Bacteria Live Happily in Nuclear Waste

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."

Comments

Re:If you read the artical

[droid_rage]

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

[Spamalamadingdong]

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

[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 research has shown that because of the harsh chemical enviroment the tanks can last only 12 years. (Don't forget that fifty years has elasped since then).

They ran out of tanks space, so what they did was just pour the chemicals on the ground. This in turn has led to vast areas of "radioactive soup" swampland.

Mice running around trigger radiation sensors because they have become highly radioactive due to the enviroment they live in.

When they find a radioactive animal, they can do an autopsie on it to determine where it came from, by looking at the specific radioactive isotopes that it has.

To say that this place is "a mess" is an understatement. It makes love canal look like pristine park in comparison.

The number one thing they need to do is get the stuff out of the ground water table. Currently they have pumps on the edge of the plume pumping out water, filtering it, and pumping it back into the ground. This currently is the state of hanford - taking care of one emergency after another, while never achieving actual "clean up."

Whether they will be able to clean the place up or not remains to be seen, due to the magnitude of the problem. This is why it has been labeled as "a national sacrifice area."

Re:Self-boiling?

[Carnildo]

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:Further Proof

[Idarubicin]

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. 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 extremophiles they're poorly suited to competition with other bacteria in less challenging environments--in the human gut, for example. The D. radiodurans was only observed after radiation treatment cleared the field, as it were.

The real question we should be asking is not whether or not radiation sterilization is a safe procedure, but whether the food industry will consider it a panacea and become more lax in their other handling procedures as a result. After all--how did D. radiodurans get into the meat in the first place?

Re:Bacteria vacuum cleaners

[pragma_x]

You mean Bioremediation? There's already gobs of research being done in this area. :)

The geobacter project 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
USGS's site on bioremediation