Microbes for Bioremediation 189
The San Francisco Chronicle has a piece discussing current efforts to clean up nuclear waste sites with microbes. Current treatment procedures generally involve pumping out the contaminated groundwater, filtering it, and pumping it back, which is rather expensive.
And what happens? (Score:5, Funny)
I for one welcome our new microbe overlords!
Re:And what happens? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And what happens? (Score:2)
I know an old lady who swallowed a fly (Score:2)
Bad movie idea... (Score:4, Funny)
I can see it now: radioactive germs bite a kid and he turns into a super human spiderman/hulk thing.
Great.
neal stephenson=nostrodamus? (Score:4, Insightful)
Interesting but crappy test subject (uranium) (Score:4, Interesting)
Or even a microbe spray to degrease stuff; cool, huh? No more wiping down.
Also cool would be microbes in my toilet, to eat my shit (but not die.)
Of course, I do wonder what they'd do while they weren't eating shit or grease or whatever, but who cares about that, they're cool!
Re:Interesting but crappy test subject (uranium) (Score:2)
Re:Interesting but crappy test subject (uranium) (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Interesting but crappy test subject (uranium) (Score:2)
Re:Interesting but crappy test subject (uranium) (Score:2)
Until they started to eat the cooking oil, not to mention 90% of the "food" before it could be served. Or even a microbe spray to degrease stuff; cool, huh? No more wiping down.
The fat can be converted to something else, but it won't disappear. You'd probbaly get a waste product even more disgusting to clean up.
Re:Interesting but crappy test subject (uranium) (Score:3, Funny)
Och! That's Willy's retirement grease!
Cure for Hiroshima/Nagasaki? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Cure for Hiroshima/Nagasaki? (Score:5, Informative)
So, as it currently stands, there's not much that microbes could do to "cure" Hiroshima. It's already highly populated after having to recover from near-total population loss, and I seem to recall reading somewhere that it has a birth defect rate that's the same as other Japanese cities. So much for the nuclear waste zone.
Re:Cure for Hiroshima/Nagasaki? (Score:2, Informative)
This process is being proposed for ground watter in which U is dissolved. It is, thus, mobile and can impact surface water and drinking water wells. The idea is to immobilize what is currently migrating downgradient.
RTFA
Re:Cure for Hiroshima/Nagasaki? (Score:3, Interesting)
Hiroshima was bombed on August 6th, 1945 and Nagasaki 3 days later - this is less than 60 years ago, and today they're large, thriving cities. Did they dig out most of the city and replace it with clean dirt, or what?
Here's a site. (Score:4, Informative)
They were "airburst" nukes. That means that there isn't as much contaminated material as there would be if the fireball contacted the earth.
With an airburst, the contamination can be washed away. Even though this only moves the residual contamination to another area.
If this had been a groundburst, there would have been a lot more radiation contamination to clean up.
Re:Cure for Hiroshima/Nagasaki? (Score:5, Interesting)
I get a more intense radiation dose living in the Denver area with lots of graitic soil and living at 6,000+ ft above sea level than most of the inhabitants of Hiroshima or Nagaski get in a normal day. If I go skiing or climb a mountain, I really get nuked. So far, no spare hand growing out of my forehead but I have mutated into being more politically conservative the older I get and the longer I live here.
Re:Cure for Hiroshima/Nagasaki? (Score:2, Interesting)
Good question. I remember hearing about microbes which were supposedly able to "eat" the garbage at landfill sites. I haven't heard of them since.
Also, how about our (North America's) fresh water lakes? I would love to see some plan to clean them up. Much of the Great Lakes, for example, are polluted. Very, very sad.
Huh? (Score:2)
i'm missing something here.... (Score:4, Interesting)
then i get to the part where the microbe is taking water based uranium and making a solid form. ok.
don't you still have to dig this stuff up? wouldn't the 'solid' form break down after a while and still have the problem? and wouldn't the solid form still have the same amount of radioactivity?
it looks like it makes it easier to get it out of soil, but you still have to dig it up and process it out?
eric
Re:i'm missing something here.... (Score:2)
Re:i'm missing something here.... (Score:3, Insightful)
According to Mining bacteria's appetite for toxic waste [sfgate.com]
The article does not say what is uraninite. Uraninite is the primary ore of uranium. Uraninite is a reduced form of uranium which a
Re:i'm missing something here.... (Score:2)
Re:i'm missing something here.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Bury it safely?
