Fracking is problematic as you know. The resultant pollution and environmental damage is serious.
In the 60s and 70s our energy planners tried using nuclear bombs to get at the natural gas. They actually did this several times setting off nuclear bombs underground for the purpose of getting at natural gas. It seems unbelievable that these people would pull off such a stunt, but they did.
The article will give you a brief history of this far flung stunt.
One thing that we need to remember, stuff does not go away in America. Somebody out there in a position of charting our energy course, some CEO somewhere or some government authority out there is trying to bring the nuke technique back. It just has to be. You just watch...
Kansas City Star: Detonating nukes in search of natural gas: A curious tale in the 1960s and ’70s
Federal officials once expected to use nukes to blow sandstone and shale to smithereens to provide decades of natural gas to heat homes and run businesses.
One estimate calculated that 10,000 nuclear bombs could blast loose enough natural gas to meet 20 years of U.S. demand for the fuel. In just one gas field in Colorado, 140 bombs were to be set off.
As President Richard Nixon put it in 1971, the time had come for some “nuclear stimulation technology.”
The first nuclear explosion to “stimulate” natural gas was in 1967 in New Mexico, and it won the support of state and local officials. Project Gasbuggy, which used a 29-kiloton bomb about double the size of the one used on Hiroshima, was declared a success because it caused gas to flow from the rock formations and created a cavern to store the fuel.
“I remember having the thought that maybe we shouldn’t be doing this..."
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