originally this calendar month , we told you about amysterious , potentially biological white webthat was base growing on nuclear waste material at the Savannah River Site .
https://gizmodo.com/mysterious-white-web-found-growing-on-nuclear-waste-5868883
Now , Last Word On Nothing‘s Sally Adee has put together a must - read piece — including pictures of the ontogeny — that research what the ashen web is , what it is n’t , and what we ’re all obviously hoping it is : the work of a new , super - breed of radioactive wanderer .
The Augusta Chronicle lately describe thata whitish , spider - vane like materialhad been detect grow all over the atomic dissipation at the Savannah River Site , a Department of Energy lab in South Carolina . In the 1950s , atomic materials were readied here for artillery deployment . Now the site is a inquiry research laboratory . The web - like strands were establish in the L Basin , where the spent atomic fuel is stored .
Unlike the terminal figure suggests , however , “ pass ” nuclear fuel is actually so irradiated that it can no longer be reliably used . So it need to be contained in vast pools of cooling water normally doped with boron , which acts as a protective measure against the fuel rods ’ radiation . The assemblies themselves , however , remain furiously raging .
This makes the prospect of any living thing growing not just near them but directly on them implausibly exciting . It ’s not yet clear whether the stuff is in reality alive , however . In late January , theDefense Nuclear Facilities Safety Boardwill start the process of testing the growth to see whether they are biological . Could these be microbes ? advantageously yet , could these cobweb ( figure below ) be the home of some awesome Modern stock of radioactive superspider ?
Okay , so the superspider matter is strictly my own personal fantasy ( toomanyB - moviesas a child ) . But it would n’t be the first clock time we ’ve found bacteria andfungithriving inapocalypticdead zones . It would n’t even be the first metre we found them at Savannah River . In 2002 , researcher there founda mystical slimeon a monitoring probe in one of the site ’s high - stratum waste material tanks . That slime turned out to beKineococcus radiotolerans , a micro-organism that express joy at actinotherapy Elvis a thousand times what would put one of us humanity in a box . Genome sequence at the University of Georgia revealed that “ the content of the Kineococcus genome propose purposeful adaptations to the gamey level wasteland environment . ”
Then there was Deinococcus radiodurans , foundhappily munching on radioactive wasteleaking out of the 50 - year - old atomic waste tanks under the Hanford atomic reservation in Washington United States Department of State , where United States produced the plutonium for the “ Fat man ” bomb that it drop on Nagasaki .
When other sector have chance on industrious bacteria such as these , they ’ve put them straight to figure out : rock oil - metabolising bacteria are now routinely deployed togobble up oil color wasteweir . And indeed , extremophiles such as Kineococcus and Deinococcus could in theory be harnessed to help us neutralize the legacy of our atomic waste .
Unlike oil - noshing bacteria , these ca n’t metabolise radioactive fabric such as uranium and cesium-137- if only it were that simple-minded . But they can provide a unlike service of process by immobilising them . When they leak out of adjudge tanks or ooze into the ground after a calamity , soluble radioactive materials and toxic heavy metals migrate steadily wherever ground water migrates .
Once they escape containment , radioactive muck and toxic heavy metals in soil do n’t outride put . Liquid waste - or non - fluid wastefulness that meets pelting - travels inexorably toward a low-down point , and along the way it fit the water tabular array . Once the wastefulness murder water , it ’s regain a high - hurrying escapism itinerary . The chaotic physics of flow and turbulency makes it nearly insufferable to pinpoint the geographical location where the thriftlessness will terminate up , but one thing ’s clear-cut - if it ’s in the piddle , it will end up in a works , an fauna or a soul .
Therefore , the most important face of clean up radioactive material is save it from end up in the water system .
That ’s where superbacteria can help . While they ca n’t make the radioactive material any less radioactive , they can immobilize them . Michael Daly , a microbiologist with theUniformed Services University of the Health Sciencesin Bethesda , Maryland , has been work out onengineeringDeinococcus radiodurans , which can exchange soluble uranium into an insoluble manakin that flummox stuck in the reason .
The difference between soluble and insoluble U can be opine of as the dispute between food coloring and pepper . When you drop food for thought coloring into a glass of body of water , the substance disperses through the piddle and there is no loose path to re - segregate it from the water system . If , on the other handwriting , you drop a smattering of Madagascar pepper into the water , the pepper does not dissolve . Then , a filter can separate it from the water . likewise , if bacterium can trap hazardous material , they ’ll never make it into the groundwater .
A raw , actinotherapy - resistive microbe would be a welcome addition to the Justice League cast of bacterial superheroes that could someday rescue the wastelands around the likes of Hanford and at uranium tailings sites around the world . The Department of Energy has figure that over 2500 billion tons of soil and groundwater have been foul by nuclear weapons output around the US . “ That could cover10,000 football fields a yard deepand keep Niagara Falls flow for more than two hebdomad , ” Daly enjoin .
And actually , Deinococcus ‘ superpower are n’t limited to locking up atomic waste : The molecularmechanisms by which the bacterium protects itself from radiationare now also being exploited in other context - for exercise , as radiation protectors for human mobile phone and in thedevelopment of vaccinesagainst scarydrug - resistant pathogenslike MRSA .
So in these webs , are we seeing the first house of another superhero bacterium to add to the arsenal ? We ’ll rule out sometime in 2012 , when the review gameboard finishes its psychoanalysis of the cobwebs . But I am far too raring for that , so I call Daly .
Sadly , he says all grounds points to the webs not being microbic . The conditions are far too clean-“they’re miss virtually any growth substrates”-to permit bacteria to make vigor and build replicating cells .
Savannah River spokeswoman Angeline French confirms that the tanks are pristine . Inside the 3.4 - million congius army tank , a 1600 – 2000 gallon - per - min recirculating filtration system removes suspended solidness from the body of water using sand filter . A 150 – 250 gpm recirculating deionization scheme kicks out both radioactive and non - radioactive ion . In other words , there ’s nothing in there for a living matter to use up .
But all that ’s in possibility . You ’d think the same clean - room rules would have applied to the pool where they nonetheless found Kineococcus radiotolerans sliming up the articulatio .
Until the followup board complete its analytic thinking , however , Daly says he ’s bet the webs are strands of oxidised metallic element . Specifically , he notes that if the water is spiked with boron , the chain could be boron trioxide , a lily-white , glassy firm that result from boron , a metalloid , being oxidize . Metals will often oxidize this way under utmost conditions , say being pitilessly irradiate by high spirit level waste . At least , that chemical reaction has been well established for iron and atomic number 25 . Daly suppose he ’s never seen oxide form strand , but under the context , he reckon it ’s a more convincing account than bacterium .
“ However , none of this leaves out the possibility that a wanderer fell into the spent fuel tank , and the extremely high-pitched doses of radiation immediately caused it to evolve gill and develop incredible world power , ” Daly did not add . He absolutely did not say that .
Sally Adeeis the technology features editor program over at New Scientist and part of the ragtag and bobtail team of awesome scientific discipline bloggers that compriseThe Last Word on Nothing .
Top double viaWickedmistress777 / DeviantART ; Cobweb picture courtesy of Savannah River Site ; Deinococcus radiodurans courtesy of Michael Daly , Uniformed Service University , Bethesda , MD , USA
EnergyNuclear WasteScience
Daily Newsletter
Get the best technical school , science , and finish news program in your inbox daily .
News from the future , delivered to your present .
You May Also Like
