Strange growth found on nuclear fuel

Oh good Lord! Why did it have to be in Georgia? I always prefer when this freaky stuff happens on the other side of the world.

I'm honestly sick of hearing about/worrying about nuclear energy issues. It's not worth it.

there is no proof the stuff is an organism

must suspect its a chemical reaction & the residue & not some mutated organism
...but who knows... thanks for the info, i will be looking in the news for some follow up reports on the foreign material

reply to post by isyeye


Kind of reminds me of this "morgellons" disease that is becoming popular . I wonder if this is a cover story for that?

I also wonder as we are getting so many disaster stories with nuclear if we are on the edge of perhaps revealing newer forms of energy devices, somehow i doubt it though.

We can all live in hope though i suppose.

Did someone mention a bad horror movie?

Sorry, I couldn't resist. Good post OP!
ETA It's from The Blob, just in case,

Hopefully its as tasty as The Stuff.

Morgellons is now becoming radioactive morgellons?



The first sign will be glowing pigs.



www.viewzone.com...

reply to post by JBA2848


You took the thought right out of my head.

As soon as I saw "lint" and "organism" I thought of the fibers people have reported with Morgellon's symptoms.
We most certainly need to pay close attention to this developing information.

Originally posted by steveknows

Originally posted by Areyoupeopleinsane
I'm surprised by the immaturity of your responses to the article. Is this something to be expected from you?

Perhaps the better synopsis is that we may have discovered an organism capable of withstanding high levels of radiation. We can then endeavor to determine by what mechanism it obtains this capability and perhaps use it to treat radiation sickness, and or adapt our bodies to better withstand the effects of radiation.

But hoping the containment facilities are sufficient to prevent a zombie attack is ludicrous at best.

Alot of organisms can handle high levels of radiation. It's not a biggy.

Which ones?

reply to post by isyeye


Why did Morgellons come to mind when I read this...?

www.morgellons.org...

EDIT to add: Should read the thread before replying. I see others had the selfsame thought!

reply to post by brommas


Sorry for not referring to your Morgellon's comment and giving you the credit deserved for mentioning it first.
Good call!

Originally posted by kosmicjack
Oh good Lord! Why did it have to be in Georgia?

It's not in Georgia, it's in South Carolina.

Does that make you feel any better though? I work there and live about 25 miles from there and haven't seen any zombie fibers running around yet...

Funny,
My first thought was an organism that feeds on waste nuclear materials.

Kind of like the rusticles that are eating Titanic. Be nice to have a naturally occuring organism that we could utilize to help get rid of radioactive waste.

It has to be feeding....

You know, this thread has jogged my memory into recalling this strange thread:
"Mysterious BP bugs swim through solid steel" by Maxmars
www.abovetopsecret.com...

It's certainly worth a looksee when discussing scifi creatures we don't want to believe exist.

Sounds like a pretty effective virus-like life form that could potentially disable ALL our nuclear facilities and nuclear capabilities. hmmmm good or bad? IDK. If it consumes the radiation it would seem its good, but if it exposes the fuel and causes explosions that'd be baaaaad.

This article talks about "Bacterial Nanowires Could Revolutionize Electronics" seems Geobacter sulfurreducens bacteria was discovered in the 1980s and has been passed around from University of Massachusetts and Arizona State University.

news.discovery.com...

The strings of nanowires, called pili, allow the bacteria to get rid of electrons that are a byproduct of its digestive process. Humans and animals get rid of electrons through breathing, according to Mark Tuominen, professor of physics at UMass and lead author of the paper. But bacteria living in anaerobic zones don't have oxygen to carry the electrons. Each one of these spaghetti-like strands is 10 to 20 times longer than the bacteria itself, according to Tuominen

But whats interesting is this second article."How Bacteria Clean Up Nuclear Waste" This is the same bacteria, called Geobacter sulfurreducens.

blogs.discovery.com...

