Project Rulison, named after the rural community of Rulison, Colorado, was an underground 40-

kiloton TNT equivalent is a convention for expressing energy, typically used to describe the energy released in an explosion. The is a unit of energy defined by that convention to be , which is the approximate energy released in the detonation of a ...

nuclear test Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine nuclear weapons' effectiveness, Nuclear weapon yield, yield, and explosive capability. Testing nuclear weapons offers practical information about how the weapons function, how detona ...

project in the United States on September 10, 1969, about SE of the town of Grand Valley, Colorado (now named Parachute, Colorado) in Garfield County. The location of "Surface Ground Zero" is . The depth of the test cavity was approximately below the ground surface. It was part of the

Operation Mandrel The United States's Mandrel nuclear test series was a group of 52 nuclear tests conducted in 1969–1970. These tests followed the ''Operation Bowline'' series and preceded the ''Operation Emery'' series. References {{US Nuclear Tests ...

weapons test series under the name Mandrel Rulison, as well as the

Operation Plowshare Project Plowshare was the overall United States program for the development of techniques to use nuclear explosives for peaceful construction purposes. The program was organized in June 1957 as part of the worldwide Atoms for Peace efforts. As ...

project which explored peaceful engineering uses of nuclear explosions. The peaceful aim of Project Rulison was to determine if

natural gas Natural gas (also called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbo ...

could be easily liberated from underground regions. This site remains under active monitoring by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Legacy Management. The test succeeded in liberating large quantities of natural gas; however the resulting radioactivity left the gas contaminated and unsuitable for applications such as cooking and heating homes. Although projected public radiation exposures from commercial use of stimulated gas had been reduced to less than 1% of background, it became clear in the early 1970s that public acceptance within the U.S. of any product containing radioactivity, no matter how minimal, was difficult if not impossible. This was the second of three nuclear demonstration projects for natural-gas-reservoir stimulation as part of the Plowshare program. The other two were

Project Gasbuggy Project Gasbuggy was an underground nuclear detonation carried out by the United States Atomic Energy Commission on December 10, 1967 in rural northern New Mexico. It was part of Operation Plowshare, a program designed to find peaceful uses for ...

in 1967 in northern

New Mexico ) , population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano) , seat = Santa Fe , LargestCity = Albuquerque , LargestMetro = Tiguex , OfficialLang = None , Languages = English, Spanish ( New Mexican), Navajo, Ke ...

and Project Rio Blanco in 1973 in Colorado.

Clean up and later proposals for site

The

Department of Energy A Ministry of Energy or Department of Energy is a government department in some countries that typically oversees the production of fuel and electricity; in the United States, however, it manages nuclear weapons development and conducts energy-re ...

began a cleanup 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 Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. About 30 percent of all readily available freshwater in the world is groundwater. A unit of rock or an unconsolidated ...

, though a later report due in 2007 was expected to more fully explore if there was subsurface contamination and whether or not radioactivity was still spreading outward from the blast site itself. As of June 2005, the Houston, Texas-based company Presco was seeking to drill for natural gas within the buffer zone, 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. A placard, erected in 1976, now marks the site where the blast took place. It is accessible via a gravel road, Garfield County Route 338.https://plus.google.com/102729802421002547137/about?gl=us&hl=en

References

External links

Rulison Site Environmental Management End State Vision
– January 2005 DOE report ( PDF)
Rulison Site, Office of Legacy Management
{{coord, 39, 24, 19, N, 107, 56, 54.7, W, display=title, type:event Explosions in 1969 1969 in Colorado American nuclear weapons testing Peaceful nuclear explosions Explosions in the United States Underground nuclear weapons testing