Court prohibits vocal fracking critic from entering 40% of Pennsylvania county

An anti-fracking activist has been barred from entering over 300 sq miles of an area of Pennsylvania that includes a county hospital, a drug store, supermarket, and a number of other locations she regularly visited before clashing with local officials.

Vera Scroggins, an environmentalist and leading opponent of the practice officially known as hydraulic fracturing, was ordered to stay out of the 312.5 square miles throughout Pennsylvania that have been purchased or leased by Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation, one of Pennsylvania’s most powerful energy companies.

She's63

rt.com/usa/court-prohibits-fracking-critic-pennsylvania-383/

few weeks ago, a reader wrote to me asking how we can be sure the government isn’t slyly getting rid of nuclear waste by injecting it into shale rock that’s been fracked for oil or gas. Jon Abel’s questions will seem far-fetched to some of you, worrisome to others, depending on how much you trust government and the energy industry:

I wanted to mention something that might be getting missed with the whole radioactivity issue surrounding fracking waste water,” my reader wrote. “Has anyone tested for other radioactive metals – such as cesium or plutonium (not just NORM elements)? And, has anyone tested the frack water for radioactivity BEFORE it goes down the frack production wells? Is it possible that the government is getting rid of nuclear waste in this manner?”

Far-fetched or not, no sooner had Jon posed the question than someone proposed it.

At the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, Leonid Germanovich of the Georgia Institute of Technology suggested that nuclear wastes deposited in shale rock would never return to the surface.


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“It’s basic physics here — if it’s heavier than rock, the fracture will propagate down,” said the physicist and civil and environmental engineer.

Jens Birkholzer, head of the Nuclear Energy and Waste Program at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, told Livescience the idea is impractical, largely for safety reasons, but in fact, the government has already disposed of nuclear wastes this way, as you’ll read below.

Jon Abel’s questions had me wondering whether these two explosive forms of energy extraction had ever been combined.

And indeed they have.

In December, 1967, scientists from the Atomic Energy Commission and officials from the U.S. Bureau of Mines and El Paso Natural Gas Company gathered at a gas well in northern New Mexico, near Farmington. They lowered a 29-kiloton nuclear device more than 4,000 feet down the shaft and set it off.

UK nuclear workers told to stay home as radioactivity rises

Britain’s Sellafield nuclear reprocessing site has told non-essential workers to stay home Friday due to the detection of abnormally high levels of radiation.

The radiation spike was detected by one of the monitors at the north end of the partially decommissioned site.

Sellafield management have sought to reassure the public that radiation levels are not high enough to warrant any emergency. Apart from the reduced staffing levels, the site is operating normally, the company said.

"In response to an operational condition on the Sellafield site a conservative and prudent decision has been taken, to operate the site at reduced manning levels, commensurate with safe operations," the company said in a statement.

UK Energy Ministry said it is in contact with Sellafield and sees no reason to believe that the incident is more serious than what the company says it is.

​Living near fracking sites increases infant birth defects – study

rt.com/usa/fracking-colorado-birth-defects-477/

Large-scale fracking in the UK is not likely to lead to big reductions in household gas bills, Chancellor George Osborne has said.

Extracting shale gas would boost tax receipts and aid the UK economy, Mr Osborne said.

But he played down expectations that consumers would see big reductions in prices in evidence to a Lords committee.

David Cameron has previously said it had "real potential" to cut bills.

Speaking to the House of Lords economic affairs committee, Mr Osborne said both he and the prime minister were big supporters of fracking.

But he said he did not want to suggest that the UK would see the kind of price cuts seen in the US - where prices are down by up to 40%.

He told the committee: "I think it will have an impact (on prices)," he said. "I hope it will have a significant impact."

But he added: "I think in the UK there are some differences with the US. We are not as closed an energy economy as the US is.

"So I think we more closely track the worldwide gas price than the US does and we have less ability to detach ourselves from the worldwide gas price."

While fracking in China and the rest of Europe could bring down the price of world gas, which would help UK consumers, there would not necessarily be a direct knock-on effect from shale gas extraction in the UK, because of the extent to which the country relied on gas pipeline connections from other countries.

"I am very pro this development and I think it does have the potential to bring gas prices down in the UK.

"I just don't want to over-promise. I don't want to go out there and say this is the solution to all of this country's economic problems."

That's an alarming increase in all sort's of diseases and ailments!

But an increase in tourettes? That seemed very odd and stuck out