Researchers have discovered a soil microbe could help clean up nuclear waste: It produces a protein might snag, detect or filter radioactive particles.
Fission in nuclear reactors forges radioactive metal by-products so toxic that they must be stored deep underground, at great cost and effort, for millennia. But a protein made by a common microbe could help ease this hazardous burden, researchers report in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
In 2018 Cotruvo and a team of researchers first reported that Methylorubrum extorquens produces a protein called lanmodulin. The microbe uses this protein to grab naturally occurring metals, typically from a group called the lanthanides, to drive its metabolism. The researchers propose integrating the protein into radiation detectors and filters to extract these long-lived radioactive metals from contained nuclear waste. They could then be sequestered separately, decreasing the volume of material that needs extended monitoring and spacing. Alternatively, Cotruvo suggests, captured americium and curium could be recycled back into nuclear fuel.
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