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Science

Cleaning Up In High Level Radiation with Microbes 66

Posted by Hemos from the excellent-approach-to-things dept.
geomon writes "Research conducted by the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is featured on the DOE's Office of Science web site. PNNL's work with the Deinococcus radiodurans microbe is featured on the Office of Scienceweb site in the article Radiation Resistant 'Superbug' May Be Used in Cleanup of Radioactive Contaminants." I've read about this before - this article does a good job of bringing the latest advances together.
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Cleaning Up High Level Radiation with Microbes More

Cleaning Up High Level Radiation with Microbes

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  • Re:The Food Chain (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Damn smartass moderators.
  • To have Spiderman as superhero, uncle Ben has to be killed by a burglar that Parker left to the police.

    Otherwise you have yet another TV attraction.
    __
  • unless those microbes have cold fusion as part of their metabolism,

    Interesting thought. Biological reactors as nuclear reactors. Has this ever been explored in SF?
    __
  • Hemos probably "read about this before" here [slashdot.org].

    Bravery, Kindness, Clarity, Honesty, Compassion, Generosity

  • You know what's going to happen, don't you? Have you seen Jurassic Park?

    We'll unleash these microbes on irradiate sites, and evolutionary action will occur. Not only will they process the radioactive elements into a stable reduced form, the ones that actually manage to figure out how to tap the radiation as an energy source will get reproductive advantages!

    So within a few million cycles we'll get bacteria that *thrive* on radioactivity. If that happens, and they manage to contaminate radioactive power plants, who knows what happens?

    Anyway, these radiaoctive materials are stored away from oxygen at least, as the article was talking about the anaerobic action of the bacteria.

    -AS
  • Ah, well, you can think of them as organic nanotechnology, can't you?

    The more dangerous problem is... what's to stop them from eating non-trash? Living in your gas tank? Sitting on your car? Eating through the plastic shell of your iMac? Growing in your tailpipe?

    Then they become a nuisance!

    -AS
  • And then we bring in nukes to get rid of the unwanted microbes.

    --
  • Actually, mutations are extremely common. Mutations that make a significant difference are more rare.
  • That seems extremely unlikely. Bascially all bacteria do is reproduce. If you take that away, they won't really have any need to consume anything, which kind of defeats the whole idea.
  • It seems this would just transform highly dangerous radioactive waste into highly dangerous radioactive bacteria. Unless of course they've developed a way to train the bacteria to carry the stuff away to a dump site.

    ^. .^
    ( @ )

    Soylent Foods, Inc.
  • Ahem... inert RADIOACTIVE microbe crap.

    Unfortunately, you can't simply "digest" radioactivity.
    --

  • If Deinos couls live in your gas tank, then so could the rest of the bacteria... If you happen to get a nasty deino problem in your gas tank, or anywhere else for that matter, use clorox, freeze them, or heat them past about 70 degrees C. They're interesting because they don't mutate, for this reason they're safer to use as genetically engineered organisms. However, they are not at all unkillable. They just don't die or mutate because of high doses of radiation or because of dessication.
  • "possibility of microorganisms that could aid in the breakdown of waste quicker"

    The deinos don't help to degrade radioactive waste faster, they only help immobilize it somewhat or potentially concentrate it. This is only useful in the case of environmental spills and dilute radioactive solutions that need to be concentrated. The thing is, spills that need to be sequestered and large volumes of dilute radioactive solutions should not be a normal part of the operation of a nuclear power plant.

    Avoiding spills and leaking tanks that need to be cleaned out (=dilute radioactive solutions)will go a lot further towards making nuclear waste a viable option than even the most wonderful of superbugs.
  • Its just like most animals are good at storing PCBs in fatty tissues. Here's what you'd do with these beasties:

    1. Hanford has a spill. (At the Hanford Bar & Grill, with Radioactive Leaks, and Nuclear Spills! (sung to a cheesy diner tune)) (Dig through the 'Almost Live' old episodes - its hilarious!)

