Oil-and-gas wells produce radioactive waste | Hacker News Reader

Oil-and-gas wells produce radioactive waste

rollingstone.com

311 pointselijahwheelock94 comments

I used to do the soil lab testing for a guy that dealt with this waste in my state. They did permitting and paid farmers to be able to spread it on their fields and tell them it is good for them and will make the soil more fertile. It can be either the salt brine or the more hydrocarbon based stuff that was basically like tar being spread on the farmer’s pasture. He himself wrote the laws that the state government just rubber-stamped. I felt like I was working for evil, polluting my own state, and quit as soon as I could. Some real Grapes of Wrath type stuff. The old farmers don’t have any money, so the money the oil company will pay to spread that garbage on their land seems like a good deal to them and they weren’t informed about the real dangers of what was being spread.

Side note, the owner of that company was a very rich man and also one of the unhappiest people I’ve ever met in my life. It was a good lesson to learn at my young age then.

What did the tests say was in it? What didn't you test for (like radioactivity) that you felt bad about?

> they weren’t informed about the real dangers of what was being spread.

I wonder how many of them would even care. This week the EPA dismantled the Clean Water Rule.

The primary backers for this were farmers and developers.

I guess they would care if their land becomes worthless as a result.

> I wonder how many of them would even care. This week the EPA dismantled the Clean Water Rule.

This week, the EPA rolled back an Obama-era executive order interpreting the Clean Water Act. Hard to see how rescinding a three year old executive order could “dismantle” a 47-year old statute.

The Obama-era interpretation was ridiculous on top of everything else. The Wikipedia article is actually pretty good:

> The Clean Water Act is the primary federal law regulating water pollution in the United States. The language of the Clean Water Act describes itself as pertaining to ‘Waters of the United States’. These the act defines as ‘navigable waterways’, which connects the act to constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce. Two U.S. Supreme Court decisions, in 2001 and 2006, interpreted the law to include waters not presently navigable that were formerly navigable that might be readily dredged to be restored to navigation or be made available for navigation. The scope of these decisions cast into doubt lower court decisions interpreting the act’s authority to extend regulatory authority to streams, wetlands, and small bodies of water not navigable in the sense of the interstate commerce clause.

So the Clean Water Act says the EPA can regulate ”the waters of the United States,” which is defined consistent with “navigable waters,” contemporaneous with Congress’s Commerce Clause authority over navigable waterways. The Obama EO extended it to include even small bodies of waters like ponds, such that farmers would have to get EPA permits to make modifications on their own land that was nowhere near navigable waters.

Maybe we need a law that requires permitting of everything that could affect any body of water no matter how small, because it’s true that pollution can flow from such waters into navigable waters. Maybe there is a way to even make such a law constitutional (e.g. setting up state regulation of water bodies that fall outside the commerce clause). But the Clean Water Act is not that law, and the permitting framework under the CWA is not appropriate for farmers doing work on land far from rivers and lakes.

So just because farmers supported rolling back this rule, why would you assume they’d be okay with radioactive materials polluting their land? Is there any room in our politics to acknowledge that agencies sometimes overreach, and just because you want to push back on that overreach doesn’t mean you want get rid of the agency or long-standing laws entirely?

> So the Clean Water Act says the EPA can regulate ”the waters of the United States,” which is defined consistent with “navigable waters,” contemporaneous with Congress’s Commerce Clause authority over navigable waterways. The Obama EO extended it to include even small bodies of waters like ponds, such that farmers would have to get EPA permits to make modifications on their own land that was nowhere near navigable waters.

That is a rather distorted view of the water. Note that the definition of "navigable waters" is explicitly laid out in the law (33 USC §1362 (7), for exact reference) as:

> The term “navigable waters” means the waters of the United States, including the territorial seas.

This has been generally interpreted to include at least pretty much all non-ephemeral streams in the US, and ephemeral waterways are rather more questionable. See, e.g., Rapanos v US, decided in 2006 (i.e., before Obama took office).