The whole point of this excercise is to keep the radioactive material from interacting with living creatures: if it is immobile, insoluble and buried, then there are PRECIOUS FEW living things that are in any way affected by it.
After all, the REAL danger in toxic and radioactive heavy metals is not momentary exposure, but the concentration over time into the tissues of long-lived creatures (e.g. humans);
The point you're missing.... (Score:4, Informative)
other uses (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe this technology could be put to other uses. for example, what if we used old nuclear waste for drilling deep within the earth. We could pour some in the hole, and then microbe it when it stopped being effective. lather, rinse, repeat.
1. Pour nuclear waste into ground making a really really deep hole.
2. Clean up hole with microbes.
3. ????
4. Profit!
Re:other uses (Score:3, Funny)
Already done with sewage, right? (Score:5, Informative)
The probably won't happen for awhile (Score:5, Informative)
Obligatory Simpsons Response (Score:5, Funny)
Lisa: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?
Skinner: No problem. We simply release wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.
Lisa: But aren't the snakes even worse?
Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
Lisa: But then we're stuck with gorillas!
Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
Re:The probably won't happen for awhile (Score:3, Interesting)
Engineer in promoters for certain compounds that must be present for the organism to live. No sustaining compound....microbes die. This is very common in the lab, and I could imagine other potential applications such as radio frequency induced promoters that would trigger pre-programmed apoptosis pathways to eliminate bacteria when the job is accomplished.
Until they mutate (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The probably won't happen for awhile (Score:5, Informative)
I'd assume they'd start to eat the natural oils that birds, fish, etc produce. "But they're only engineered to digest petroleum oils" That's the beauty of biology, it mutates into what you want it to exactly not do. Doesn't take that long either. Chernobyl 4 melted down in '86, and life is already thriving there (bacterial life, but life nonetheless)
Re:The probably won't happen for awhile (Score:2)
Re:The probably won't happen for awhile (Score:2)
You are utterly ignorant. GE and stimulated naturally occurring bacteria have been successfully used for bioremediation for years, at least since the late 1980's.
Yes, they DIE when they run out of food. They do not mutate and become inexorable flesh-eating zombies. And they are not engineered to eat "oil'" they are engineered to eat specific chemical compounds or classes o
Re:The probably won't happen for awhile (Score:2)
New unit of measurement (Score:5, Funny)
That's all very well and good, but I want to know how many Libraries of Congress that is.
More importantly (Score:2)
Mini-Nanotech (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mini-Nanotech (Score:3, Interesting)
Ionizing radiation (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder how is it that the ionizing radiation doesn't manage to kill off these microbes before they can do their job? A typical gamma ray goes for 5 MeV, whereas a typical ionization energy is only at 15-20 eV. Interfering with chemical reactions necessary to life most definitely. Mutation and more likely outright killing of these organisms.
How do they survive?
Re:Ionizing radiation (Score:4, Informative)
For gamma-rays carbon based life is pretty transparent. The gamma ray will rarely deposit all its energy in one spot instead it knocks an electron off an atom and gives it a few 100 kev to work with and then proceeds on its merry way. Anything in the path of that electron is hammered but for the most part that's just inter/intra-cellular fluid which produces some free radicals that are quickly scavanged. Its only a problem when the DNA helix is hit or possibly the cell membrane, both fairly low in volume compared to the whole cell. Internal alpha particles are another matter entirely. They have energies around the 5 MeV range and an alpha is like a cannon ball shot in a fab shop. Anything it hits is a goner since all that energy is deposited in a very small volume.
As for microbes surviving high radiation levels you should look at some articles concerning high microbe levels in reactor core coolant streams. They appear to have highly redundant DNA with very good repair mechanisms. Unfortunately the processes they use seem to only work for for ring DNA strands found in bacterias. So don't look for a human drug soon to make you rad proof. D. radiodurans is one species that was found in the shielding water of high activity sources.
