Cleaning Up In High Level Radiation with Microbes

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.

Comments

Radioactive things STAY radioactive...

[JCCyC]

...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?

[sacremon]

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?

[NecroPuppy]

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".