That’s not a correct reading of Rapanos. Rapanos says that “the meaning of ’navigable waters’ in the Act is broader than the traditional understanding of that term, SWANCC, 531 U. S., at 167; Riverside Bayview, 474 U. S., at 133.3 We have also emphasized, however, that the qualifier ’navigable’ is not devoid of significance, SWANCC, supra, at 172.“

Rapanos doesn’t define exactly what navigable waters are, but casts sharp doubt on two types of waters: ephemeral streams, and wetlands without a surface water connection to navigable water.

The key changes to the 2020 rule are to exclude those things: https://www.eenews.net/stories/1062159101

> Specifically, the new rule will erase protections for so-called ephemeral streams, which flow only after rain or during snowmelt.

> The rule also erases protections for wetlands that do not have surface water connections to intermittent or perennial streams, which account for more than 51% of the nation's wetlands.

The media spin of and your account, while different, are both very different from what I hear from my partner the environmental engineer.

The media would lead you to believe farmers have stock piles of 50 gallon chemical drums they're waiting to pour into our lakes and streams.

My partner's take is that a wetland, natural or otherwise is a protected habitat that can't just be destroyed. Farms have such wetlands and land developers are finding they can't just buy up farm land and plop developments on it due to wetlands.

That seems to make the most sense to me being that Trump is a developer.

Just because wetlands should be protected doesn’t mean that they are protected under the Clean Water Act. (Congress doesn’t have the authority to regulate every body of water in the US. It’s limited to regulating the “channels of interstate commerce.”)

States can, and do, regulate intrastate wetlands. And they can do it more efficiently, because they already handle permitting of local construction projects.

It's actually up to the Army Core of Engineers to determine if a wetland is under the CWA. They aren't blanket included or excluded.

The Army Corps of Engineers makes decisions on individual wetlands, but they have to follow the statutory definition in the Clean Water Act. (And the Clean Water Act can only be interpreted in a way consistent with the Constitutional limits on Congress’s power to regulate intra-state activity.)

So what exactly are you arguing? The CWA stipulates what is covered and the Army Core of Engineers is responsible for interpretation.

My point was that the rules rollback wasn't about farmers wanting to pollute or regulation of water ways, but rather about eliminating restrictions and regulations that inhibit land development on wetlands.

Nothing you have said challenges that assertion, you just seem to be hung up on whether or not the Fed has the right to regulate something.

The "farmers" backing the EPA rule change are the industrial CAFO operations that produce open-air manure lagoons (literal lakes of shit) that cause all kinds of environmental hazards. They can afford to care less because they typically don't live on-site like traditional farmers did. Hell when it comes to hogs they might not even be citizens - the largest hog producer, Smithfield, is owned by the Chinese now.

If you can find an actual farmer - an endangered species as the industry consolidates into corporate CAFOs - I can promise you that they have no interest in drinking poison from their wells.

Is seems, this also affects public roads. Here is, for example, methodology of application of these waste products to road surfaces in California:

https://dot.ca.gov/-/media/dot-media/programs/research-innov...

Doesn't seem there is much there on controlling amounts of lead, cadmium and radium in the material. No on the gradual accumulation on the road.

As per the following paper, not much research had been done on the health effects of applying it on the roads and risks of dust particles lifted by vehicles being inhailed. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325460511_Environme...

And from its abstract: "Currently, state-by-state regulations do not require radium analyses prior to treating roads with O&G wastewaters.".

So it looks like there is a loophole that doesn't specifically disallow to accumulate unlimited amounts of radioactive material with 1600 years decay half-life on public roads.

> methodology of application of these waste products

Linked document is interesting, however it is "Brine Application Equipment and Methodology" - methodology of deicing paved roads. Only mention of toxic or waste is an aside of brine use motivation - granular material in California is for some reason regulated as toxic waste.

Mentioned in the document are NaCl, MgCl₂, CaCl₂ brines and beet juice, and in the survey section, some agencies also report use or discontent with proprietary deicing products.

