the Exxon guy on TV said these were "self contained well systems"!

But I guess that's part of Mr. White's beef, which has two main parts. The first is that the 1999 study doesn't reflect actual fracking practices in a way that underestimates the contact between the fracking fluid and underground contaminants. It's not clear whether this would be by something like a factor of two or more like a factor of ten or a hundred.

The second part is a bit muddy. The basic claim is clear enough: the software used to make the estimates ignored certain mechanisms by which contaminants may spread. But I couldn't make out from White's paper exactly which ones those were, or how much effect those should have on the analysis.

The report itself is on the Grassroots Environmental Education web page. It's really a call for a careful analysis rather than a study.

The report White criticizes is available through the New York DEC web site (which includes a link to a .pdf of the full report).

The scope of that study seems to be assessment of risks associated with oil and gas extraction methods that have been used in the past. The software used to estimate impacts is intended for use in environmental cleanup work. But I think the most important question is essentially unanswerable without a lot of research: how much more radium would one expect using fracking than the old methods? It could be a LOT more. I think White is correct that the 1999 study isn't really applicable to the new situation.

At the same time, I wonder whether this is a straw man on some level. Is industry citing the 1999 study to dismiss any concerns about contamination from NORM (naturally-occurring radioactive materials)?

I suspect that this is the least of many excellent reasons to oppose fracking.