"Researchers believe they have found an unlikely way to decrease the radioactivity of some hydraulic fracturing wastewater: Mix it with the hazardous drainage from mining operations.

The discovery by Duke University researchers would allow oil and gas drillers to combine flowback waters from the fracking process with acid drainage from mining, or any other salty water. The solids that form, which include radioactive materials, are removed and dumped at a hazardous waste landfill, and then the now cleaner water is used to drill a new well, said Avner Vengosh, the Duke professor who oversaw the project, which included scientists from Dartmouth College and the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa.

The metals and radium in the drilling wastewater automatically attract to sulfates — or salts, he explained.

"It's a romance. It's inevitable it will combine," said Vengosh, a professor of geochemistry and water quality.

Vengosh's research was published in December in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, but still needs to be field tested, he said."
http://news.yahoo.com/lab-study-cuts-fracking-waste-39-radioactivity-200745430.html