Going by the second document, O&G wastewater use on roads is not permitted in California. In the 13 states that do allow its use, the study mostly mentions use on unpaved roads as a dust suppressant in lieu of salt brine (neither a particularly good idea IMO).

Why now that you don't work for that guy/company you still don't publicly expose them?

i thought nothing would grow on salted earth, so how is it supposed to make the soil more fertile? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salting_the_earth

"Radium, typically the most abundant radionuclide in brine, is often measured in picocuries per liter of substance and is so dangerous it’s subject to tight restrictions even at hazardous-waste sites. The most common isotopes are radium-226 and radium-228, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires industrial discharges to remain below 60 for each. Four of Peter’s samples registered combined radium levels above 3,500, and one was more than 8,500."

I wonder how many of these trucks full of radium have driven beside me on the freeway.

Nice to see some numbers. Lot's of articles leave out numbers, which really matter in thing like radiation where the detectable level is sometimes many orders of magnitude below the hazardous level.

Ra-226 is mostly an alpha emitter and can't reach you through a piece of paper. Don't drink it though. Ra-228 is primarily a beta emitter which can't go through a metal tank. Also don't drink it.

> Ra-226 is mostly an alpha emitter and can't reach you through a piece of paper. Don't drink it though. Ra-228 is primarily a beta emitter which can't go through a metal tank. Also don't drink it.

What about being in constant contact with the skin via let's say you have a bit of it your shoes?

> the rest of the uniform hardly offers protection from brine. “It’s all over your hands, and inside your boots, and on the cuticles of your toes, and any cuts you have — you’re soaked,” he says.

Alpha particles generally cannot penetrate the skin, much less clothing or shoes. Betas can get through skin but probably not shoes. There is some energy dependence. Secondary decays and energy transitions often emit gamma rays as well which can go through everything, but the majority of the energy with these nuclides are alphas and betas.

These are primarily dangerous because they're water soluble and present an ingestion and inhalation hazard. Once a large amount of a strong alpha-emitter is in your intestines it can really cause damage.

> These are primarily dangerous because they're water soluble and present an ingestion and inhalation hazard. Once a large amount of a strong alpha-emitter is in your intestines it can really cause damage.

So since the workers are getting it all over their hands and feet, which probably has sweat on it, would it pose a danger? Also, would getting it on wounds like cuts be dangerous as well?

The article focuses on the fact that the workers aren't given the training or opportunity to decontaminate before eating.

Yes. If you are appropriately protected you can work with it. If you’re paying people $16/hr to haul hazmat (that you are concealing), you’re not providing appropriate protection or procedure.

Don’t listen to the apologists here. If you’ve worked in a place that handles toxic materials, you wouldn’t read about worried truck drivers keeping samples in mayonnaise jars. The driver would contact the industrial hygienist or safety officer at work.

Precautions are appropriate depending on dose rate. If dose rate is high, there is risk. If dose rate is very low, there is less risk. As far as I'm aware, radium does not seep through wounds and sweat but does get into water and dust which can be inhaled or ingested.

Again, if high dose rates get in your body there is risk.

Sounds like these people need some health physicists and probably better PPE and training.

We should avoid blanket statements of danger that do not have dose rate numbers in them.

Uranium precipitates out of igneous hydrothermal waters when it encounters organic carbon. So it is probably concentrated in some oil deposits. Then some radiative isotopes of uranium will decay into radium, alpha particles (ionized helium) and other elements.

Most of the worlds commercial helium is mined from natural gas, which may have fractions as much as 5%. This helium is thought to be from uranium decay emitting alpha particles and not primordial helium.

We're drowning in headlines these days that I feel like this story really fell through the cracks. People who live near fracking really need to know this.

It’s not just those near it - places between the well and the dump site, near the rivers by the dump, near the truck stops, eating the crops the brine has contaminated, using the recycled pipes, washing workers clothes, living in the worker’s houses. If you were designing a dispersal system, you’d be hard placed to make a better one short of perhaps aerial spraying.

It's amazing what that monthly check can make people look over when the wells are placed on private property.

