US Fracking Flowback Water is 70 Times Larger Than All Other Forms of Liquid Hazardous Waste.

[NNadir]

This interesting fact can be found here: Propagation of Swellable Microgels through Superpermeable Channels: Impact of Particle–Pore Matching Size Relationship Yang Zhao, Mingzhen Wei, Jianqiao Leng, and Baojun Bai, Energy & Fuels 2021 35 (22), 18533-18542.

From the text:

Excessive water production during oil and gas development is a huge source of wastewater around the world (on the order of 10^9 m^3/year). (1) In the U.S. as an example, the produced water was about 70 times the volume of all liquid hazardous wastes. (2) The produced water raises environmental and economic concerns...

How much fresh water is 10^9 m^3, one billion cubic meters?

My recent combing through literature suggests that the annual water consumption for the drought stressed State of California is on the order of 45 million acre-feet of water, in SI units, around 5 billion cubic meters. Thus water more or less permanently destroyed by fracking as "flowback water" represents about 20% of all the water used in California for all purposes. And let's be clear, the ground on which that water is dumped is more or less permanently destroyed. (Fracking is practiced in California by the way, using and destroying permanently, ground water.)

Some flowback water, notably that produced on the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania, is radioactive, having extracted radium from natural subterranean uranium formations, more radioactive that seawater outside the Fukushima reactors about which our anti-nukes like to complain incessantly while millions of people die every year from air pollution because we don't use nuclear power enough, this without a whimper of concern.

As we are seeing in officially anti-nuke like nations like Germany, where, as of this writing (6:36 AM Berlin Time, 4/26/2022) the carbon intensity of German electricity is 469 g CO2/kwh compared with 88 g CO2/kwh in neighboring nuclear powered France, reliance on so called "renewable energy," largely represented by wind and solar power, is dependent on access to dangerous fossil fuels. (In "percent talk" German electricity is producing 533% more of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide than is France per kwh.)

When the Germans can't get Russian gas, they burn coal. As of this writing, Germany is producing 20.2 GW of power by burning coal and dumping the waste directly into the planetary atmosphere, and is producing 3.92 GW of power from wind. In "percent talk" as of this writing Germany is producing 515% as much energy from coal as it is from wind.

For my entire adult life, I've been listening to claims that a "renewable energy" paradise was inevitable. It didn't come; it isn't here; and in my opinion will never come.

I'm not young.

For my entire life people have also been stating frequently with deep conviction that Jesus would come back soon too.

I'm not sure if either or both faith based claims are subject to the laws concerning religious practice, but it would appear, definitively, that they have nothing to do with the laws of physics, laws that are not subject to repeal by legislatures or courts.

Now people, largely in denial, speak of an "energy transition" being underway, which is nothing more than rebranding an unsustainable status quo. The belief in the existence of an "energy transition" is, in my opinion, nonsense. There is none.

[elleng]

1. Swell

[NeoGreen]

2. To everyone else, be careful to ask the question 'what isn't being said'...

... before you accept a claim.

To that point, if you open the link, and then the link for Reference #2 in the Introduction:



i.e. https://water.usgs.gov/orh/nrwww/Otten.pdf


Specifically, the reference for the claim that the volume of oil/gas wastewater is 70x the volume of all liquid hazardous wastes in the US.

What was not mentioned, intentionally or otherwise, is that the referenced PDF of the 'power-point' presentation also states:
"Presently, 95% of all produced waters are reinjected..." and "...prior to modern environmental regs (1965-70), a high percentage of produced waters were released to the surface."



And, if you dig down into the details of the presentation and what datasets they used to build their model (page 18 of PDF), they boldly state:

"gas wells dropped from consideration"



It would appear that the inference and statement that potable groundwater is being destroyed in vast volumes relative to all US produced wastewater:

And let's be clear, the ground on which that water is dumped is more or less permanently destroyed. (Fracking is practiced in California by the way, using and destroying permanently, ground water.)

Is not supported by the cited reference.

The word 'Hogwash', seems apropos.

And, this isn't the first time unsupported claims have been made:
https://upload.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1228&pid=56052
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127109508

[NNadir]

3. Ah, the pleasure of "percent talk," this in defense of the gas industry. How sweet.

It is, of course, not at all surprising to hear it. The complete and total failure of the "renewables will save us" meme that has circulated among the anti-nuke set must defend the oil, gas (and in the German case) coal industries, because the slightly more than 10 exajoules that trillions of dollars thrown at solar and wind would have failed earlier without oil and gas.

Speaking only for myself, I have never had any intellectual and moral respect for anti-nukes, since they are, to my mind, the precise equivalent of anti-vaxxers in both senses. Nor have I ever assumed that they can read well enough to interpret what is and is not being said in a scientific publication.

