Nuclear Fracking: Projects Gasbuggy, Rulison, and Rio Blanco, 1967-1973

• In Event: Energy Frontiers in the Late 20th Century

Abstract

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) conducted a series of tests to release natural gas from shale rock formations. The process was similar to the hydraulic fracturing (fracking) techniques that are now widely used in natural gas production, except that they employed nuclear explosives instead of high-pressure fluids. The experiments, including Gasbuggy (New Mexico, 1967), Rulison (Colorado, 1969), and Rio Blanco (Colorado, 1973), were intended to pave the way for the widespread deployment of nuclear explosives in natural gas production. Those plans never came to fruition because of local opposition and concerns about the financial costs and environmental impact of nuclear gas stimulation. Projects Gasbuggy, Rulison, and Rio Blanco are largely forgotten today. This paper, however, argues that they were nevertheless significant. The tests were brought to a halt in part by environmentalist opposition (even as the demand for new energy supplies became acute during the 1970s oil crisis), demonstrating the rising strength of the environmental movement during that period. Opposition to nuclear gas stimulation was more than simply a sign of environmentalism’s influence; resistance to the projects helped catalyze the growth of the environmental movement in areas near the test sites. In Colorado, concerns were so widespread in the immediate aftermath of Rulison and Rio Blanco that in 1974, restrictions on any further underground nuclear detonations were incorporated into the state constitution (Article XXVI), where they remain today. The history of Gasbuggy, Rulison, and Rio Blanco is also an important prelude to the later development of hydraulic fracturing. The experiments serve as a reminder that scientists, government officials, and corporations were well aware of the large gas deposits in shale formations and hoped to exploit those reserves long before current hydraulic fracturing techniques became widespread.

Author

• Victor McFarland, University of Missouri