That monthly check might not even be very large. Unfortunately, in many places (like North Dakota), mineral rights are severed from surface rights. So as a surface owner you might get a pittance for allowing a pad on your property, all the royalties are going to someone else who bought up mineral rights decades ago.

I grew up near a location in Texas in the 1970-1980's where oil well companies would truck in mud from wells, and dump it in a field to dry up and the liquid would run off, the water in the ditches had an oily sheen for miles (would ride my bike around town as far as I could go). I just checked and the field is still there and brown/empty but the company got replaced by a church and it's across the street from a junior high school now (and across a different street from the de facto segregated part of town where most of the African American kids got on the bus I rode to school).

It looks like it's not exactly news as such; I found this USGS report about the problem from 1999: https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-0142-99/fs-0142-99.pdf

> There are over 1 million active oil-and-gas wells across 33 states

This is insane. One well per 300 inhabitants of the USA. How is that even economically viable?

Spoiler, it's not. Gas companies have been bleeding money.

I’m guessing here, but I think the number seems high because shale wells have short lifespans. The declines are much higher than conventional wells, and so there are a great many of them to maintain production as the wells decline. There are large a number of DUCs, or drilled but uncompleted wells. They maintain these so that when one well runs dry, another can be brought online to maintain production targets. Also it’s more economic to drill as many wells as you can as quickly as possible even if it exceeds targets because there are economies of scale when it comes to moving and leasing rigs that drill the wells.

The vast majority of wells are old vertical wells, not shale wells. For example, in the Permian basin there are around 18,000 horizontal shale wells but over 300,000 vertical conventional wells.

Does that hold for the Bakken in ND also? See

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2013/01/16/169511949/a...

Great question. For the Williston Basin, the numbers are 31,905 horizontals vs. 28,330 verticals. It definitely speaks to the difference in when these basins were developed.

Have you ever looked at Google maps/Earth of Texas? Zoom out to a couple thousand feet, and look at all of the little white dots across the surface. Each one of those little dots is a fracking well. Seeing it from this view is quite shocking. Look at how close houses/schools/etc are next to these well sites.

Here’s an example of some I found the other day. Each one of those white dots is a well pad where they cleared the land for a drilling rig to work. If you look closely you can see surface pumps on many of them. Some have storage tanks as well. This entire region (the Permian Basin) is pockmarked like this.

(31.6643861, -103.0348924) Dropped pin Near Winkler County, TX https://goo.gl/maps/J2zi8VwD2QjKUpbk8

Whoa. I zoomed out, then double whoa.

holy shit, this is not even the worst spot... this one appears to be more dense: https://goo.gl/maps/9YZrP4of97tDgQmH6 .... I think I found out where they dump all those waste products: https://goo.gl/maps/ZkfDDKM26gfmtQTL6

No way anyone in West Texas would bother driving all the way to Sabine... see this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22149320

More likely here...

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Midland+County,+TX/@32.288...

Interestingly the first thing to stand out in your first link is the Crane branch of the Texas Department of Public Safety.

This is all so...absurd...

(speechless)

> How is that even economically viable?

You bribe politicians into removing regulations to lower the costs

> How is that even economically viable?

Are you kidding? It's like drilling up geysers of money.

The ten most profitable companies in the world are nine oil companies and Apple.

Count the cars and trucks and planes and generators and leaf-blowers and chainsaws and every piece of plastic ever and thousands of chemical byproducts... oil is everywhere.

I was thinking of the overhead of equipment, personnel and so on. Saudi Arabia produces as much oil with 100x less wells. All I can imagine is that US oil is massively subsidized, to the point of market forces or efficiency not mattering at all.

Ah, yeah, I don't know, I'm not that knowledgeable about it. Maybe Texas is less efficient than the Saudis, maybe the tech is older or something, but they're not losing money on those fields.

Oil is black gold.

FWIW, oil is massively subsidized: war isn't cheap, eh?

It reminds me of the Radium Girls.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls

Now measure coal waste.

There's a lot. A lot more than I imagined according to a DOE seminar I sat through.

