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Microbes Produce Power As They Clean Nuclear Waste
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at Michigan State University (MSU) have isolated and explained the phenomenon that causes microbes to generate electricity while cleaning up nuclear waste. The team is hoping to use their findings to create a microbial fuel cell that is capable of generating renewable energy while it cleans up environments exposed to nuclear waste. The bacteria the team studied is a kind of geobacter that is covered in a coat of tiny, natural nanowires that protect the bacteria from the toxic materials. While completing the complex task of stabilizing radioactive spills, the bacteria simultaneously creates energy that can be harnessed and used as a zero-emissions power supply."
Now if we can only find a bacterium that converts sunlight into nuclear waste we'll have near infinite clean energy!
Note that what is going on is essentially chemical, not nuclear. That is, the bacteria are getting energy out by chemical processes of elements that happen to be radioactive. If one had a sample of pure uranium 238 (which is radioactive but only a tiny bit so, with a very very long halflife) these bacteria would act identically. And if one could magically make uranium not radioactive the behavior of these bacteria would not change at all.
A rat teaches them martial arts?
You're forgetting about Hanlon's Razor.
The larger concern I have here -- a position taken that anyone in disagreement must be duplicitous, without even allowing an opposing argument to be first presented, is no way to have a serious discussion.
This is, indeed, great research. Why muddy the waters with a bunch of flamebaiting?
Proud because possessing a vagina limits scientific prowess? Or proud because they scored one for team vagina?
This is slashdot, and using a topic to pursue your own agenda is part of what makes this a shitty experience.
You're forgetting about Hanlon's Razor.
You're forgetting about Grey's Law.
Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
If they're vocal and annoying enough, does it matter if the cause is through ignorance or intent?
> Proud because possessing a vagina limits scientific prowess?
Proud because a team of female researchers is half the price, so it is not only a scientific achievement, but also an economical one.
lucm, indeed.
FTFA, “Our findings clearly identify nanowires as being the primary catalyst for uranium reduction.They are essentially performing nature’s version of electroplating with uranium, effectively immobilizing the radioactive material and preventing it from leaching into groundwater,”
The biggest bleeding hemorrhoid of New Clear Power is the Radio Waste. Filter the radio active part away from the trash, and the trash can recycled. The Radio Active Waste part can then be recombined into something else that is useful. I was thinking of expensive blast furnaces with a combination of fractionating columns. But if some type of Bacteria can do the job, all be it one atom at a time, then my giant blast furnace patent could be in real jeopardy. So this now begs the question, how could one test it? Maybe a road trip to Chernobyl?
nuclear energy + genetic engineering + nanoparticles = clean planet
Yes. Maybe a little *too* clean. In other words, I, for one, welcome our new nuclear-fed, genetic engineered nano particle overlords.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Uranium generally isn't a problem in radioactive spills or contamination. It's not particularly biotoxic as a metal or oxide and with very long half-lives for the two most common isotopes (U-235's half-life is 700 million years and for U-238 it's 4.5 billion years) it's not even very radioactive by itself. Most uranium ore bodies contain a lot of decay products like radium, thorium, polonium etc. which have built up over millions or billions of years and these are exposed to the wider environment when the uranium ore is mined and refined. A method of concentrating and sequestering such short-halflife isotopes from mine tailings would be more useful than this biological method which only, it seems, concentrates uranium. Right now the Japanese would really like a variant that, say, concentrated cesium in a similar manner as Cs-134 and Cs-137 are 99.9% of the contamination problem in the area around Fukushima.
It might be this particular form of the bacteria could be better used to extract uranium from lesser ore bodies or even seawater where it is present in quantities of about 3 tonnes per cubic kilometre but right now and for the next fifty years or more uranium ore is plentiful enough that the costs of such marginal operations would outweigh the value of uranium metal (currently trading on world markets for 60 dollars a kilo) extracted by them.
Of course uranium has a scary reputation -- see this news report for an example. Further comments suggest the uranium in question was 500 milligrammes of yellowcake in a sealed vial, a gift from a friend studying chem eng who had prepared it from ore found in New Mexico (just lying about out in the open! Horrors!).
This is excellent research. I noticed in the picture of the MSU research team that they're all women. I hope they can inspire more women to join the scientific research community. We need more people in it, and women are the majority of people. Without getting closer to 50:50 gender parity, we're losing the talent and hard work of a large fraction of the people pool we need to draw from. More role models will get more women to follow suit, just as they do for men.
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make install -not war