Re:Ionizing radiation (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ionizing radiation (Score:2)
Zodiac (Score:3, Interesting)
Screw the expense (Score:3, Insightful)
I want these guys to use whatever works the best. Microbes, filtering, shooting it off into the sun...
Really...this is one of the places where is has to be done right. Screw the expense.
Unfortunately, profits and stockholders will get in the way of doing it right.
Re:Screw the expense (Score:5, Informative)
And who gets to pay for it? The taxpayers and society. So, in managing hazards to the environment and people, we do this silly thing called engineering. It is not easy, but goes something like this:
1) Define the problem. Not easy when dealing with contaminants in ground water that don't announce their presence.
2) Define a goal that reduces the hazard to an acceptable risk, often an increase in health impact to humans by no more than 1 in 1 million.
3) Assess the alternatives to achieve the goal. These microbes may be a new alternative.
4) Design the most cost-effective system to achieve the goal.
5) Maintain documentation and rationale for the decision-making process.
6) Implement and assess the design. Since the problem and conditions are often not 100% defined due to economic considerations, you need to determine if the solution is working and adjust as necessary.
Interesting, but is it pratical? (Score:5, Informative)
Having read the article, it seems like a good way to precipitate soluble U ions as U oxides, or complex uranyl compounds. It appears to offer a way to mitigate impacts upon human health and the environment by precipitating U ions traveling in ground water so they do not discharge to surface water or pumped by potable wells.
Bioremediation is nothing new. It works well with chlorinated solvents (PCE and TCE), especially in reduced, iron-rich ground water. The caveat for those compounds is, however, that they break down only so far, often leaving vinyl chloride -- a demonstrated carcinogen -- as the final step before there is not enough energy for them to survive by reductive dehalogenation. Basically, the microbes die becuase they do not have a source of "food."
The same goes for aerobic microbes, like these appear to be; they combine dissolved metals with oxygen to precipitate them. That gets even more expensive, because you have to maintain the proper redox level by introducing O2 with hydrogen peroxide or ozone. It's expensive and prone to mechanical failure or the vagaries of the subsurface.
These microbes may die out once their source of "food" depletes. However, the by-products should be assessed before they try to use this in a live environment, because sometimes the cure can be worse than the problem. There is also no economic analysis for this research, but it is likely way to early to determine how much it would cost to implement. It may be more reliable and cheaper to precipitate dissolved U by simply pumping a lot of oxygen into the ground water.
Re:Interesting, but is it pratical? (Score:3, Informative)
Bugs in the ground are amazing. I once did an auto shop that had gray- and black-water leach fields side-by-side. Well, they did detailing and ended up dropping TCE an
Mining microbes are very common (copper mining) (Score:5, Informative)
The story sounds like its using a method that the copper industry has been using for years, expect in this case with microbes that crave uranium instead if copper. They don't eat or destroy the uranium, just chemically transform it into insoluble forms that can be easily filtered out of groundwater.
Biological heap leaching is an inexpensive way to extract the metal from low-grade ores where copper is bound in a sulfide matrix. As the microbes chew up the ore, which has been treated with sulfuric acid to encourage them, the copper is released and concentrated in a solution that flows into a catch basin. The metal is extracted, and the acid solution is recycled.
This is good. (Score:4, Interesting)
The bacteria doesn't get rid of the radiation, just makes the radioactive slush insoluble so that they can collect it and deal with it with less cost. It's a great idea.
I'm just hoping that some genious comes up with a safe way to speed up the nuclear decomposition so that the material stabilizes into non-radioactive elements. That will be a breakthrough!
Re:This is good. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:This is good. (Score:2)
A "safe way to spee
Re:This is good. (Score:2)
It's conceivable to build a nuclear plant like this, where the neutron beam is "tuned" to the ideal energy to cause fission in whatever the target material is. It's not necessarily very fficient.
A neut
nuclear energy (Score:4, Interesting)
Pros:
Cons:
Could this be the cure to the first of the two cons?
