Wild. One of the ideas that came out of Project Plowshare in the 1960s was "nuclear fracking" - setting off a nuclear bomb in a natural gas well to make the rock more permeable and increase the flow of gas
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No, this random book on Energy from 1975
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Here’s a step by step video from Los Alamos on the work, called Project Rulison.
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AFAIK, Soviets actually used several nuclear explosions for such mining.
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Wasn't the residual radiation in the gas high enough to make it unusable when they actually tried this (or calculated to and they gave up?)
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A picture of one of the sites if you’re curious.
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Stood on top of an old nuclear explosion today in the Permian Basin. Have to take some time to see the history of the place if you’re wandering around here.
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Formation turned to glass and nobody wanted to buy radioactive gas! ☢️
Frac the limit. 😬
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The 1st in December 1967 was "Project Gas Buggy" in the New Mexico Carson National Forest. El Paso Natural Gas Company and the DOE tried it in the "Picture Cliff" sandstones. Production testing from 07/1968 to 10/1969 yielded 213 MMCF of natural gas during five tests. P&A'd.
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