    2. Seed the ground near the site with these beasties so that the spill doesn't make it into, say, the Columbia river.

    3. After the bugs have solidified / precipitated out all the U / Pu / Th / Etc (that must be element 115!) you collect all the soil, extract the radioactive substances (if you can) and bury them in a deep dark unused coal mine where they won't escape until they are no longer radioactive.

    Cyano
  • I guess it shouldn't surprise me that some people would miss the point of this research. The issue is ideed cleaning up radiation, but the focus for researchers has been cleaning existing radioactive contamination.

    The Hanford Site hosts 177 underground high-level radioactive storage tanks with approximately 53 million gallons of radioactive waste containing 190 million curies of radioactivity [hanford.gov].

    I guess it is easy to be glib when you are unaffected by this level of contamination. Unlike yourself, however, I live 23 km from these high-level tank farms.

  • So now America won't have an ethical dillemma when nuking a city - generations to come won't have to suffer from horrible disease and mutations. And what's more, America can SELL the microbe to their victims and make a few more bucks on top their sales figures for planes, tanks, missiles, battleships, guns, submarines.......

    Yet another example of solving the effects of a problem, not the problem itself.
  • This could certainly help in muting many of the critics of Nuclear Power if these bugs are able to aide in the cleanup effort.

    One of the main issues has always been the waste and treatment of that waste that the nuclear power generators create. With widespread vitrification for "safe" long term storage on the horizon and the possibility of microorganisms that can aid in the breakdown of waste quicker, what's stoping us? Firing up a half dozen Fission reactors around the West could certainly quelch the energy problems California and Washington are facing right now.

    Of course, these bugs need to beef up a bit, first.
    --Also PNNL is just across the street, so it's kinda rooting for the local guys.

  • Ok, so it's the most resistant life form in the known universe to radiation. That's nice, and I don't mean to sound too alarmist, but what happens when you unleash 5 billion of these things on a highly radioactive site? At least a few hundred mutations are going to occur, what then?
  • Most likely they would just remove the reproductive gene altogether. As for how would they get more, they would probably make two kinds of "Supergerm". Think Mules, which are Donkey+Horse and cannot reproduce.

    -------
  • woohoo! After years of lurking, I get a +1 bonus! I'm finally among the slashdot 31337!

    Does this mean I can post stories?




    TWAJS

    -------

  • Sure you can destroy and create elements, shoot a couple of neutrons into uranium and eventually it will split into two lighter ones. Also, uranium and other yummy stuff is made all the time in stars.

    I guess is that you're thinking about energy which really cant be created or destroyed, but that is another story completely.

  • D. radiodurans may be effective at reducing contaminants such as chromium and uranium in place, thus preventing their migration through soils and into ground water.

    So the idea is to immobilize the contaminants? I'm guessing 'reduce' doesn't mean what I would normally expect in this context. These bugs aren't going to metabolize the radioactive waste and make it dissapear or render it inert. There must be some benefit in having them 'eat' the stuff though. So when they excrete their waste, it isn't going to continue to spread into groundwater, or something. You still have to clean it up eventually, this just keeps it from getting away?

    ---

  • Work has also been done using microbes regularly present in organic matter decay: they use methane as part of their metabolic process. Noting thing, an environmental biologist figured out that by super saturating the intended environment with methane (piping it into the ground) spills of toxic and even radioactive waste could be naturally broken down to become innert microbe crap.
  • Depleted uranium is far more dangerous as a chemical contaminant than for it's radioactivity. Thus, they could use these bugs (or a genetically modified variant) just to convert the DU rounds we dropped all over the balkans into a harmless salt. Also, chemical reactivity is what makes storage of nuclear waste dangerous - it leaks out of / dissolves barrels, catches fire, and so forth, not because of the rads it puts off, but because it's chemically nasty.

  • The simple solution would be to stop the superbug from reproducing / splitting / whatever. IANA biologist, so I don't know if this is possible, but it would probably be a solution to your question...