Re:What is wrong here? (Score:2)
Acquisition (Score:2, Funny)
I need these microbes for my bathroom... (Score:2, Funny)
Same Microbes Make You And Your Food Healthy (Score:3, Insightful)
Almost all organic farms are now spraying soil with this solution. Additionally, people who raise animals are feeding it to their animals. Not just organic farmers, but even traditional mass production farms in the US because it lets them *totally eliminate anti-biotics and hormones* due the increased nutrition the microbes afford creates who consume them.
Human beings are actually supplementing with these as well. It is very popular in Japan and South Korea, and is becoming popular in America.
The PNSB's act as reducing agents, ie, antioxidants. So, the break things down by creating antioxidants that eliminate the material over time, as opposed to oxidizing bacteria that makes things putrify and rot. The reduction ability of the PNSB's is why the US military uses the same exact solution as the farmers and humans do, to break down toxic waste from weapons and nuclear power plants.
Have a look at:
http://www.rawpaleodiet.org/em/ [rawpaleodiet.org]
http://www.antioxbew.com/ [antioxbrew.com]
Re:Same Microbes Make You And Your Food Healthy (Score:3, Insightful)
Duh (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Duh (Score:2)
"That boy's heed is the size of Sputnik!"
radioactive waste? (Score:3, Interesting)
still doesn't solve the question of radioactive waste does it?
Re:radioactive waste? (Score:2)
Done before... (Score:5, Interesting)
A simple control mechanism such as that, especially using elements already found in nature, will be far more acceptable to the general public (fed on many a recent techno-thriller) as well as the tin-foil-beanie crowd (though just barely).
CORRECTION and REFERENCE SOURCES (Score:2)
PBS did a special on this in their "Intimate Strangers" series on microbes - so titled because they're everywhere and represent a major interdependency but largely unacknowledged.
A summary of that particular episode is at: http://www.pbs.org/opb/intimatestrangers/newage/b i oremediation.html [pbs.org]
Hmmm... (Score:3, Funny)
Maybe the microbes had to chew through some bowel obstructions to allow the accepted stories to clear through.
Well, since we all know about microbes... (Score:2)
But there are a lot of people out there who think having radioactive symbols on their case mods is a cool idea, why not give them a reason to have that radioactive symbol: RADIOACTIVE CPUS! They fry everything, including living flesh, but they're definitely the hottest thing on the market! No cooling fan will c
What about long term effects... (Score:2, Insightful)
Groundwater Bioremediation of Hydrocarbons (Score:5, Informative)
Hydrocarbon groundwater pollution is a much more widespread problem than soluable uranium. People with water wells 10 miles from Miami International Airport (MIA) can smell JP5 jet fuel in their well water. This is clear cut opportunity for bioremediation. People store and therefore leak hydrocarbons where they can and do use them.
As population and water needs rise, and supply dwindles, the US Federal Government has been forced to act. In the 1990's, to reduce the hydrocarbon pollution of groundwater, the US Government forced every gas station (petrol filling station) to dig up every storage tank and the soils surrounding the tank, and leave the dirt in piles to "off gas" the hydro carbons for months. And after off gassing, station owners had to replace the tanks with less leaky modern tanks.
Because water is essential for life, yet difficult to move economically, there will be increased border wars and politcal fights to control rivers and aquafers. We are watching a war for control of the oil rich country of Iraq. We will see similar fights and politcal disputes for control of rivers and dams on many international rivers. We will also see a marked rise in the trade of grain, one of the few water intensive commodities that can be traded economically.
All of this spells a golden opportunity for bioremediation of hydrocarbons, to help cities, farms, and countries to improve supply of potable water.
Mac refugee, paper MCSE, Linux wanna be
and first person to mention knoppix on
Re:Groundwater Bioremediation of Hydrocarbons (Score:2)
Nuclear+Bioterrorism? (Score:2, Funny)
I live in Oak Ridge, I work at the National Labs. (Score:5, Informative)
What those who speak in praise of the city haven't mentioned is that the swan pond that I'm looking at is surrounded by a fence, that you can't fish anywhere downstream of the labs for miles and miles, and that there are still barrels of STUFF that we don't even know exist buried around the countryside. Sure, on the surface things are fine, but that's because the heavy metals have long since sunken into the earth.
