There’s an uproar in the Catskills – long the iconic vacation
getaway for Jews from New York City – over plans to do extensive
hydraulic fracturing for gas, a process known as fracking.
Fracking uses massive amounts of water and toxic chemicals to
break apart shale formations deep below the ground and release
the gas within them. This is seen as a contamination threat to
drinking and groundwater. And now an environmental organization
on Long Island, New York has issued a report that finds that
fracking can also bring to the surface large quantities of
radioactive materials if the shale contains them – and the shale
in the Catskills has them in major concentrations. Radioactive
Radium-226, widespread in the Marcellus Shale region in upstate
New York – on which the Catskills sit – has a half-life of 1,600
years. A half-life is how long it takes for a radioactive
substance to lose half its radiation. It is multiplied by
between 10 and 20 to determine the “hazardous lifetime” of a
radioactive material, how long i