  • The nice thing is they won't melt into the soil as easily as their unoxidated equivalent, but all radiation is still there.

    Well, that's the point. No one is saying this makes the radioactivity disappears - it concentrates it in relatively fixed cells so you don't have plumes of plutonium spreading through the soil into groundwater.

    The radioactive metals have to be physically taken away from the place at some point. How?

    I've heard secondhand accounts of some lab that's trying to breed cleanup microbes that can migrate back to the surface. More realistically, I would guess that the soil has to be dug out.

  • This bacterium is going to mutate at an extraordinary rate if we encourage it to eat radioactive material.

    *sigh* Another person who didn't read the article.

    The microbe is extremely resistant to radiation. It says so in the article, right under the What Makes "Superbug" so Tough? heading.
  • I did not read the article for I am too frightened of what it may say! Science today is scary! They should not engineer bacteria like this for they may kill us all - many diseases are caused by bacteria just like these and if it gets out of hand! Also when the bacteria run out of food do they die or go find new food - watches or cyclotrons or oil? Maybe they do not reproduce? But with all the radioactive they are eating why after one or two generations would they not mutate back? And would we be able to stop them when they have been engineered to be invincible!

    Also I am wondering what they will do with the bacterial waste! If I ate glowing radioactive, I would be too and we would be no better off than if I did not eat it! Maybe the bacteria are smart enough to put it in a box? But I do not think we should make smart bacteria because like the proverbial Frankenstein they could turn on us!

  • I'm confused. I mean, I understand that the bug is radiation-resistant. That's very cool. But, how does it 'reduce' the amount of radioactive Uranium, exactly? Uranium is an element, so I thought that it could neither be created nor destroyed? Even if the bug eats it, won't it still be present in the bug, or won't the bug just pass it on through?

  • Use of Depleted Uranium counterweights

    DC-10 (McDonnell-Douglas) : 1000 kg
    L-1011 (Lockheed) : 680 kg
    B-747 (Boeing) : 850 kg

    Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) reported 430 aircrafts overloaded with DU in December 1999. Overall, there are 380 tons of DU flying every day over our heads. As a comparison, 320 tons of DU were scattered in Irak in 1991 by Warthog planes to destroy tanks, DU which is highly suspected of being the origin of the Gulf war and Balkans syndroms. And that's only within 10 years time! Therefore it is very nice if some scientists have found that the Deinococcus radiodurans can tame nuclear waste in some way but since radioactivity will not be removed using these bacterias, the problem is not solved at all! How do scientists plan to use them at a wider scale anyway ? How could they treat radioactive smoke or dust which is worse for the human being because it can be inhaled ?

    When such a plane crashes and the fuel burns, temperature reaches more than 1000 Celsius which is far enough to oxydate DU to microparticles of UO2 or UO3, which can be widespread by the wind and are breathable. Knowing that DU half life is 4.5 billions years, it may be useful to know better how to use bacterias to solve this problem. But I believe we are still a long way far from a practical solution to the radioactive waste treatment. So until then, prevention is better than repression.

  • I think you answered your own question here. Deinococcus radiodurans has enzymes which protect the fidelity of its genetic material. That is to say, it is not easily mutated by ionizing radiation and its DNA is not susceptible.

    As for organisms feeding on radiodurans. That's a hard call. It depends strongly on how much radioactive material is retained in this bug at any one time. You could get magnification through the food chain this way, but hopefully it will be engineered to avoid this.

  • Sounds good don't it? Gimme two! Not more than two.

  • 1) I think this was addressed before. The products will be something immobile and not water-soluble. This stops the spread of contamination and makes clean-up easier.

    2) If it is a well designed bug, it will die out after it runs out of radioactive goo. You can engineer the metabolic pathways so it requires the waste (or some part of the waste) to live. No more food, no more life.

    3) See 2. The bugs are limited by the amount of waste present.

    4) Again, see 2. The bacteria itself doesn't need to be "picked up" again. You just keep a sample in the lab.

