Project Rulison
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| Project Rulison | |
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 View of Rulison Site. |
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| Information | |
| Country |  United States |
| Test series | Operation Mandrel Operation Plowshare |
| Test site | near Parachute, Colorado |
| Date | September 10, 1969 |
| Test type | Underground |
| Yield | 40 kt |
Project Rulison, named after the rural community of Rulison, Colorado, was a 40-kiloton nuclear test project in the United States on September 10, 1969, about 8 miles SE of the town of Grand Valley, Colorado (now named Parachute, Colorado) near western Colorado's Grand Valley in Garfield County. The location of "Surface Ground Zero" is 39°24′19.0″N 107°56′54.7″W / 39.40528°N 107.948528°W. It was part of the Operation Mandrel weapons test series under the name Mandrel Rulison, as well as the Operation Plowshare project which explored peaceful engineering uses of nuclear explosions. The peaceful aim of Project Rulison was to determine if natural gas could be easily liberated from underground regions.
After the successful test in which approximately 10 times the amount of natural gas was liberated as compared to traditional methods, fear of radiation made the natural gas, which contained a small and continually decreasing percentage of radionuclides, unmarketable.[1] The Department of Energy began a clean up of the site in the 1970s which was completed in 1998. A buffer zone put in place by the state of Colorado still exists around the site. A January 2005 report by the DOE stated that radioactivity levels were normal at the surface and in groundwater, though a later report due in 2007 is expected to more fully explore if there is subsurface contamination and whether or not radioactivity is still spreading outward from the blast site itself.
The Houston, Texas-based company Presco is seeking to drill for natural gas within the buffer zone as of June 2005, putting in as many as four wells. The company had initially received approval to drill one well, but the county dropped its support when more extensive plans were revealed.
The only other nuclear test to take place in Colorado, 1973's Project Rio Blanco, also had similar aims.
[edit] External links
- Rulison Site Environmental Management End State Vision – January 2005 DOE report (PDF)(Dead Link)
- Rulison Site, Office of Legacy Management
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