New Bacteria Could Clean Contaminate Uranium Sites

Mining Australia reported that a new strain of bacteria that “breathes” uranium could be used at uranium processing sites.

As quoted in the market news:

A team of Rutgers University scientists and collaborators discovered the bacteria in soil at an old uranium ore mill in Rifle, Colorado, 321 kilometers west of Denver.

The team’s discovery, published in the April 13, 2015 issue of Public Library of Science (PLoS) One, is the first time scientists have found a bacterium from a common class known asbetaproteobacteria that breathes uranium.  This bacterium can breathe either oxygen or uranium to drive the chemical reactions that provide life-giving energy. After the newly discovered bacteria interact with uranium compounds in water, the uranium becomes immobile,” said Lee Kerkhof, a professor of marine and coastal science in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences.

“It is no longer dissolved in the groundwater and therefore can’t contaminate drinking water brought to the surface.”

According to Kerkhof, Breathing uranium is rather rare in the microbial world. A media release from Rutgers University explains that most examples of bacteria which can respire uranium cannot breathe oxygen but often breathe compounds based on metals – typically forms of solid iron. Scientists had previously witnessed decreasing concentrations of uranium in groundwater when iron-breathing bacteria were active, but they have yet to show that those iron-breathing bacteria were directly respiring the uranium.

Click here to read the full Mining Australia report.