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Results expected from Gasbuggy(Editor’s note: The following is reprinted from an Associated Press release by Jake Booher Jr. Mr. Booher has in attendance at the briefing held in Farmington and the site on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week.)Gas Might Contain RadiationNatural gas obtained from the earth through nuclear explosions might contain radiation making it unsuitable for use in the home, a scientist said Tuesday.But Dr. Floyd F. Momyer, Jr., of Lawrence Radiation Laboratory at Livermore, Calif., said that contaminated gas possibly would be of use to industry even if too hazardous for consumption• Sharon and Delores Baltazar are attending school at the Gran-ado Mission school in Arizona.• Tim Paiz, Harrison Elote, and Lindberg Phone were participants in the Cebolla rodeo recently.by the general public. His remarks came at a symposium on Project Gasbuggy, a November 14th underground nuclear explosion in northern New Mexico to help determine if such detonations will free natural gas from hard-to-get-to areas. Scientists have estimated that use of such explosions might double this country’s natural gas reserves.Lawrence Radiation Laboratory is operated for the Atomic Energy Commission. The AEC, El Paso Natural Gas Co. and the U.S. Bureau of Mines are joint sponsors of Gasbuggy, which is planned in a gas-bearing field 55 airmiles east of Farmington.Momyer told the estimated 600 persons in this northwestern New Mexico city for the symposium that the gas which the explosion is expected to free from the underground sandstone will not be suitable for use by the public and that no such use is planned.But he said scientists were encouraged sufficiently by prospects of eventually obtaining usable gas from such a technique that the $4.7 million Gasbuggy was scheduled as the first in a series of experiments. It is the tirst time industry has participated in use of a nuclear explosion.Scientists hope gas obtained through the technique could be used for anything as gas acquired through conventional means might be used, Momyer said. If use of the home proves impossible, industry might be able, through higher acceptable radiation exposure levels, to utilize the gas. He said he’s most concerned about one radioactive property. This is tritium, an isotope of hydrogen. Twelve years after the blast only 50 percent of the tritium would have decayed, he said.“It appears that tritium will present a hazard regardless ot the thermonuclear devise used,” Momyer said.The hazard would be ;n use ot the gas after extraction from the ground. The test site is sealed tightly for the explosion, and an AEC spokesman said no radioac-tivyit is expected to escape irom the ground at that time. Research is continuing in the laboratory, Momyer said, to cope with whatever tritium problem may arise. He said that it may be possible to produce explosions which would result in less tritium but not eliminate it entirely.
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Dulce Jicarilla Chieftain
Dulce, New Mexico, US
Mon, Sep 25, 1967
Page 7
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Emily J.
USA 22 Jan 2024
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Dulce Jicarilla Chieftain