And of course, lazy googling, this not even from Google Scholar, is also unimpressive.

So, let's recap the defense above for fracking.

"Presently 95% of produced water is reinjected...

Note that the OP quotes, um, a scientific paper from a reputable journal - a paper which by the way is proposing to improve fracking so that people won't notice that the wind doesn't blow continuously and sunlight disappears for long stretches in every 24 hour period - as follows:

Excessive water production during oil and gas development is a huge source of wastewater around the world (on the order of 10^9 m^3/year). (1) In the U.S. as an example, the produced water was about 70 times the volume of all liquid hazardous wastes. (2) The produced water raises environmental and economic concerns...

It doesn't say that if one injects into the ground again the environmental and economic concerns vanish.

But it's unsurprising that we have anti-nukes who are as indifferent to the quality of groundwater as they are to the roughly 7 million people who die each year from air pollution while they whine about Fukushima.

I'd post a reference to the Lancet paper again but arguing about science with an anti-nuke is, again, very much like arguing with an antivaxxer about vaccines or even the existence of Covid. There's no point. Ignorance takes pride in itself, as weird as that is.

Other people do give a shit about groundwater, and it's interesting, but not really surprising, that people who whine stupidly about used nuclear fuel which hasn't killed anyone in the United States, now think that burying toxic materials is acceptable.

These people are rather like Republicans; no hypocrisy can embarrass them.

Climate change exists.

I could also, again, post reference to the 3.2 trillion dollars squandered on the solar and wind industry in just 15 years of this century with no result, but it's not like "renewables will save us" anti-nukes give a shit about poverty any than they do about climate change.

But maybe, I shouldn't say "no result."

There it a result and here it is:

April 25: 420.79 ppm
April 24: 420.51 ppm
April 23: 419.41 ppm
April 22: 419.13 ppm
April 21: 420.47 ppm
Last Updated: April 26, 2022

Recent Daily Average Mauna Loa CO2 Here we are, seeing concentration readings above 420 ppm of the dangerous and frankly deadly dangerous fossil carbon dioxide less than 10 years after we first saw readings about 400.

We've needed so many times to recall Joseph Welch's remark to McCarthy in a more modern context:

You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

Apparently not, in this context.

There is not a shred of decency left in the anti-nuke rhetoric, and whining stupidly about what the American Chemical Society - the oldest scientific society in the United States and a society of which I am a member - calls endangered elements

It's not like anti-nukes give a rat's ass about future generations, if there is enough indium immediately they're not interested in the future. (For the record, indium can be recovered from used nuclear fuel, but the energy density of uranium which makes it environmentally superior to all other forms of energy means there will never be 10,000 tons of it.)

And of course, the fact that after 50 years of mindless hype, the solar industry, with or without CIGS cells, has never, not once, produced 5 exajoules of energy on a planet consuming close to 600 Exajoules per year has probably helped the demand for Indium low for now.

But why bother discussing vaccines with antivaxxers or clean energy with anti-nukes? To listen to demonstrate the poor quality of their thinking?

Here's what's not being said: Some people will chant to the end of the Earth in spite of all reality.

Here's a partial list of nations that don't give a shit about anti-nuke rhetoric in "Nuclear Free" forums and websites:

Poland

Estonia

China

Slovakia

Canada

Argentina

Oh, and a prominent North American country led by a wonderful President: The United States

...the list is longer...

These countries just don't give a shit about anti-nuke ignorance.

My son just signed on to a nuclear engineering Ph.D. program, and during the introductory meeting with the faculty asked the new graduate students to raise their hands if they were there because of climate change. Three quarters raised their hands.

They are the future, and it doesn't matter how many old farts sit around picking lint out of their navels and whining about the grand "renewable energy" nirvana that didn't come, isn't here, and won't come. They give a shit about the world in which they must live, even if old anti-nuke farts couldn't care less.

Forests all over the planet are burning. Vast stretches of continents are without fresh water. People died from heat stroke in fucking British Columbia, all this while barely literate anti-nukes nitpicked and whined about a few radioactive atoms decaying. About 77 million people died from air pollution since anti-nukes began whining about Fukushima, where 20,000 people died from seawater and very few, if any people, died from radiation.

History will record these luddites, these ethically and intellectually indifferent fools, for what they were, and it will not be forgotten.

There is nothing more simultaneously amusing and depressing than an anti-nuke trying to discuss critical thinking. It's rather like discussing human rights with Vladimir Putin I have not met one here or elsewhere who even remotely knows what critical thinking might be.

Have a nice evening.