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Science

Bacteria Live Happily in Nuclear Waste 75

Posted by michael from the self-boiling dept.
unassimilatible writes "Scientists studying the soil beneath a leaking Hanford nuclear waste storage tank have discovered more than 100 species of bacteria living in a toxic, radioactive environment that most would have thought inhospitable to all forms of life, reports the Seattle PI. For most living creatures, the nuclear and chemical waste in the underground storage tanks on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation is the deadliest mixture of toxins and radioactive muck on the planet. For certain bacteria, however, this toxic goop left over from decades of nuclear weapons production appears to be just a second home. 'Scientifically, it's pretty interesting stuff,' said a microbiologist at the lab. 'The material in the tank is self-boiling and quite hot, so it's not just radioactive and harsh chemicals but also in extreme heat.' The discovery eventually could help researchers better understand how microorganisms can survive severe contaminants -- and how to use the bacteria to help clean up toxic environments. Hanford was an important site for the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb during World War II. For 40 years, it processed plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal. Today, work there centers on a $50 billion to $60 billion cleanup, to be finished by 2035. See also, the related AP story."
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Bacteria Live Happily in Nuclear Waste More

Bacteria Live Happily in Nuclear Waste

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  • Update: Sorry (Score:5, Funny)

    by mcgroarty ( 633843 ) <brian@mcgroarty.gmail@com> on Thursday May 27, 2004 @04:48PM (#9271322) Homepage
    It seems that Jones just had *really* dirty hands when preparing the microscope slides.

    We're terribly sorry about all this.

    -- The Scientists

  • I for one (Score:3, Funny)

    by Gojira Shipi-Taro ( 465802 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @04:49PM (#9271338) Homepage
    ...welcome our new radioactive bacteria overlords!

  • Why is anyone surprised? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Inominate ( 412637 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @04:53PM (#9271391)
    Everytime we look closely at an environment suspected to be unable to support life, we invariably find it.

    • The rule these days seems to be "if there's liquid water and an energy source, there's life".

      • Re:Why is anyone surprised? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Daniel Dvorkin ( 106857 ) * on Thursday May 27, 2004 @05:00PM (#9271451) Homepage Journal
        And of course here there's a great energy source: the radioactive sludge the bacteria are living in. I'm not suggesting that they actually use the radioactivity directly (I don't think we've ever found a critter that can do that) but there must be lots of interesting chemistry going on in those tanks, creating all kinds of high-energy compunds the bacteria can digest.
        • Plants?






          Sort of anyway...

        • I would be surprised (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Spamalamadingdong ( 323207 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @05:40PM (#9271797) Homepage Journal
          I don't see how bacteria could survive and grow on energy from radiolysis while their own cytoplasm is being damaged by that same radiolysis.

          It is far easier to believe that the bacteria are consuming the organic materials in the radioactive sludge. The Hanford wastes are from the Solvex and Purex processes, which (if I understand correctly) used the different affinities of various ions for organic vs. aqueous solvents to separate uranium and plutonium from fission products. The spent, contaminated solvents wound up in the now-problematic tanks and their continued chemical breakdown under the radiolytic assault is one of the reasons they are so hard to handle.

          It does make one wonder: could these bacteria be used to consume the organic matter in the tanks and reduce them to solutions in water? You would have to dilute the waste for the bacteria and re-concentrate the products (say, by evaporation) but getting rid of the organic solvents would be a big plus.

          • I don't see how bacteria could survive and grow on energy from radiolysis while their own cytoplasm is being damaged by that same radiolysis.

            It is far easier to believe that the bacteria are consuming the organic materials in the radioactive sludge.

            Well, yeah, that's what I was getting at -- I wasn't suggesting that they were using the radioactivity directly, but rather, that the high levels of radioactivity might contribute to the formation of some unusual high-energy organics, of which the bacteria cou

            • the high levels of radioactivity might contribute to the formation of some unusual high-energy organics, of which the bacteria could then make use.