  • This could have interesting consequences. This bacterium is going to mutate at an extraordinary rate if we encourage it to eat radioactive material. We could end up with something we'd rather not have to deal with. Couldn't we?
  • Yes, it could be programmed not to reproduce, but then how would we get any of it in any decent quantity in the first place? It would have to reproduce. And even if we did manage it, once we had enough, how would we stop the radioation from knocking that disabled reproductive gene back on and it reproducing again?
  • Well, one of the nce things about this bug, much like the one we read about on Friday, is that its natural. Not genetically engineered. Moreover, they are found in abundance in the soil in man different environments. If a large quantity is deposited in an area, it will gorge itself on the resources around it; when there arent enough, they will die until an environmental equilibrium is reached. They [te creatures] don't need to be cleaned up, presumably, but their byproducts, which will be a metabolized radioactive metal, will be. From What I can tell, this stuff, while still radioactive, will be in a more stable molecule, and be less likely to contaminate other resources, talthough it will still be necessary to store it in a safe place.
  • Just as the senior watching the local news gets a little worried about some script kiddie making the latest vb virus that only works on outlook so does the majority of /.

    Most of the post have been preching doom from biotech but it is just a matter of that this site is full of geeks that work with eletron flow devices and have no real sense of control over biotech like the kind we have over those electron devices and the result is fear but the the same can be said about a doctor when it comes to his computer and i think that is why i see so many doctors use a mac

    Personaly give me GM foods new replacement parts grown in pigs a virus that infects pests and a giant bug that can blow up planets its all hacking no matter what kind of material you are working with

    Travis
  • So what they basically created is a microscopic cockroach to clean up the mess after a possible war. I wonder how many are needed to undertake this task, and does it mean that government officials can rest a bit easier thinking if a nuclear holocaust were to take place tomorrow, this bug will solve the problem?

    Where in the world is Stacey Sanches [antioffline.com]

  • It is comforting to know that when we have nuked ourselves out of existence, the radiodurans will live on.
  • But what will it do about that funky gray stuff under my bed?

    ---------------------

  • Actually, "they" didn't create it. It evolved naturally. The specific "radiodurans" refers to its ability to repair DNA damage of the sort that can be caused by radiation.
  • Wasn't there a book that started like that, except that the microbes were created to eat oil spills ... and they got out of hand. -CrackElf
  • I'm confused. I mean, I understand that the bug is radiation-resistant. That's very cool. But, how does it 'reduce' the amount of radioactive Uranium, exactly? Uranium is an element, so I thought that it could neither be created nor destroyed?...

    The actual amount of Uranium can't be reduced. What I think they mean here, is reduction in the chemical sense. In chemistry, a reduction reaction is the opposite of oxidation. Oxidation is the loss of electrons to the other reactants, in a chemical reaction, reduction is the gain of electrons. Oxidation does not necessairly involve oxygen. Check out definition 5a here. [dictionary.com] I'm not sure what they'd gain by doing this, though. Mabye the nasty stuff is easier to clean up this way?
  • Actually, this has been done before:
    Godzilla vs. Biollante [stomptokyo.com], specifically.
    In fact, it was actually *interesting* in that film, with one of the best G-suits ever, imho. Heck, there was even some reflection on the consequences of using such a thing. Similarly, for Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995), considering the aftermath of the Oxygen Destroyer and Serizawa's fears in Godzilla (1954/1955).
    For current aspects of the original legend, see the real thing [godzilla.co.jp] in its original home.
    "thought you'd like to know"
  • You're so right. Also, the doses of radiation that our little deinos will experience are really low in comparison to what they can take. When exposed to 0.1Mrad of ionizing radiation (roughly 100 times the dose that would kill most humans through excessive DNA damage) Deinococcus shows and undetectable level of mutation, and is not even stressed enough to have slowed growth. Deino can survive single hits of around 5 Mrad without mutation. This is about 5000 - 1000 times the amount that would kill most people. This is MUCH higher that what they could contact in the soil definitely, and most of the tanks with radioactivity this high are so concentrated, acidic, saline, or just plain hot (temperature) from the continual reaction induced by said free radicals, that Deino could not survive to do its job anyway.
  • Sure they do. Otherwise, species would never have developed any genetic variations and survival of the fittest would be moot, as all genes would be the same in the species, and we would have no evolution and be one giantly large incestful family.

