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E. Coli Can Be Used To Clean Up Nuclear Waste
jerryjamesstone writes "Researchers have found that E. coli can be used to recover uranium from tainted waters and can even be used to clean up nuclear waste. Using the bacteria along with inositol phosphate, the bacteria breaks down the phosphate — also called phytic acid — to free the phosphate molecules. The phosphate then binds to the uranium forming a uranium-phosphate precipitate on the cells of the bacteria. Those cells can then be harvested to recover the uranium." What has made this 14-year-old process economically feasible is the use of inositol phosphate, which is a cheap waste material from the production feedstock from plant material.
Surely the e-coli just wants to cuddle up to something warm, nothing unusual in that
If he's the Walrus then can I be a penguin please?
I for one welcome our new radioactive, disease spreading overlords!
Someone's bound to get bitten, and then what?
Will e-coliman protect us from the villains?
So a combined chemical and biological threat can defeat a nuclear one, after all!
Had they discovered that a couple of years ago they could have used all that e-coli infested frozen spinach that went to waste!
Doesn't e-coli live in sewers? So if we use sewer content to cool nuclear reactors, e-coli kills the nuclear waste and the reactor kills e-coli: two birds with one stone....
no, I don't have a sig
Does it mean that McDonalds is a safe place to hide in a nuclear war?
Shit happens.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
they will discover that the radiation has mutated the bacteria badly enough to create another disastrous plague...
One day we will find out that e-coli prefers uranium-235, not long after it happens to make a nice deposit of this benign material.
i'm sorry, but it's pronounced 'nucular'.
I for one welcome our radioactive super powered waste eating bacteria overlords
.... I'll get my coat.
can they also cure atomic radiations patients like those from (Chernobyl for you lot, hey where's my cyrillic)
even better would be E. coli, but perhaps I ask too much :(
She is rather egg-cellent to comment on e-coli.
All cows eat grass!
Nuclear E. coli can be used to clean up human waste. So everybody's a winner.
Just build petting zoos on top of nuclear waste dumps. Problem solved!
Welcome our new glowing self-mutating assbug overlords.
E coli lives up buttholes. Human and animal. Instead of running around like headless chickens people should learn to wash their goddam hands already, especially if they've been near buttholes or stuff that comes out of them or xcreature likely to have rolled around in stuff that comes out of them. Problem solved, hardly rocket fucking science is it?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Uranium is the element named after Uranus, right ? No wonder it attracts E.Coli.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
All those commenters that need to make that very funny joke about E.coli => poop. Man, that was funny when you were 6, not 20 or 30 years later.
But to go back on topic: This looks a bit like a solution looking for a problem. How much low grade uranium waste is there anyway? Or do they propose to use it in primary uranium mining, to make low uranium content ore usable?
Yes there is an unsolved waste problem with uranium fission, but this proposed solution is no solution to that.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Great, we have gone from uranium tainted water to E.Coli infected water. Take your pick!
I love hearing about turning aids into a cancer fighting ailment.
I love hearing about using waste from the farms to develop the ecoli, which will then recycle the nuclear waste we are accumulating.
Imagine if now, the nuclear waste did not have to go missing off the back end of ships and trucks everywhere, because we had a safe means of disposal....it would not only make the garbage management industry falter, but make us rethink our failure to adopt nuclear energy as a viable source for cities everywhere.
I long for the day when the "Green" movement is forced to concede that nuclear power is the ONLY path to true energy independence and abundance. I'm not interested in your pre-industrial-revolution utopia.
Paging Fred Small, paging Fred Small, there's a song in this story trying to get out.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
And now they're going to dump a bunch of E. coli into the Great Lake to... clean it up? What a country! http://www.beyondnuclear.org/storage/fermi_holtec-press_releasejune09.pdf
I resent McDonalds bashing jokes.
Their food is perfectly healthy and we had a guy eat McDonands for a whole month to prove it.
He gained one or two (or twenty) extra pounds not much to complain about.
He is alive and well !!!
(is he?)
Looks like its time to start moving assets into http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:JACK
Cool. Now my stool can glow in the dark!
One "Aw, Shit!" is worth 100 "Ata boys!"
How will this affect my nuclear piles?
The reference to Ghost in the Shell is tempting, but unfortunately, the "Japanese Miracle" from GitS involved using nanomachines for radiation clean-up. Still, pretty interesting.
The article says it can clean up nuclear waste. Does this mean it can clean up sites where a nuclear explosion has taken place? (Sorry if that's a dumb question, I'm not that knowledgeable on this). If so, I am more interested in what this will mean politically: does this mean using nuclear weapons has become a much easier option? Does having a nuclear weapon now become less of a deterrent?
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
All jokes aside, nuclear waste "mutated" E Coli. Why am I the only one who thinks this is a bad idea?
Making life radioactive? is that really a good idea?
blog.idigitall.com
Actually, I think the radioactivity will create viable mutations. But then those mutants need a niche that is exploitable by their particular mutation.
But all this mutation talk seems like it's off-topic. I'm more interested to hear more about this technique of precipitating metals using phytic acid.
We have large uranium mine tailings that need to be cleaned up. We also have other radioactive materials that need to be neutralized.
Also, I wonder if this technique can be used to extract materials such as Hafnium, now widely sought out for its use in processors.
Best regards.
That everyone down that river now constantly shits his pants, instead of losing hair, and that that makes them die even quicker. :P
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.