It's interesting because an incredibly small fraction of coal (coal varies a reasonable amount in composition across geological regions) contains various radioactive isotopes with long high-lifes.

When you burn/combust coal, especially without care and consideration in the process, a lot of these small components are released in the air as particulates.

Now at first thought, it doesn't seem like much (were talking 1ppm/1ppb or less levels in some cases depending on the coal type/geological area), but when you consider the entire volume of coal combusted worldwide, that small fraction turns out to be more radioactive waste than is produced by all controlled nuclear energy in the world at the time (about 8-10 years ago).

I wish I still had the slide set with all the reference material and derivations.

Coal ash is a thorium and uranium concentrate, and as you say the Department of Energy publishes the release statistics. They aren't too difficult to find. Each year in the US, we release more than a thousand tons of thorium and uranium into the environment via coal ash dumping, with limited controls.

There have also been population health studies in communities that live adjacent to where coal ash is dumped in the US. As I recall, it is correlated with a small but detectable (around 1% IIRC) increase in cancer incidence rates relative to local control populations, and largely attributed to the thorium component of the waste.

> Now look elsewhere

Old news...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...

Technically speaking they released concentrated naturally-occurring radioactive materials (NORMs). I only emphasize this because most people don't know how much radioactive stuff is natural.

Doesn't mean it's not a hazard in concentration, of course.

Sounds like you're trying to correct something that is already correct in the article, as soon as in paragraph 4.

> The Earth’s crust is in fact peppered with radioactive elements that concentrate deep underground in oil-and-gas-bearing layers. This radioactivity is often pulled to the surface when oil and gas is extracted — carried largely in the brine.

The article does a good job. I'm referring to the headline. For example, nuclear reactors produce radioactive material by fissioning barely-radioactive uranium into highly-radioactive fission products but take great care to not release it. Fracking releases naturally-occurring radioactive materials.

Also: "is peppered with" does not imply naturally-occurring. Someone biased to think all radiation is man-made could easily assume it's from us dumping waste.

If we're using solutions full of this stuff as deicing brine, that's definitionally dumping waste.

I'm sure your terminology is right in the context of nuclear engineering, but I think the headline is right in terms of how most people will read it: oil wells produce radioactive waste in the same sense as they produce oil

No, the article is misleading. Those radioactive elements aren't just deep underground - they're literally everywhere. The soil is naturally full of them. They've got this damning-sounding quote from an internal report that “almost all materials of interest and use to the petroleum industry contain measurable quantities of radionuclides”, but again, that's true of ordinary soil and all kinds of things. What the oil industry and its regulators mostly seem to worry about is their production processes inadvertently concentrating them in places like pipes.

(Incidentally, rare earth production is particularly nasty because it involves taking feedstock that's already quite high in radium, thorium, etc and intentionally concentrating them.)

> that's true of ordinary soil and all kinds of things.

Sure. If I remember right, someone who lives in Denver gets about double the average radiation dose because a) there are a lot of radionuclides in the Rocky Mountains (relative to other places) and b) Denver's altitude means that more cosmic rays reach ground level because there's less atmosphere to form a shield.

If you told most people that (insert some activity) was going to double their radiation dose, they would freak, yet no one panics over the idea of living in Denver.

We literally mine Uranium. How can people not realize this stuff can be found naturally on Earth?

Or even better, the natural fission reactor found in Gabon. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reac...

I'll raise you the hypothesized (and today largely doubted) terracentric georeactor published in PNAS:

Deep-Earth reactor: Nuclear fission, helium, and the geomagnetic field, https://www.pnas.org/content/98/20/11085

And don't forget the "Moon may have formed in a nuclear explosion" theory (uranium enrichment back then was well above 20%!): https://www.technologyreview.com/s/417259/moon-may-have-form...

>What’s Lurking in Your Countertop?

>But with increasing regularity in recent months, the Environmental Protection Agency has been receiving calls from radon inspectors as well as from concerned homeowners about granite countertops with radiation measurements several times above background levels. “We’ve been hearing from people all over the country concerned about high readings,” said Lou Witt, a program analyst with the agency’s Indoor Environments Division.