    Of course, mutations are rare. But depending on the life cycle of the bug, it's certainly possible to see a mutation have an undesired affect in a couple thousand generations. Throw in radiation, which is credited as causing gene damage (Hiroshima babies and formation of life theories), and you can certainly have something incredible happen over the course of hundreds of thousands of generations.

  • So these are going to enzymatically reduce radionuclides and metal contaminants in the absence of air ... So what happens when we leave the laboratory environment, and things start getting wacky. This is almost verbatim to the stuff from Stephenson's Zodiac about PCB-killing microbes...
  • Don't believe everything you see in X-Men, mutations (under normal circumstances) don't happen in living organisms. The bug's offspring may be affected, but it could simply be "programmed" not to reproduce.

    -------
  • Didn't they try that in Jurassic Park? I bet this supergerm would simply mutate (in a relatively short time frame) like the dinosaurs did and start mating. Then they would grow out of control like a plague of locusts and destroy all civilization.

    ...ok that's enough of the sarcasm
  • Um, the radiation is not the largest problem caused by nuclear holocaust, the largest problem is the effects nuclear holocaust would have on the atmosphere, causing heat from the sun to be reflected in to space, leaving the surface of the earth very cold. These bugs will not be able to generate enough heat to keep us alive. They can seperate dangerous metals from soil and storage facilities, which is very good, but we still all die in nuclear holocaust. If we could find a way to keep us warm and make food, all would be good.

    In the event of a nuclear holocaust we would need to develop a widescale heating and food creation system in a very short time, just a guess, but maybe about a year or two.

    The dinosaurs didn't survive the cooling of the earth due to atmospheric changes, we might be able to survive it, but with no preperation in advance, I doubt it.

    Brian

  • I quote:
    >To
    > eat oil, say, thus providing a good >way of getting rid of oil slicks? Or to degrade >plastics previously considered
    > nonbiodegradable?

    Firstly, the way genetic engineering works, you copy proteins, even whole chemical pathways, from existing organisms. For example, you might (conceivably) create photosynthetic bacteria that live in smokestacks (refering to a previous article.) You'd do this by cloning the genes for photosynthesis into something that lives in undersea vents - there are a great many more technical hurdles than that, but it's conceivable.
    Now, there is no (known) naturally occuring organism that *efficiently* consumes petrochemicals. That's why there are big deposits of them underground. In order to make a bacteria that efficiently eats petrochemicals, you'd need to generate such a pathway yourself, from scratch. Unless someone comes up with something really clever, which is of course possible, it's not going to happen. The combinatorics of solving this sort of problem by brute force (i.e. making a new protein that chews up (CH3)n at warp speed and generates ATP to boot) are several orders of magnitude greater than the number of fundamental particles in the known universe.
    Finally, as other people pointed out, bacteria that eat plastic in an oxygenated environment might not be the best things to have around, eh? It'd depend on exactly how they worked, you could arrange so that they ate plastic relatively slowly, and so that you were 99.9% sure that they wouldn't evolve another factor of 100 in consumption speed once you let them loose, but it'd be another layer of difficulty.

    Sam
  • The article doesn't explain what Deinococcus radiodurans does with the radiation, other than sequester it withing. I have two questions: What about the organisms that feed on or will develop a fondness for the superbug? and what happens when superbug mutates? The bug itself may be hearty, but it's DNA is as susceptible as always. It's heartiness implies a DNA structure that persists despite mutation.

    ----------------------
  • Simple we'll just genetically engineer them to have cold fusion like you said. You can do anything with genetic engineering, don't you watch tv?