              Which would be silly for an organism to depend on, because the fraction of the potential food which is converted to these unusual compounds is such a small part of the total. D. Radiourans was discovered happily chewing on irradiated food in sealed packages (which was completely edible to humans before the bacteria got to it), and it would be more successful e

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion
            • That would be easier to take seriously if there were an existing synthetic pathway which could use such energy, but I believe that the radiation-resistant bugs like Dienococcus Radiourans are not even photosynthetic. The amount of energy recoverable from the radiation is small compared to the chemical energy of the organic solvents, so any bug trying to "eat" the radiation would be seriously out-competed by the bugs chewing on the chemicals.

    • Life finds a way (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Pi_0's don't shower ( 741216 ) <ethan&isp,northwestern,edu> on Thursday May 27, 2004 @04:59PM (#9271441) Homepage Journal
      I completely agree. Just because we are such fragile creatures, we often (so erroneously) assume that all other creatures are fragile, too.

      Single-celled organisms, especially, can survive in ridiculous environments. A virus can be frozen and thawed years later with no ill effects. It's not that life is easy to just "create" out of nothing (oogenesis, and it's hard), but life is very hard to eradicate.

      Cockroaches, for one, can survive over 100x the radiation levels that would be lethal to humans.

      It's good that science is confirming what we all should have expected, I agree with the parent, and don't understand why anyone would have expected otherwise. Can anyone respond to this? (IANAB)

      • Re:Life finds a way (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Boglin ( 517490 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @05:43PM (#9271823) Journal
        IANAB either, but I am an amateur physicist. The difference between this and that standard scenario is that, instead of finding life where it should be missing the things it needs, we found it where there are things that should kill it. When we find life in pitch black portions of the ocean, we're surprised because life normally needs the sun to live, but here they have found a different energy source. The radioactive waste is different, however. We're not saying that life shouldn't live here because it's missing some crucial componenent, but because the radiation should destroy it. To put it differently, the ocean depths would kill most life forms, but we aren't surprised when a submarine makes it down there. With the nuclear waste, we're amazed every time it doesn't destroy things that aren't even alive. So to see things living where the inanimate die is quite remarkable.

        To put it differently, finding life in a closed ice source in the arctic is like finding an astronaut in a space suit on the moon. Finding life in nuclear waste is like finding an astronaut in bermuda shorts on the moon.

      • Why do you think humans are weak? I mean they live in more different environments then most other mammals. And they (humans) are thriving in them. Except maybe for domesticated animals.

      • Re:Life finds a way (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Just because we are such fragile creatures, we often (so erroneously) assume that all other creatures are fragile, too.

        Right conclusion, wrong reasoning. We aren't fragile at all. All sorts of bad shit can happen to us and we keep on living.

        The erroneous assumptions people make about "things can't live there" environments are because they are alien to us. Extreme temperatures for us are normal for other forms of life. It doesn't mean that we are fragile, it means that we are suited for one type o

      • cockroaches find their way in a microwave (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I have seen live roaches running around in a microwave oven while it was on. Apparently the coverage is pretty spotty.

        This couple had cockroaches living in their microwave. Perhaps this isn't so impressive, since the roaches mostly stayed out of the cooking compartment while the microwave was on. The rest of the house had only the very occasional roach (I can verify this) but the microwave was infested. Very odd.

        Apparently the roaches liked it there, and various cleaning supplies bothered them not at all.
      • It reminds me of the time I visited a nuclear research facility in the UK, which had some smallish reactors on site. I saw several mutant insects, including a very large bee (fortunately non-aggressive!), and some enormous spiders. People who had worked there previously told ne that this was not unusual, the spiders in particular were thought to live under one of the reactors.