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/garden/24granite.html

The article actually picks up on that but the other way around:

"There is a perception that because the radioactivity is naturally occurring it’s less harmful (the industry and regulators almost exclusively call oil-and-gas waste NORM — naturally occurring radioactive material, or TENORM for the “technologically enhanced” concentrations of radioactivity that accumulate in equipment like pipes and trucks)."

In the same way that oil wells don't produce oil.

The headline is fine. Many definitions of "produce" fit what they are doing[1]. For example, "to compose, create, or bring out by intellectual or physical effort" or "to cause to accrue".

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/produce

They do and unfortunately this knowledge has been available for some time.

Here is a simple observation I derived from witnessing much of this over the years. In my experience the bigger your wallet. The more you get away with and the easier it is to change "laws" to further your business interests. I think it is important to understand the lengths people will go to secure a financial interest.

For what it's worth this brine is potentially a monster source of lithium.

How is that relevant to the story about workers being exposed to brine, not being told it's radioactive and everyone is acting casually around waste management around brine?

I found it interesting. Maybe there’s an avenue to better remediation via using the waste as feeder to another chemical process, which ends in more value?

Me too, but it's hardy relevant to the subject of the article, which is about contamination and people being affected by it, and the industry not taking the necessary precautions when dealing with waste.

but it is relevant - if the waste could be made economically viable to process and extract (and as a side effect, the harmful parts removed/utilized), then there would be less pollution and contamination.

With all that lithium, at least the workers won't be depressed about getting irradiated.

Many interesting discussions here touch on tangential subjects. I for one found the information relevant.

"A Balrog awoke in Moria when the Dwarves had mined too deep for Mithril. It drove the Dwarves out of their home and slew King Durin VI, and the Balrog was thereafter called Durin's Bane"

https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Balrogs

That is a novel not an article

I'm glad they wrote about this, but it's certainly not breaking news or anything. Back in 2016, EPA released a report [1] that was years in the making, which covered the history, science, and effects of hydraulic fracturing in the U.S. The executive summary [2] says that produced water can contain "naturally-occurring organic compounds, including benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes (BTEX); and oil and grease; radioactive materials, including radium; and hydraulic fracturing chemicals and their chemical transformation products." It also discusses spills from evaporation ponds (e.g., a 2.9 million gallon spill in North Dakota in 2015 that flowed into Blacktail Creek), as well as exacerbation of local droughts due to groundwater withdrawal for fracking.

Unfortunately, as happens these days, when the draft report was released in 2015, conservative news outlets [3][4][5][6][7] grabbed hold of a single statement in the executive summary reflecting the usual statements of uncertainty in any scientific report, and they used that to imply there was no evidence of any consequences of hydrofracking on the environment or human health. The draft report's statement that they took hold of was: "We did not find evidence that these mechanisms have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States". However, the very next paragraph explains "This finding could reflect a rarity of effects on drinking water resources, but may also be due to other limiting factors. These factors include: insufficient pre- and post-fracturing data on the quality of drinking water resources; the paucity of long-term systematic studies; the presence of other sources of contamination precluding a definitive link between hydraulic fracturing activities and an impact; and the inaccessibility of some information on hydraulic fracturing activities and potential impacts."

Even in 2016, when the final report was released, a WSJ article [8] insisted EPA had "political scientists" who rewrote the report to cast doubt on the safety of hydraulic fracturing. (The rewritten statement was: "However, significant data gaps and uncertainties in the available data prevented us from calculating or estimating the national frequency of impacts on drinking water resources from activities in the hydraulic fracturing water cycle. The data gaps and uncertainties described in this report also precluded a full characterization of the severity of impacts.").

[1] https://cfpub.epa.gov/ncea/hfstudy/recordisplay.cfm?deid=332...

[2] http://ofmpub.epa.gov/eims/eimscomm.getfile?p_download_id=53...

[3] https://www.wsj.com/articles/fracking-has-had-no-widespread-...

