that travel along Interstate-70 just 5-10 miles north of the Rulison site per day?  (17,300 is the AADT on I-70 east of Parachute in the year 2004).   

Activists sue again (2008-2010)

In December 2008, Garfield County residents and two citizen groups filed a lawsuit in a Denver court to force a state hearing over pending oil and gas permits for drilling within three miles of the Rulison nuclear site.  (The groups had filed a legal objection in January 2008 over the state's approval of 16 drilling permits.)  The coalition filed the suit after being denied a hearing request with the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, an action the coalition asserted was in violation of state law.  That law, the 'Oil and Gas Conservation Act,' the groups alleged, allows “any interested person” to petition the commission on “any matter” and requires the commission to hold a hearing on the issue.   However, the Commission had recently changed the 'rule' to prevent any land owner except the surface owner from requesting a hearing.  The plaintiffs sought judicial relief, specifically: a court declaration stating the rule is “contrary to state law," an order prohibiting the commission from enforcing it and an order “compelling” the commission to hold a hearing over various permits.  

In May 2009, a District Court of Denver County judge ruled in favor of the defendants, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and EnCana Oil & Gas.  The judge concluded that the drilling posed an 'extremely low' public risk despite the plaintiff's contention that the concentrations of the contaminants and their distribution in the subsurface were never adequately determined, and that fracturing technologies may increase the risk of contaminant migration.   (Fracking involves the use of highly toxic chemicals: according to a brochure by ShaleShock.org: 'Each fracking uses a cocktail of 140,000 pounds of chemicals, including benzene, toluene, kerosene, and formaldehyde. Many cause cancer, birth defects, or lung disease. 65 are classified as hazardous waste, but because of gas industry exemptions, none are handled as hazardous.')   In late 2009 the plaintiffs appealed and on June 24, 2010, the Colorado Court of Appeals overturned the lower court's ruling, asserting that COGCC's rule change was not legal and that state statutes gives any plaintiff with 'standing' the right to a hearing.  The decision makes it so that, again, anyone has the right to request a hearing on applications to drill, even for wells beyond the 1/2 mile radius.  The judges, however, said that COGCC has the discretion to 'control the manner of the hearings' and, as such, commission officers and not the entire commission may may preside over the hearings. 

Reclaiming your voice under NEPA 

It is incredibly important to know, Coloradans, that you are being left out of one of the most effective and most democratic environmental statutes in the United States: the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA.   NEPA requires that federal agencies who are planning 'actions' that may threaten 'significant' harm to ecology or health enter into a transparent and democratic process through an Environmental Assessment or Environmental Impact Statement.   Since the 1970s, the Environmental Impact Statement for the Nevada Test Site and Off-Site Locations has been reviewed every five years per NEPA and has addressed a slew of issues, most pertinently environment management issues, regarding actions such as cleanup, waste transport, radionuclide migrations, etc... For some reason, at some point the DOE thought to exclude from that document all but two of the 10 off-site underground nuclear explosion sites in the United States managed by the Nevada Operations Office of the Department of Energy.  Sites in Mississippi, Alaska, Colorado, and New Mexico are excluded, however two in Nevada are included.  (In FY 2007, the DOE's Office of Legacy Management took over responsibility for the Rulison site.)

The Environmental Impact Statement for the Nevada Test Site and Off-Site Locations should have been periodically - since the 1970s - establishing baseline conditions and addressing present or future environmental threats at the Rulison Test Site.  But residents of Colorado and other states - outside of Nevada - where underground nuclear tests were conducted have been stripped of their rights under NEPA because the 'NTS EIS' ignores them.

