Microbes Produce Power As They Clean Nuclear Waste 90
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."
Re:Nuclear Power + Genetic Modifications (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
despite your uid, you must be new here (Score:4, Insightful)
This is slashdot, and using a topic to pursue your own agenda is part of what makes this a shitty experience.
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We are working on recognizing a joke when they see it. I can't be sure, but I think even the toddler is ahead of you on that one.
I bet the toddler's ahead of you on that one, too.
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Chicks dig my slashdot cred.
Same here. They're always asking me to fix their computer, carry their things, listen to them complain about their boyfriends....
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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?
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So I guess this is a good time to mention Hitler?
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+1: Correct application of Godwin's Law :)
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It matters for purposes of discussing motivations.
If one doesn't care about motivations, one need not discuss them.
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Proud because possessing a vagina limits scientific prowess? Or proud because they scored one for team vagina?
Re:Nuclear Power + Genetic Modifications (Score:4, Funny)
> 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.
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Yes, of course, because typos and misspellings are a female problem just like bloodstains.
One simply cannot believe that a MENSA member might make a typo or not proofread something they wrote.
Do you really think this person doesn't know the difference between sexist and sexiest? (Both of which will not be caught by a spell checker, since they are correctly spelled words.)
BTW I would guess the source of pride is the simple visibility of a contribution to science made by a female team, as "hard science" is tr
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. I am proud that it was all done by a team of female researchers.
Personally I'm just proud of it.
It could have been done by nazi pedophile devil beasts and I would still have been proud of the research.
Them being females neither adds nor takes away from their results. Because this is science and it doesn't matter who does it.
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> It could have been done by nazi pedophile devil beasts and I would still have been proud of the research.
But what if it was female nazis? (I'm pretty sure nazis had females too, someone had to sew all those swastikas.)
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It could have been done by nazi pedophile devil beasts and I would still have been proud of the research.
Indeed, nazis such as Dr Mengele did lots of medical research whose results are still useful today!
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> Anyone who is truly concerned about our environment must admit that there is no cleaner energy source then nuclear
Great statement, a nice way to open the door to discussion. Reminds me of GWB: "You're either with us, or against us".
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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.
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If they oppose it, then it is a clear proof that their motivations are not as clear as they wish us to believe.
Or, more probably, they don't believe your formula, and are wary of hidden snags.
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99.999999999% and then some of all the life forms on Earth are bacteria. Assuming you're human, the bacteria in your own body outnumber the not-bacteria cells more than 100:1.
The bacteria own the the biosphere, from the highest reaches of the atmosphere to miles beneath the surface. The mass of bacteria outweigh all of the algae in the seas, plus all the trees, plus every other plant and animal living by 10x. Even if you break those down into individual cells, bacteria outnumber those cells by 10:1.
The
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You nuke fetishists are predictably absolutist. "Then they must support this technology" is the knee-jerk bottom line of all you nuke fetishists, no matter what the new nuke technology announced.
You're also completely crazy, "Mensa (insecure and medium IQ) Babe". You don't care about CO2 because plants breathe it, and you want climate change, but you're more enviro than thou?
I'm sure you've been corrected many times before. Just shut up already. Your privilege of posting in public doesn't entitle you to yam
Almost there... (Score:4, Funny)
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Where do you think all those nuclear products came from? We are all stardust :)
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So, feeding microbes mutagenic nuclear waste. What could possibly go wrong?
You forgot that those are genetically modified microbes.
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Re:Hmmm..... (Score:5, Funny)
A rat teaches them martial arts?
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This made me laugh out loud and startle my sleeping wife beside me.
Well done indeed.
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I'm always impressed by the quality of the writing in these sorts of things. It's honestly inspiring because I know anyone who would seemingly waste such talent on anonymous shit stories must find better outlets for their abilities. I hope you are creating something that makes the world a better place, you can.
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I also have modpoints and would also mod you artfully dissonant. Send it to Hustler Magazine with an SASE and see if they buy it. And work on your standup routine.
renewable energy (Score:1)
How is this renewable energy??? is there a constant influx of nuclear waste?? oh yes there is... sorry, my bad
The power is chemical (Score:4, Informative)
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molecules doesn't make the atoms less radioactive. Only time (or, in some very
specific cases, neutron irradiation) will do that.
