Mysterious "white web" found growing on nuclear waste

Mysterious "white web" found growing on nuclear waste

io9.com

This is as fascinating as it is unsettling. Scientists at the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site — a nuclear reservation in South Carolina — have identified a strange, cob-web like "growth" (their word, not ours) on the racks of the facility's spent nuclear fuel assemblies.

Could we be dealing with an unknown species of extremophile?

(visit the link for the full news article)

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)

There is a thread started on this already

www.abovetopsecret.com...

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.

This is very weird. I'm sure there is an simple, scientific explanation for this. Even if there is not one, i'm sure the government would find a way to sweep this under the rug. It would be interesting to see what further developments happen for this.

Maybe some shadowing government organization finally did some good for the world by developing radiation scrubbers... or maybe nature is doing it for us.

Originally posted by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi
Maybe some shadowing government organization finally did some good for the world by developing radiation scrubbers... or maybe nature is doing it for us.

What a fascinating idea and suggestion! My first thought was like everyone else I suppose....what have we gone and created this time?! However, you raise a possibility I'm ashamed to say hadn't even crossed my mind. Perhaps nature is using the extreme environment of radioactive waste to morph new life which adapts to that and actually feeds on it. Wouldn't that just be a Miracle in it's own right for how nature always finds a way.

Oh I'd just be struck speechless in awe if we were to find you're right and in the piles of death we have stacked around the nation, we find the hope which literally consumes the problem as part of it's own life cycle. Heck...I'd read about organisms actually living inside the water of reactor cores..of all places to find anything at all. I suppose what you suggest is as likely as anything and a whole lot more positive and hopeful than most ideas.

Hope we can find one big enough to bite me and then I could be mutate and get cool spiderman powers.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


yeah I find it amazing how nature seems to always find a way. As a kid I used to find it almost unbelievable when you would see a small plant that had somehow pushed heavy tarmac or concrete aside over the years to get to the sun.

but back to the radiation point, I swear I saw a doc about evolution and they have found worms and other ground invertebrates living around Chernobyl that have a higher resistance to radiation than any other animals, which did not have these attributes pre-disaster. They were making the point that its evolution happening within a human lifetime and its not something that can only happen over long periods. Although I would say that this rate of change is only possible for the simpler forms of life.

reply to post by Echotebarknwhale


Everything has it's equal or opposite.

If a nuclear bomb can cause death, it can also be responsible for life. ( or the birth of it )

It's not like we get to study the effects of nuclear explosions in the REAL world often so this would just be a thing that would have to happen and then we would asses it from there.


Companies in power don't like to admit they don't know something. So if they are or do, then there is definitely warning for concern or at the very least a red flag pops up.

Originally posted by Elpasdo
reply to post by Wrabbit2000

 

yeah I find it amazing how nature seems to always find a way. As a kid I used to find it almost unbelievable when you would see a small plant that had somehow pushed heavy tarmac or concrete aside over the years to get to the sun.

but back to the radiation point, I swear I saw a doc about evolution and they have found worms and other ground invertebrates living around Chernobyl that have a higher resistance to radiation than any other animals, which did not have these attributes pre-disaster. They were making the point that its evolution happening within a human lifetime and its not something that can only happen over long periods. Although I would say that this rate of change is only possible for the simpler forms of life.

I might have seen the same documentary on Chernobyl now that you mention that. As I recall it was a biologist or similar science specialist with his team, going back on a fairly regular basis to document the effects on, like you say, worms and other forms of life likely to show major changes under those conditions. If I recall right myself, he was finding some startling changes in such a short period. The funny thing is, I went looking for this or any reports of it after Japan blew it's nuclear cork and couldn't even find a mention that such a documentary ever existed. Go figure?

I also distinctly recall (I'll never forget it) another program showing the formalin filled jars on row after row of shelves for the birth defects and biological mutations of the human population effected by Chernobyl. The one in particular that burned into my mind was a perfectly formed and developed baby in every way, save one. It was a perfectly formed and symmetrical CYCLOPS. The stuff of myth and children's books..but sure enough..there one was in a jar somewhere in the Ukraine as part of their medical collections for the accident there.

