Garfield County officials want to take a closer look at Rulison nuclear blast site

Garfield County officials believe the best way to gauge the Rulison nuclear blast site's potential danger is to get in close and drill, inside the half-mile boundary set by the U.S. Department of Energy as the closest that drilling should be allowed. But the DOE has yet to respond to the idea, which was first suggested to a federal official more than a year ago. The Rulison blast site is where, in 1969, the U.S. Department of Energy detonated a 43-kiloton atomic device at a depth of 8,426 feet in an effort to free up deeply buried fields of natural gas and oil. The blast, which took place about 30 miles west of Glenwood Springs, was hailed as a potential peaceful use for nuclear energy. The blast produced less gas than expected when it fractured the sandstone formations, though, and the gas that was produced was unusable because it was radioactive, and the contamination could not be removed. The Garfield County commissioners, along with several Colorado congressmen, recently asked the DOE to determine how close drillers can come safely to the radioactive cavern created by the blast...PostIndependent