  • yep it does.

    the magnetic field is able to analyse information collected from ions (charged particles). The information is in the form of a spectrum (range of frequencies) that can be analysed with Fourier transform.

    A Fourier transform is an algorithm to analyse spectrums to extract frequencies. It's used to make MP3s :)

    AFAIK, different elements have different frequencies that can be extracted from a spectrum created by the device mentioned.

    Did I make sense?

    Dan P.

    ---

    Computerize it [eevolved.com]

  • they used what? (Score:3)

    by raygundan ( 16760 ) on Tuesday February 20, 2001 @10:26AM (#416622) Homepage
    According to the article, the scientists used "unique high magnetic field Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry" to analyze the bacteria. Do these words actually mean something together? Or is it like saying that I put together a "open-source XML cross-platform NUMA per-pixel internet back-end serial port integration ecommerce rasterizer"?

  • Stabilization, Not Destruction (Score:3)

    by SEWilco ( 27983 ) on Tuesday February 20, 2001 @12:10PM (#416623) Journal
    The article makes more sense if you're aware that in Chemistry the word "reduce" means that a certain chemical reaction takes place. Far down in the article it is also mentioned that this organism produces insoluble material.

    This article is reporting that this organism can be let loose (well, it's already around in small quantities naturally), fed, and after the resulting slime dies off there will be deposits which do not easily dissolve in water.

    The purpose of this method is to turn radioactive leaks into bits that don't interact with the environment as easily as raw machined metal does. If there's strong radioactivity one still has to dig up the resulting solids and put them someplace safer until the radioactivity fades. That's weeks, decades, or millenia depending upon the material -- or fire up your nuclear accelerator and transmute them into safer stuff sooner.

  • Of course, they can't lower the radioactivity... (Score:3)

    by smoondog ( 85133 ) on Tuesday February 20, 2001 @09:44AM (#416624)
    These aren't fusion bugs, they are just resistant to high levels of radiation. They can break down compounds into more managable forms or do other useful things. The radioactive waste is still dangerous, though.

    -Moondog

  • This can only resuly in one thing. (Score:3)

    by BiggestPOS ( 139071 ) on Tuesday February 20, 2001 @09:45AM (#416625) Homepage
    A real Life Spiderman. The Implications are enormous, seeing as a real-life superhero would make life just a little bit cooler.

  • Re: Dinococcus (Score:3)

    by QuincyFree ( 147705 ) on Tuesday February 20, 2001 @10:03AM (#416626)
    It's worth noting that Dinococcus' DNA repair mechanism exists because life in a dessicated environment (e.g. dry soil) causes breaks in the DNA strand. Because of genetic redundancy mediated through possessing three copies of its genome, Dinococcus can reanneal its genome using intact segments from multiple strands. Thus, Dinococcus has not adapted to conditions of high levels of radiation as its tolerance of radiation might suggest.

  • Address (Score:3)

    by slashdoter ( 151641 ) on Tuesday February 20, 2001 @09:45AM (#416627) Homepage
    does any one have an address to write to so I can get some, I have a problem that started with a bowl of chili, now it's in the bathroom.....


    ________

  • Re:A Bug's Life (Score:3)

    by NecroPuppy ( 222648 ) on Tuesday February 20, 2001 @09:55AM (#416628) Homepage
    So what they basically created is a microscopic cockroach to clean up the mess after a possible war.

    Did you even read the article? They are talking about using this microbe to clean up nuclear facilities where leaks have occured. There isn't even a single mention of war in the entire article.

  • Re:What if... (Score:3)

    by Mercaptan ( 257186 ) on Tuesday February 20, 2001 @10:27AM (#416629) Homepage

    The bug is not invincible.

    What is being described is not a super-bug. It has vulnerabilities like any other bacteria (you can kill it with antibiotics or Clorox). You could even engineer into it a kill-switch, allowing you to introduce some compound which would cause this bug to die.