It's not like the situation hasn't gotten infinitely better since the initial mismanagement of the lab (alluded to by a previous poster and by Richard Feynmann's 'The Pleasure of Finding Things Out'). We built an onsite waste management facility [doe.gov], as part of the cleanup led by Bechtel Jacobs. It was a step in the right direction for the lab, as it allows us not only to repair damage already done, but to prevent causing further harm to the environment as research on radioactive materials continues. (side note: we prefer the term 'rare isotope'... It doesn't scare the populace). The cleanup process [bechteljacobs.com] was not painless [knoxnews.com], as this proposal by Bechtel Jacobs (the company leading the multi-billion dollar effort) and article from the Knoxville News-Sentinel indicate. We're nearly done, though. Occasionally something surprises us, but the situation's better than it was.
So, on to the article at last... These microbes don't have a huge utility value here, but they have great potential. Chernobyl, anyone? If there's another uncontained meltdown, these little buggers can be deployed almost immediately (via aerosol spray delivered in an overfly by crop dusters) to begin to counteract the fatal seep of irradiated cadmium and contaminated nickel. It's not of use now, but it's a valuable tool to have in our box.
Hooray for transmutation of elements (Score:3, Informative)
What they're doing is changing one molecule involving uranium (which is water soluble) into another molecule involving uranium (which isn't). Everything stays just as radioactive, but not dissolved in water.
Re:Nuclear energy is clean (Score:5, Insightful)
Technology progresses; I'd think a slashdot geek would realize this. Nuclear energy technology is no different.
I'd also point out that if you exclude insanely stupid events like the detonation of nuclear bombs, more people in the USA die in a year from car accidents than have ever died world-wide from radiation exposure. Americans (or perhaps humans in general) do a really lousy job in assessing risk. And don't get me started on the tragedy of SUVs (sure, you're more safe in your SUV...it's because of conservation of momentum. Never mind the poor sod you run into, because youre life is obviously more valuable than his). Anyway...never let good science get in the way of politics and mob manipulation. We fear radiation and throw ourselves under the juggernaut of the oil industry.
Re:Nuclear energy is clean (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nuclear energy is clean (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Nuclear energy is clean (Score:2)
Re:Nuclear energy is clean (Score:3, Interesting)
Basically we are all in this boat together and we've got to do what we can to keep it afloat. So you and me, we're on the same side, we're just arguing over implementation details. It is a far cry from us arguing over whether the correct alternative energy source ought to be nuclear or otherwise to th
Re:Nuclear energy is clean (Score:5, Interesting)
And don't forget that burning coal high in uranium can release into the atmosphere as much radiation every day as was released by the Three Mile Island leak. Just look to the big coal plant in central Utah for an example.
Re:Reactor Varieties (Score:3, Informative)
Canadian reactors (Candus) do not use weapon grade plutonium and uranium, but they do produce (concentrate) it, like most reactors in most countries.
Other than the factual errors, youre post is correct :-). Differences in design of reactors can have a big impact of saftey. Any reactor being built today is probably incapable of a full meltdown.
Re:Reactor Varieties (Score:2)
I hate to be a nit-picker (but it's early and I haven't had my coffee, so forgive me), but Chernobyl experienced a "partial core meltdown with significant offsite issues." Essentially, it suffered a steam explosion that ruptured the core and what little (try nonexistent) containment the reactor had. Chernobyl #4 was an RBMK-1000 type reactor and what occurred was a shutdown of the cooling system under low power. RBMK type reactors are unstable at low
Re:Reactor Varieties (Score:4, Informative)
Canadian reactors can be used to burn weapons grade plutonium and uranium, if mixed in with their regular fuel (That is a simplification) During the Clinton administration, they wanted to do this to dispose of a bunch of US nukes, but as you say, nobody wanted it shipped anywhere near THEM. There is also the issue of security: A terrorist would LOVE to get his hands on some disassembled nuclear weapons.
But generally, plutonium is not burnt in Candu reactors. They usually run on unenriched uranium. This saves the environment because the enrichment process is very polluting, but it also means more plutonium in the waste. Less waste, but longer lasting.