        BTW the site was not one particularly noted for accidental releases of radiation, quite the opposite in fact, it had, and AFAIK still

    • Re:Why is anyone surprised? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by CheshireCatCO ( 185193 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @07:28PM (#9272677) Homepage
      I'm especially not surprised, since I've read reports of bacteria that have been found in the cooling pools for the spent nuclear fuel rods at reactor sites. Apparently, the little buggers are related to the guys that live in the hypersaline environments. The same celluar repair machinery works for both the saline damage and the radiation damage.
    • Just look at most frat houses around the US and you will find life that shouldn't exist...
    • Yet there are tonnes of people that insist that life is only on our planet...
  • You will find that they did not find any in the tanks just in the soil and the outside of the tanks. Still interesting. Looks like life is a hard thing to stop.

    • Re:If you read the artical (Score:4, Informative)

      by droid_rage ( 535157 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @05:17PM (#9271612) Journal
      The article doesn't say that they actually looked inside the tanks. They tested ground samples from boreholes taken in areas contaminated from leakages. Those tanks are sealed and buried, so I doubt if they are even able to open them up to see if any bacteria is currently living inside.
      However, with the vitrification plant being finished in a few years, some of those tanks will be getting dug up soon, and it will be interesting to see what they find when that happens.

      • The tanks cannot be sealed (Score:4, Informative)

        by Spamalamadingdong ( 323207 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @05:45PM (#9271843) Homepage Journal
        Those tanks are sealed and buried, so I doubt if they are even able to open them up to see if any bacteria is currently living inside.
        The tanks cannot be sealed, as many of them are producing gases as radiation breaks down the solvents into free radicals and other molecules. As you recombine CH3- with H+ you get methane, recombine two hydrogen atoms and you get molecular hydrogen, etc. These compounds don't remain in solution and have to be vented off so the tank doesn't explode.

        Researchers have to monitor the tanks to make sure that they remain relatively safe. It wouldn't do to have one blow its contents all over the place while we're still gearing up to glassify the stuff, and any plan to process the waste for permanent disposal depends on a detailed knowledge of what's inside.

        • Re:The tanks cannot be sealed (Score:3, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Actually one of the tanks did blow up a few years ago. It was a "chemical" explosion that released a large yellow cloud.

          What is interesting is the tanks are also capable of a "nuclear" explosion from the radioactive isotopes present reaching criticality.

          So they have to occasionally "stir" the tanks to prevent this.

          The "self-boiling" feature of the tanks is due to the radioactive decay, that heats up the chemical soup.

          The tanks were installed in the 50's with an expected lifetime of twenty two years. But
        • That's fascinating. I take it you work in the tank farms, or for BNI? What about all the stuff that's in the Burial Grounds with the submarine reactors? I was always told there were a bunch of sealed tanks out there. Is that only for solid/semi-solid wastes?
          • I don't work there, I just read some of the popular accounts. I normally take them with a grain of salt, but when they come with pictures of a crew taking a sample of the contents of one of those "sealed" tanks, it's pretty conclusive.

  • Most? Who's most? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) ( 613870 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @05:36PM (#9271763) Journal
    most would have thought inhospitable to all forms of life
    What is it with these statements about where we would think life can live? We've had so many stories about extremophiles over the last few years that I wouldn't be surprised to hear that life can live in hard vacuum, at temperatures over 200C or in even my shoes. By all means, keep telling us about cool new extremophiles, but please stop telling me I wouldn't have thought it possible. My imagination doesn't stop at this week's latest discovery.

    This isn't just a facetious point - it can damage the credibility of scientists to keep feigning surprise at things that really aren't that surprising any more.

    • It is surprising that gamma radiation that should be mutating or just plain ionizing these bacteria, isn't.
      • Cells do have some pretty amazing self-repair mechanisms. Bacteria reproduce pretty fast too. One way to deal with degradation of your data is to make as many copies of it as you can. I'm sure the details of how these bacteria are surviving will be wonderful and interesting. But I've stopped having prejudices about where life can survive!
      • well, I'm not a biologist or anything, but it sounds like a chemical waste dump would have high concentrations of things that can be used for food, and probably fairly high energy food too. That would mean that an organism using them could afford to spend quite a bit of energy on repair and DNA error correction, plus, a colony of them would be performing a relatively high-speed genetic search for parameters that work in that environment.