[4] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/report-epa-finds-...

[5] https://www.txoga.org/eid-long-awaited-epa-study-finds-frack...

[6] https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/washingtonbureau/201...

[7] https://www.texastribune.org/2015/06/04/epa-fracking-no-wide...

[8] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-epas-science-deniers-148209...

Wait until they hear about neodymium processing for wind turbines.

https://min-eng.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-real-cost-of-using-...

"Neodymium is found most often in monazite and bastnasite. Due to the fact that these minerals also contain lanthanides and other rare earth elements, it is difficult to isolate neodymium. The first isolation process involves extracting the lanthanides and metals out of the ores in their salt form. This step is carried out using sulphuric acid, hydrochloric acid, and sodium hydroxide. To further isolate the neodymium from other lanthanides and metals, procedures such as solvent extraction and ion exchange are used. Once neodymium has been reduced to its fluoride form using these processes, it can be reacted with pure calcium metal in a heated chamber to form pure neodymium and calcium fluoride. Some calcium contaminants remain in the neodymium, and vacuum processes are used to remove any of these contaminants. It is an expensive and potentially environmentally harmful process.

In a recent posting (February 1st), it was noted that China produces over 90% of the world’s rare earths, and that Beijing’s export reductions in recent years have forced high-tech firms to relocate to China. An article in a UK newspaper claims to have uncovered the distinctly dirty truth about the process used to extract neodymium: it has an appalling environmental impact that raises serious questions over the credibility of so-called green technology.

According to the report, hidden out of sight behind smoke-shrouded factory complexes lie vast, hissing cauldrons of chemicals in tailing lakes that are often very poorly constructed and maintained; throughout the extraction process large amounts of highly toxic acids, heavy metals and other chemicals are emitted into the air that people breathe, and leak into surface and ground water.

The report concludes that whenever we purchase products that contain rare earth metals, we are unknowingly taking part in massive environmental degradation and the destruction of communities. It is a real dilemma for environmentalists who want to see the growth of the renewables industry but we should recognise the environmental destruction that is being caused while making these wind turbines."

This blog post relies on the Daily Mail as it's main source. Are there any other articles or sites you can point me too, DM has plenty of links to big oil and regularly prints dubious anti 'green' material. This sounds believable though, so interested to read more.

Regarding the last paragraph:

From that same article:

A direct-drive permanent-magnet generator for a top capacity wind turbine would use around 2 tonnes of neodymium-based permanent magnet material.

https://roskill.com/news/rare-earths-changing-magnet-composi...

The rare earth content in neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) magnets is 29-33% and the main rare earths used are neodymium and praseodymium (NdPr), typically at a ratio of 3:1.

Given this data your typical wind turbine contains ~650kg of rare-earths.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277639048_An_Assess...

We estimate that approximately 0.44 kg of rare earths are used in a typical conventional sedan, with approximately80% of the rare earth content in magnets. As such, neodymium is the most extensively used rare earth, followed by cerium,which is used mainly in catalytic converters. The mass of rare earths in a full hybrid electric vehicle with a nickel metal hydride battery is approximately 4.5 kg. A full hybrid electric vehicle with a lithium-ion battery contains approximately 1kg of rare earth elements.

Basically one turbine is equivalent to ~1500 cars in terms of rare earths, which may seem high, but if you compare the production scale, wind turbines are unlikely to be the main consumers of neodymium, or rare earths in general.

What are you saying? That we can't talk about any environmental issues because we don't list every single environmental issue we're aware of?

I'm sure everyone discussing this article is aware that neodymium processing is very hazardous. But right now we're learning that "simple" oil & gas extraction is also extremely hazardous, that the hazards are completely ignored, that non-employees of the extraction companies are deeply affected by the hazardous waste, that the extraction companies themselves work very hard to make it appear safe when in reality it can make you very sick, and generally that oil & gas extraction companies do not care at all about the treatment of these people on whom they are dumping these chemicals.

But by all means, let's also talk about neodymium production in China to distract ourselves from what's going on in our own back yards.

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