    In any case, the idea here is to make the nuclear waste immobile and insoluble, keeping it out of our water supplies and from spreading. I don't think any bacteria can actually render radioactive waste non-radioactive. This stuff just makes it easier to handle and contain.

    Deinococcus radiodurans two unique qualities are its resistance to dessication and radiation. These properties result from D. radioduran's ability to quickly and faithfully repair its own DNA after severe damage. It is thought that this allows it to survive out in the open with very little water to shield its genetic material. UV, like the ionizing radiation from nuclear waste, tends to chop up an organism's DNA and make life difficult. And in this case, its useful if we want to have a bug that can operate in high-radiation environments.

  • Bacteria are the future for pollution treatment. (Score:3)

    by Heidi Wall ( 317302 ) on Tuesday February 20, 2001 @09:48AM (#416630)
    Especially genetically engineered bacteria. Imagine taking archaeobacteria from extreme conditions, such as thermal vents under the ocean, and then geneticall engineering them to solve common pollution problems? To eat oil, say, thus providing a good way of getting rid of oil slicks? Or to degrade plastics previously considered nonbiodegradable?

    People are working on these things even now. I just hope that the proper precautions are taken, as bacteria of this sort can be considered as dangerous nanotechnology a few years to early.

    I am not trying to scaremonger though - I think that research in this field should take place, no doubt about it.
    --
    Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,

  • Radioactive things STAY radioactive... (Score:4)

    by JCCyC ( 179760 ) on Tuesday February 20, 2001 @10:16AM (#416631) Journal
    ...no matter what chemical reactions occur to them. So, unless those microbes have cold fusion as part of their metabolism, you're left with radioactive metal (as opposed to the previously existing radioactive oxides and salts). The nice thing is they won't melt into the soil as easily as their unoxidated equivalent, but all radiation is still there. The radioactive metals have to be physically taken away from the place at some point. How?

    This is true for non-radioactive poisonous metals too, for most metals don't like to stay unoxidated for long. Electron-hungry things in the environment like oxygen, sulphur, chloride and some organic materials will revert them back to their nasty, combined state. Again, you have to get the damn thing away from there ASAP.

  • Re:they used what? (Score:4)

    by sacremon ( 244448 ) on Tuesday February 20, 2001 @11:35AM (#416632)
    Okay, let's pricture this:

    You have a container that is toroidal - like a circular particle accelerator - a cyclotron. Like the accelerator, the toroid is ringed with magnets.

    The sample, comprised of a mix of proteins from the bacteria, is subjected to a process that ionizes the proteins. I'm not going into Fast Atom Bombardment (FAB) here. Just take my word for it that it is a routine practice to be able to ionize molecules the size of proteins.

    The ionized sample speeds into the toroid and begins to travel around the circle. However, molecules of differing weights will have different periodicities. Since they are ionized, they are a moving charge, which generates a magnetic field. The field will be a composite of the individual fields generated by the different weight ions. Take a snapshot of the field, and apply Fourier Transform to generate the individual frequencies.

    From the frequencies and the external magnetic field, one can deduce the weight of the ions, which is what mass spectroscopy is all about.

  • Re:Great, then what? (Score:5)

    by NecroPuppy ( 222648 ) on Tuesday February 20, 2001 @10:05AM (#416633) Homepage
    So they have this nifty beastie that eats radioactive material.

    No, they've got a neat little microbe that eats lactate, as mentioned in the article. What the microbe does is:
    enzymatically reduce radionuclides and metal contaminants in the absence of air.

    What waste products are left behind?

    The radioactive particles are concentrated into a less mobile form which is more easily collected for disposal.

    What does it eat once it runs out of radioactive goo?

    It doesn't 'eat' the radioactive particles. The lacate it eats is applied to the contaminated area. Then the microbe is released into the area. As the microbe eats the lactate, the radioactive particles (plutonium, uranium, etc) are concentrated into "relatively insoluble and immobile forms".

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