What this does is turning radioactive waste into living radioactive waste...
Re:The power is chemical (Score:4, Insightful)
What this does is turning radioactive waste into living radioactive waste...
It's better than that. While the value of the bacteria generating energy seems utterly irrelevant, the bacteria do provide opportunities to concentrate the nuclear material , in other words, to remove it from the environment, and that's valuable. And maybe there is some minor value in the energy part, it could be a measure of activity.
Re:The power is chemical (Score:5, Insightful)
The bacteria take uranium out of solution and turn it into nanowires outside their outer membrane. They have tested it outside in a uranium mine tailings pile. The goal is to build a bacterial water treatment cell that produces electricity while it filters out dissolved uranium.
This is not for generating power, the energy produced is a by-product. I doubt that the resultant energy would pay for it's own production. However, the electricity could be used to help pump water through the system, which is a neat trick and will help to reduce cleanup costs.
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This is not for generating power, the energy produced is a by-product. I doubt that the resultant energy would pay for it's own production. However, the electricity could be used to help pump water through the system, which is a neat trick and will help to reduce cleanup costs.
I very much doubt it would be even worth that much. The article source(s) are very scant on details, but one of the many tricky aspects of constructing any microbial battery is engineering a system that would effectively and efficiently separate charges in a way that can be usefully harnessed. But even if they should solve the problem of developing good cathode/anode pairs, the conditions these bugs are expected to work under would not be expected to approach a remotely useful energy density.
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so when the concentration of bacteria becomes too high, they become supercritical and will explode? nice..
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If they could enrich the uranium as well, that'd be quite a feat. Somehow I doubt that the bacterium would make their own tiny centrifuges though...
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Seriously? If they could enrich the uranium as well, that'd be quite a feat. Somehow I doubt that the bacterium would make their own tiny centrifuges though...
Maybe U-235 tastes better than U-238...
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so when the concentration of bacteria becomes too high, they become supercritical and will explode?
No, they just form into a giant fire-breathing lizard.
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It was a ridiculous idea.
free energy (Score:1)
just add nuclear waste
Nuke Mars (Score:1)
Possibly a Filter Method for Radio Active Waste? (Score:3)
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?
Now if only.. (Score:1)
Now if only people would shoot themselves in their foot, and be sacrificial fodder for the greater good, we could force them to spend exorbitant amounts of their dollars into making nanowires, improved syntheic bacteria based on the ones the researchers used.
Why aren't anyone shooting their own foot for the greater good?!! People are so selfish.
BTW I won't shoot my own foot because I genuinely need it. So don't blame me. There are people who can afford to shoot themselves in the foot. Ask them to pay for it
Uranium (Score:3)
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-journalonline.com] 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!).
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To prove your point where did the uranium come from in the first place? It came from whatever past supernovas made up the dust and gas that made up our solar system. So it has at least been around at least 5 billion years maybe more. Like you said it is the radiation that is the problem and having such a long half life is good. I means every once in a while it decays and the radiation is very little compared with background radiation. The short half life stuff on the order of days and weeks isn't that bad e
You all know the drill (Score:2)
1. Wacky new source of power reported that will POWER ALL THE THINGS!
2. Never heard about again
3. "What ever happened to that what's it called? The thing? The- ah, never mind..."
You go gerl! (Score:2)
Reguera has filed patents to build on her research, which could lead to the development of microbial fuel cells capable of generating electricity while cleaning up after environmental disasters.
Way to speed up the process of building tools to protect people from disasters!
Woman Powered (Score:3)
This is excellent research. I noticed in the picture of the MSU research team [msu.edu] 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.
Hmmm... (Score:1)
Eureka! (Score:2)
Terraforming (Score:2)
We must make sure we keep this out of enemy hands. The Daleks could reclaim their planet Skaro from the Thals with this technology.
Cool! (Score:2)
nuff said!
Japanese Miracle in action... (Score:1)
Looks good (Score:1)