Another environmentally friendly feature of a Candu reactor is that, rather than having carbon rods to absorb the neutrons and control the chain reacton, the reacton relies on a medium of heavy water, and is controlled that way. To shut down an American reactor, all of the control rods must be fully inserted. But if the reaction has progressed to far, this may not be enough. In a Candu reactor, it can be shut down by draining the heavy water from between the fuel rods. Without the medium to slow the neutrons, the reactron cannot progress. In the event of a catastrophic safety failure, where the system does NOT drain the reactor, the very act of overheating and rupturing the housing would drain the medium away (In theory, it hasn't happened yet, that I know of) thus stopping the reacton.
They are, however, water cooled, so you end up with thermal pollution of the lake you are on. But not radioactive pollution, since the water used to turn the turbines is a closed system, and the external water is only used to cool the steam, which is not sufficantly radioactive to contaminate the coolant water in any appreciable way, AFAIK.
Re:Reactor Varieties (Score:5, Informative)
Canadian reactors are not initially fueled with plutonium. They are just not highly enriched (where the fraction of the isotope U-235, which occurs 0.7% naturally, is increased). The consequence of this is that in order to have a self-sustaining chain reaction (criticality), the neutron flux must be higher. This is because the Candu reactor uses slow-fission which utilizes U-235 as a fuel and not U-238. In order for the core to remain critical (where on average one neutron from a fission event goes on to cause another fission vice being absorbed by another nucleus or escaping the boundary of the core) it has to be very large size and have a very high neutron flux (as compared to a more enriched core which could be smaller and have a lower neutron flux and stay critical).
One consequence of a core with a very high neutron flux is that U-238 can absorb a neutron (which is helped because the core utilizes slow fission unlike a nuclear bomb), become U-239, undergo 2 beta decays and form Pu-239. Pu-239 can also undergo fission like U-235 and be used as a fuel (odd numbered atomic mass numbers of very heavy elements will undergo slow fission but even numbers will not). This is one of the reasons why natural uranium and thorium (which would produce U-233) could potentially create more fuel over time in the reactor (as the U-235 is depleted). Since it is much easier to make a nuclear bomb from plutonium than the brute force method of seperating U-235 from natural uranium this is obviously a potential threat for nuclear weapons poliferation around the world if these reactors are sold.
You asked: "So -- as far as environmentally friendliness is concerned, how do the different types of reactors stack up?"
When you think about environmental friendliness there is short term safety (immediate event of casuality) and long term (groundwater and storage of waste) concerns.
In the short term the major concerns are preventing the reactor from breaking and spilling its fission fragments (which is the VERY highly radioactive waste in a reactor compared to everything else which is relatively lowly radioactive), and if it does break, by containing it. Preventing the reactor from breaking is pretty much controlled by good engineering practice of operating it and by competent design. If we've learned anything from the Chernobyl accident, the least of which is that *only* the people who are trained to operate and know the most about the reactor should be allowed to do any test (or any operation for that matter). Once management steps in and decides that they know how to operate the reactor better than the operators themselves, there is a serious problem. Containment is much simpler. You put up several barriers to prevent radioactive fission gasses from escaping. The final one, the most obvious one, is the cement dome that covers nuclear power plants. But other methods of containment are also useful, such as the pebble bed design where each fuel particle is encased in a ceramic sphere that can contain all fission product gases ever produced by that particle. In the worst case accident the particle will not melt or lose any of its ability to hold the gasses. Future reactors will be much safer due to designs like this (in fact the NRC has rated some as requiring "no evacuations under any accident condition", meaning that they don't think a meltdown can occur).
For long term concerns, continuous sampling and monitoring as well as storage of radioactive waste are the concerns. As long as there is
Re:Nuclear energy is clean (Score:5, Insightful)
As for your non-sequitur to 'anti-environmentalists', which by your tone i assume means anyone who would advocate nuclear power, All energy conversion technologies that use consumables have an output of something. I have seen a lot of knee jerking on nuclear, some valid, and a lot that isn't. You have to pick your poison if you want the juice for your internet.
