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Are radioactive monsters real? Are radioactive waters the reason they exist? How do we clean this water? A bacteria may be the answer.

 1 By: Daniel Trevino

If there is one captivating mystery in this world it is the idea of mutated monsters running around filled with radiation ready to kill anything on sight. These ideas stem from pop culture movies such as, Chernobyl diaries, Godzilla, and The Hills Have Eyes. While there are no definitive reports that such monsters exist, there is one common factor with these monsters. That factor is a radioactive source full of radioactive contaminants, such as bodies of water, contaminated with radioactive contaminants. If these monsters were to arise wouldn't it be a good idea to take away their source of mutation so more don't appear?  An article posted on the Environmental Science and Technology journal presented a possible solution to cleaning these radioactive waters. Their idea involved the use of a specific bacteria found in a fresh water lake in Mexico. They used this bacteria to uptake radioactive material that are commonly found in radioactive waters.

Image: Can life survive in a nuclear environment (Katsnelson, 2019)
Image: Can life survive in a nuclear environment (Katsnelson, 2019)

The bacteria ended up removing a great amount of radioactive contaminants. This means that this bacteria is a possible solution in cleaning many bodies of water around the world! This is a great advancement not only in the removal of radioactive material, but also for environmental sustainability. However, this is only a solution for a clean-up, it does not prevent radioactive waste from washing away into the water again. So, maybe radioactive monsters still have a chance. Let's hope we find ways to clean up and prevent these radioactive sources from giving them that chance.


References:

Katsnelson, A. 2019. Can life survive in a nuclear environment? BBC Science Focus Magazine. https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/the-road-to-recovery-how-life-can-survive-in-a-radioactive-environment/

Mehta, N., Benzerara, K., Kocar, B.D., and Virginie Chapon. 2019. Sequestration of Radionuclides Radium-226 and Strontium-90 by Cyanobacteria Forming Intracellular Calcium Carbonates. Environ. Sci. Technol. 53:12639-12647.


Comments

  1. M MendezOctober 21, 2020 at 5:50 PM

    Using bacteria to remediate media contaminated with radioactive isotopes is a very interesting research area. Is it possible to use this at an industrial source of the radiation? Since the focus of environmental sustainability is pollution prevention, maybe this bacteria could be used to prevent downstream contamination.

    ReplyDelete

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