        It really doesn't seem that surprising to me.

        What is surprising is t

  • Further Proof (Score:3, Insightful)

    by turgid ( 580780 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @05:48PM (#9271877) Journal
    I say, this is just further proof of what we've been saying all along: irradiated food isn't safe to eat.

    /me ducks

    I think it's all this beer they make me drink.

    • No. It is a common misconception that irradiated food becomes radioactive. This is simply not true.

      For one thing, beta and gamma rays are not causing nuclear reactions. Food is being usually irradiated with gamma rays from Cobalt-60 sources. This kills most living organisms (microbes etc) but the fod itself does not become radioactive.

      In contrast, alpha rays (which consist in high-speed helium nucleus) are known to cause further nuclear reactions in some atoms (for example berillium irradiated with alpha

    • Re:Further Proof (Score:3, Informative)

      by Idarubicin ( 579475 )
      I say, this is just further proof of what we've been saying all along: irradiated food isn't safe to eat.

      It's interesting, actually. The best-known radiotolerant bacterium, Deinococcus radiodurans, was actually discovered in radiation-sterilized meat [umr.edu]. The entire Deinococcus genus (eight known species) consists of extremophiles; they share some very robust DNA repair processes.

      On the other hand, they're quite safe to eat. Although they can cope with very high doses of radiation, like most extremophile

  • worms (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Worms live in peoples asses, what makes people think things cant survive in radioactive dirt?

  • Self-boiling? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by luigi6699 ( 695295 )
    Um... "self-boiling?" Does that mean that it will boil of it's own accord? If that's the case, why aren't we using this stuff to power generators? (boiling sludge -> water -> vapor -> drives a turbine...)

    • Re:Self-boiling? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Carnildo ( 712617 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @07:32PM (#9272717) Homepage Journal
      Um... "self-boiling?" Does that mean that it will boil of it's own accord? If that's the case, why aren't we using this stuff to power generators? (boiling sludge -> water -> vapor -> drives a turbine...)

      "Self-boiling" means the radioactive waste generates so much heat as a result of decay that the solvents it's in are boiling. You wouldn't want to use this to power a turbine: it's neither hot enough nor reliable enough to efficiently boil water through a heat exchanger. Using it directly would be even worse: any leaks in the steam piping means radioactive waste spewing all over.

    • Re:Self-boiling? (Score:2, Troll)

      by FFFish ( 7567 )
      That's brilliant! We could use plutonium rods to boil water, and the steam would drive turbines, which would provide power!

      Wait, wait. There's a problem: out of control reaction.

      But, hey, we could put, like, graphite rods in there to help keep it all in control! Self-boiling water, but held in check by the rods, yah, that's the ticket!

      Luigi, you're brilliant! You've just solved all the world's energy problems! Just wait until we can make your idea fit on the back of a deLorean!

      Kudos to you. I'm se
  • ...are freaked out about nuclear waste.

    They'd better realize that by not burying radioactive waste they are endangering an ecosystem. It would be an affront to nature and biodiversity to stop using nuclear power. James Lovelock sez so.

  • happy bacteria? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pedantic bore ( 740196 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @09:21PM (#9273486)
    Bacteria live in all sorts of odd environments that would kill people. Not all organisms have the same weaknesses; many examples spring to mind. Sheep love eating poison ivy, which would make many people ill. People love eating chocolate, which is poison to dogs. I've heard that there are even people who can watch movies starring Madonna with no ill effects.