Re:Nuclear energy is clean (Score:5, Interesting)
First, the ecology of the area is quite robust. A lot of wildlife - on the road into the lab deer are populated enough that nearly two are killed every week crossing the road, turkey's have become so overpopulated that they are opening the preservation up for hunting (previously only animals large enough to damage property were allowed to hunt), and Melton Hill lake is swimable and the fish are edible (above a certain point - though that point is for bacterial not nuclear).
Also Oak ridges issue, as stated in the article, is from the 40's and 50's when they thought that putting the waste in barrels at the bottom of a pond was good enough, or pouring stuff on the ground was good. As far as I know that is not standard practice today. This has to do with nuclear bomb production back in the early days, it's not even relevent to current weapons research (which is produces much worse waste than a power plant).
Oak Risge still produces some of the most radioactive stuff in the world (at the HFIR http://www.ornl.gov/hfir/hfirhome.html ) and does so qutie safely - I've looked in the holding tank at stuff glowing quite brightly (medical isotopes being produced) so it is definatly on going production.
Modern plants are quite efficient and do not produce near the waste that they used to - in fact, a large portion of thier material is recyclable back into the plant or into other useful materials. Coal is MUCH worse for the environment than nuclear power. Total impact - with materials cost, waste, and output - nuclear plants are one of, if not the best, solutions for power in all geographical areas.
Re:Nuclear energy is clean (Score:3, Insightful)
Moreover, nuclear energy is clean... and I'm certainly not an anti-environmentalist. As long as it is handled properly, nuclear energy is a very safe and efficient (not to mention cool) method for producing electricity.
[Note: calling nucl
Re:Nuclear energy is clean (Score:4, Informative)
Extending this logic, sitting in a parked car on your driveway for your entire lifetime will mean that you will have at least 2 or 3 car accidents.
Perhaps you should read something about the world's safest nuclear reactors [nuclearfaq.ca]; reactors so safe there are no deaths as a direct cause of it being a nuclear reactor? Even the Sierra Club doesn't seem to have any serious dirt on this reactor, apart from weapons sales blunders. Search for it yourself [google.ca]!
Hmmmm, zero deaths vs. many. Hard to decide. Perhaps if I were anti-people it'd be easier. You aren't anti-people, are you?
Re:Nuclear energy is clean (Score:2)
France produces 78% of their electricity generation [www.nea.fr] from nuclear power. Is it your assertion that the French are "anti-environmentalists"? Eventually coal, petroleum and natural gas supplies will all be exhausted. The only viable alternative to supply the world's energy needs is nuclear.
Re:Nuclear energy is clean (Score:3, Interesting)
In contrast, travel 10 miles outside of Oak Ridge back in the redneck hills, and you'll see all sorts of trash. Empty motor oil bottles, dead batteries, lighter fluid containers, etc, all sitting in the middle of streams. Se
Re:Nuclear energy is clean (Score:5, Insightful)
You can bet that I am not in favor of the prolonged use of fossil fuels as a primary power source. However, this does not mean that I must automatically subscribe to nuclear power as a sustainable and safe method of power generation.
Re:Nuclear energy is clean (Score:2)
But with nuclear plants they store the radioactive waste somewhere. Coal plants pump it in to the atmosphere.
Re:The old solution is retarded. (Score:2)
Secondary. Don't you think they would have thought of this? Or do you honesty believe that one slashdot arm-chair scientist is smarted than a whole team of nuclear waste specialists?
Re:The old solution is retarded. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The old solution is retarded. (Score:5, Informative)
I'd be a little surprised if the concern with the uranium concentration is really the radiation; perhaps at the Oak Ridge, but almost certainly not at the mine tailings. If the concentration of non-refined U is so high radiation becomes a concern, you're more likely to die due to the fact uranium is poisonous in the same sense mercury and arsenic are poisonous. In any case, U isn't a good thing to have in the water supply.
Re:The old solution is retarded. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The old solution is retarded. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The old solution is retarded. (Score:3, Informative)
The idea was that microbes consume the dissolved uranium (and other nasty elements) and excrete them as insoluble compounds. So the water is clean and you have a pile of solid waste much much smaller than the original volume. You could recycle that or dispose of it (at least more safely than the original method of pouring it into a hole in the ground and forgetting it).