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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."
We're terribly sorry about all this.
-- The Scientists
I completely agree. Just because we are such fragile creatures, we often (so erroneously) assume that all other creatures are fragile, too.
Single-celled organisms, especially, can survive in ridiculous environments. A virus can be frozen and thawed years later with no ill effects. It's not that life is easy to just "create" out of nothing (oogenesis, and it's hard), but life is very hard to eradicate.
Cockroaches, for one, can survive over 100x the radiation levels that would be lethal to humans.
It's good that science is confirming what we all should have expected, I agree with the parent, and don't understand why anyone would have expected otherwise. Can anyone respond to this? (IANAB)
It is far easier to believe that the bacteria are consuming the organic materials in the radioactive sludge. The Hanford wastes are from the Solvex and Purex processes, which (if I understand correctly) used the different affinities of various ions for organic vs. aqueous solvents to separate uranium and plutonium from fission products. The spent, contaminated solvents wound up in the now-problematic tanks and their continued chemical breakdown under the radiolytic assault is one of the reasons they are so hard to handle.
It does make one wonder: could these bacteria be used to consume the organic matter in the tanks and reduce them to solutions in water? You would have to dilute the waste for the bacteria and re-concentrate the products (say, by evaporation) but getting rid of the organic solvents would be a big plus.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
I'm especially not surprised, since I've read reports of bacteria that have been found in the cooling pools for the spent nuclear fuel rods at reactor sites. Apparently, the little buggers are related to the guys that live in the hypersaline environments. The same celluar repair machinery works for both the saline damage and the radiation damage.
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.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.