One commenter on the Environmental Impact Statement for the Nevada Test Site and Off-Site Locations from 1996 explained it with much more detail:

'This sitewide EIS should include all the far-ranging facilities for which the Nevada Operations Office (DOE/NV) is responsible....A series of internal report documents that has been created since FY 1992 which describe a vast program that includes operations at 10 off-site underground nuclear explosion sites which are located in Mississippi, Alaska, Colorado, New Mexico as well the two, Nevada based sites, which are covered in this draft EIS... The NTS draft EIS fails to mention the formal NV ERP [Environmental Restoration Project] program, the off-site test areas, other than those within the State of Nevada, and does not mention or otherwise address the waste management or transportation issues associated with the, out-of-state, underground nuclear test sites.  No public comments were received, during the EIS implementation phase, that suggested that references to the eight out-of-state test sites, the NV ERP, or the references to the internal documents, should be excluded from the Draft EIS....Apparently, many of the decisions that are made, concerning the majority of off-site areas, are made without the benefit of formal environmental assessments and without local community involvement.'

Don't let your rights under NEPA be abrogated any longer by the DOE.  It is high time for Coloradans to learn about the NEPA document that pertains to their Rulison-test site and demand that the DOE follow the letter of the law of The National Environmental Policy Act.  Read a citizen's guide to NEPA here and learn about your options.  Learn about the new EIS here.    

Rio Blanco in their 'sights'

According to a Grand Junction Sentinel article from January 11, 2010, state officials are preparing plans to allow natural gas drilling near the site of a 1973 underground 100-kiloton nuclear test in COLORADO.  Project 'Rio Blanco' was a large 'peacetime' nuclear experiment intended to stimulate gas production - it was a 'successor' test to a 1969 atomic experiment in Colorado dubbed 'Project Rulison' -  in the western Colorado gas fields.  Conducted on May 17, 1973, in a creek basin on federal lands northwest of Rifle, Colorado, 'Rio Blanco' actually involved three-nuclear explosives, each with an explosive yield of 33-kilotons separated from each other vertically by 400-feet at depths ranging from 6,689 to 6,230 to 5,838 feet.  The three bombs, each more than twice the size of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945, were exploded simultaneously.  The nuclear planners hoped that the three underground blasts would create an interconnected 'chimney' measuring about 1,300 feet high.  Yet the Atomic Energy Commission failed to achieve its outcomes.  

According to the book 'American West at Risk' (p. 403) "Instead, they blasted three chimneys that did not connect and contaminated the gas with high levels of radioactive cesium-137 and strontium-90. The test also produced a lot more radioactive water than expected."  

Cesium-137 actually escaped from the chamber and lodged inside the test chimney and added to significant surface radiation.   Radioactive gas was flared - burned in open air - on several occasions that exposed many Coloradoans to radioactive fallout. 

Now, Colorado state officials are beginning the first steps at allowing several companies to drill within as few as three miles from the blast site, which has not been cleaned up and will never be cleaned up.  To underscore the stupidity, greediness and devil-may-care attitude of some within the ranks of the State's Oil and Gas Commission, one commissioner insinuated that playing Russian Roulette - drilling near the nuclear test site and releasing toxic gases - would be a problem only if humans are living nearby.  Commissioner James Martin noted:  “It’s not as if there are people living there who would be exposed to a (radioactive) release if one were to occur."  

In truth, radioactive gases, bottled underneath the ground of Rifle, can be released from drilling and it will drift downwind towards Colorado's ski resorts and cities and small communities.  Gas workers and their drilling equipment - and even the natural gas used by millions of Americans in the comfort of their homes - could become radioactively poisoned if the state commission goes ahead and risks human lives for fossil fuels.   

Footnotes:

¹ DOE, or Dept. of Energy, is the successor organization to the AEC.  Some of Prince's excerpts: 'how difficult it is to track down federal monitoring results'...'Given the lack of transparency in monitoring, we simply don’t know how much radiation has escaped from Project Rulison - nor how much might be unleashed in the future.'

² All of the radioactive gases have the following 'half-lives': Krypton-85 is about 11 years, Carbon-14 is 5,730 years, and Tritium is about 12 years.  To determine how long these substances are dangerous to human health, multiply the half-life by ten (10).  (Some use a multiplier of 20.)

<?php include 'FOOTER.php'; ?>