    • you insensative clod!
    • I'm not sure if chocolate is actually "poisonous" to dogs, but caffeine is said to have a greater effect on dogs. My uncle's dog pulled a bag of Hershey's kisses off of a counter and ate them, wrappers and all. Later there were little bits of foil all over the yard. The dog did not seem to be harmed by this.
  • What if...we found bacteria that would "eat" nuclear waste, and poop out a less harmful substance.
    We could use them to clean our mess up, AND build _more_ nuclear reactors (until fusion is making an entrance).
    • You mean Bioremediation? There's already gobs of research being done in this area. :)

      The geobacter project [geobacter.org] does exactly that for Uranium waste. This was also mentioned back in October:

      http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10 /1 2/2057227&mode=thread&tid=134&tid=191

      Other links about bioremediation:
      Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory [lbl.gov]
      USGS's site on bioremediation [usgs.gov]
    • The problem with nuclear waste is that it's not chemically processable. And all bacteria, or life, can do is process chemically. For atomic, nuclear degradation you simply have to wait it all out to decay on its own. So bacteria cannot eradicate the problem, however they could be efficient separators of nuclear waste, as follows. Problem with nuclear waste is that you get a zoo of atoms, some of which are highly radiating with a short half life, say 2 years, but they run out of juice in say 10 years, so aft
      • One more note: there is some life living on energy sources not ultimately derivable from fusion in the Sun, just as these bacteria show, or some bacteria and life living near the underwater vulcanic eruptions, at the bottom of the ocean. Those bacteria and the animals that feed on them derive their energy ultimately from fission, which is what heats the insides of this plante (Potassium 40.) There are some sulfur compounds there that go through a cycle of picking up and storing energy near the hot vulcanic
      • First: fusion plants don't blow up. Well, the boiler might...but the reactor won't, and practically any other kind of large power plant uses boilers. If containment fails in an electromagnetically confined plasma reactor like the tokamak...nothing happens. The reaction catastrophically loses heat through the reactor walls, and stops. You might have to do some repairs on the interior, but that's all. No big mushroom cloud, just a cooling reactor. The reason that we don't have fusion power yet is that it is h
  • Well, I am suprised because I thought that radiation damages all DNA no matter what cell it's in.

    I can understand that the effects [whittier.edu]

    on humans, but still suprised that bacteria can handle this. It turns out that the DNA in the bacteria IS damaged, but it is able to repair at a fast enough rate and accurately too:

    "Others, such as the radioactivity-resistant Deinococcus radiodurans, can withstand serious damage by repairing their own DNA."

    source [crystalinks.com]

    So there's only so much the bacteria can handle.

    • Re:They are damaged, but (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mikael ( 484 )
      Well, I am suprised because I thought that radiation damages all DNA no matter what cell it's in. I can understand that the effects on humans, but still suprised that bacteria can handle this. It turns out that the DNA in the bacteria IS damaged, but it is able to repair at a fast enough rate and accurately too:

      There was an article on the analysis of the effects of Chernobyl. Apparently one side effect of the radiation was that plants and other organisms had tripled the number of copies of various gen
    • Perhaps these bacteria have evolved to simply reproduce at a higher rate, thus making death by radiation less relevant. Kind of like a brute force approach to survival I guess.

  • happiness (Score:4, Funny)

    by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @11:09AM (#9277341)
    how do you know those bacteria are happy?

    maybe they're really depressed to have to live there, but can't afford to move someplace else?

    next time I spot a news item about bacteria living in an odd environment, I'll submit it to slashdot, "Bacteria struggling to make ends meet in [weird environment], suffer from overpopulation; Joe Bacterium comments: "What can you do, it's part of our culture."

  • Domain Archaea is one-celled, but is vastly different from Kingdom Monera (or bacteria). They have different membrane lipids, don't have peptogylcon in the cell wall, and phyla of Archaea can live in the strangest places, such as hot smokers, extremely salt seas, weird chemical environments, and other things that would kill bacteria.
  • "Kicking the Sacred Cow" by James P. Hogan has this article and many others.
    "Vitamin R" is also online here:
    http://www.jamesphogan.com/bb/content/112297.shtm l [jamesphogan.com]

    A followup is here:
    http://www.jamesphogan.com/bb/content/030498.shtml [jamesphogan.com]

    This states that some radiation is desirable.

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