I'm dying to hear more about what their white web is when they've had time to fully analyse it....if they deem it worthy to followup with and report to the public.

Originally posted by Elpasdo
reply to post by Wrabbit2000

 

yeah I find it amazing how nature seems to always find a way. As a kid I used to find it almost unbelievable when you would see a small plant that had somehow pushed heavy tarmac or concrete aside over the years to get to the sun.

but back to the radiation point, I swear I saw a doc about evolution and they have found worms and other ground invertebrates living around Chernobyl that have a higher resistance to radiation than any other animals, which did not have these attributes pre-disaster. They were making the point that its evolution happening within a human lifetime and its not something that can only happen over long periods. Although I would say that this rate of change is only possible for the simpler forms of life.

That was from the movie Godzilla that you are talking about.

There are a few people still living near Chernobyl there a very old couple that refused to leave.

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)

Next thing you know people will be saying spider-man is prophesy.

This sounds much like the little known cause for electonics failures called the "tin whisker effect"

nepp.nasa.gov...

Certain materials possessing differences of potential (voltages) cause the molecules to reach out and bridge build in the effort to neutralize that voltage. Happens all the time with surface mount technology electronics (computers) that I've been dealing with for decades.

Originally posted by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi
Maybe some shadowing government organization finally did some good for the world by developing radiation scrubbers... or maybe nature is doing it for us.

Well, the article does mention the species Deinococcus radiodurans (latin for "radiation surviving" and also nicknamed "Conan The Bacterium") which is a highly survivable species. It can resist cold, dehydration, acid, and vacuum, and radioactive conditions.

Wikipedia has this to say about it's history:

D. radiodurans was discovered in 1956 by Arthur W. Anderson at the Oregon Agricultural Experiment Station in Corvallis, Oregon.[6] Experiments were being performed to determine if canned food could be sterilized using high doses of gamma radiation. A tin of meat was exposed to a dose of radiation that was thought to kill all known forms of life, but the meat subsequently spoiled, and D. radiodurans was isolated.
The complete DNA sequence of D. radiodurans was published in 1999 by TIGR. A detailed annotation and analysis of the genome appeared in 2001.[3] The sequenced strain was ATCC BAA-816.
Deinococcus radiodurans has a unique quality in which it can repair both single- and double-stranded DNA. When a mutation is apparent to the cell, it brings it into a compartmental ring-like structure, where the DNA is repaired and then is able to fuse the nucleoids from the outside of the compartment with the damaged DNA.

It certainly sounds like this "cob-web-like" species will fall into the same Genus "Deinococcus".

Mushroom mycelium looks exactly like a white web. Mycelium grows like a network of a fine, white thread throughout nature and feeds off of dying or dead organic material.



However, a genius mycologist by the name of Paul Stamets has found a way to train specific mushroom strains to feed off of and absorb more artificial and deadly materials. He successfully used his mycelium to soak up and rehabilitate a huge pile of dirt saturated with oil and gasoline. He also has top secret patents that have been mentioned in Jane's Defense Weekly that are strains of mushroom being used to depotentiate or clean up uranium. It is absolutely amazing. For anyone not aware, I recommend his book "Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World". You can hear him talk about these groundbreaking discoveries here:

reply to post by corsair00


It does resemble mycelium, however, they did not say that it was growing in soil and furthermore, there hasn't been any studies (at least to my knowledge) that indicates that mycelium is radioresistant. I assume it could have been a type of Microfungi, living off of the organisms on the ground, but still we have to take in account the radioactivity.

Paul Stamets On Radiation Contamination Around Fukushima

By sampling other mushroom-forming fungi for their selective ability to hyper-accumulate radioactivity, we can learn a great deal while helping the ecosystem recover. Not only will some mushroom species hyper-accumulate radioactive compounds, but research has also shown that some mycorrhizal fungi bind and sequester radioactive elements so they remain immobilized for extended periods of time. Surprisingly, we learned from the Chernobyl disaster that many species of melanin-producing fungi have their growth stimulated by radiation.