Bacteria can clean up toxins, oil spills and nuclear waste, essentially by eating the stuff. But until now nobody was quite sure how they did it. Gemma Reguera and her team at Michigan State University found that the key is a structure called the pilus, a hair-like appendage that acts like a wire.

The bacteria, called Geobacter sulfurreducens, transfer electrons via the pilus to the metals that they feed off of. Transferring the electrons gives the bacteria energy. It also changes the ionization state of the metal, changing it to a form that precipitates out of water. A colony of Geobacter living near a pile of nuclear waste would extract the uranium, making it easier to handle and remove.

So who got permission to run a experiment in a nuclear facility and is using a cover story of oh we found something that eats nuclear waste but it came from a different country? Or did a student or professor run a illegal experiment without permission in a nuclear facility? They act like they never seen this stuff befor in the OP's article but I found two articles that say they have had this stuff doing experiments since the 1980's.

reply to post by Areyoupeopleinsane

Cockroaches and fruit flies, according to wiki with fruit flies having the upper hand.

Spider Webs? Radiation?
Did there happen to be a nerdy newspaper photographer around?
One with an incredibly hot red headed girlfriend?
Was there also a small time criminal in the web with a note attached for the police?

Here is some more information posted from another thread that was started.

Originally posted by Echotebarknwhale


Amazing! Cant wait to find out what this stuff is. Sounds like something right out of a comic book. What are your thoughts/opinions? If it was an organism, maybe we could figure out some way to use these as radiation shields in space or in plant meltdowns since they seem to be resistant to radiation

io9.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

The safety board's report claimed that the initial sample of the growth was too small to characterize, and that "further evaluation still needs to be completed."

I don't know what's more intriguing — the fact that the "growth" resembles a spider web, the fact that it may be biological in nature, or the fact that (even after collecting a sample of the stuff) we still don't know what it is or where it came from.

We've already tried getting in touch with both the Savannah River Site as well as the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, but so far have been unable to speak with anybody to ask additional questions about the growth and where it's occurring specifically.

Full sizeCould we be dealing with an unknown species of extremophile? It's possible — the Savannah River Site's storage facility (The L Area Complex mentioned above) stores spent nuclear waste in pools that are anywhere from 17-30 feet deep, and while that water is enough to protect the site's workers from radiation, the growth was reportedly found underwater on the submerged fuel assemblies themselves.

Having said that, we're still not clear on how much, if any, radiation this growth has actually been exposed to. Organisms with a natural resistance to radiation are said to be "radioresistant," and certainly do exist; Deinococcus radiodurans, for example (pictured here) is not only one of the most naturally radioresistant organisms on Earth, we've actually genetically engineered Deinococcus that can be used in the treatment of radioactive waste.

I posted on another thread before realizing this one was already here, so enjoy:

Nuclear spiders? Ninja turtles?

No, but seriously, that is pretty amazing. I would say that slightly ups the chances of microbial extraterrestrial life, been finding bacteria in the craziest places recently, I wonder if we'll eventually find bacteria thriving on other local planets/moons and such.

I would be a bit careful about this # though, all jokes about Ninja turtles aside, radioactivity is known to pervert and mutate DNA rather chaotically has it not? It would be shame for the world to end in a flurry of radioactive bacteria that out competes everything else, but I guess Earth life would live on one way or another, intelligent or not.

Not that it is intelligent now.

reply to post by kosmicjack


I think it happened in South Carolina, not in the city of Savannah, Ga. Still pretty close though, the article isn't misleading, it is just lacking as far as this particular detail.

Wiki - Savannah River National Laboratory

No offense kosmicjack, but it's kind of weird how a post that is completely wrong gets four stars out of no where.

reply to post by isyeye


How much you want to bet mushrooms grow out of it....I am betting Mycelium....Welcome to your first glimpse of mother nature guiding our hands towards a solution....but will they recognize it....I am going to bet its a FLY