Radiotrophic fungus
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
The original study is open access and is worth reading. Here's an interesting little review:
> The literature already contains some indirect evidence for the notion that radiation can enhance the growth of melanized microorganisms. For example, the melanotic fungus C. cladosporioides manifests radiotropism by growing in the direction of radioactive particles and this organism has become widely distributed in the areas surrounding Chernobyl since the nuclear accident in 1986 [7]. Both in the laboratory and in the field several other species of melanized fungi grew towards soil particles contaminated with different radionuclides, gradually engulfing and destroying those particles [35], [36]. In addition, there are recent reports that certain life forms can utilize non-conventional forms of energy - microbes in geothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean can harvest thermal radiation as an energy source [37] while some microorganisms living in mines exploit energy from radiolysis of water [38]. On the basis of these precedents and the results of this study we cautiously suggest that the ability of melanin to capture electromagnetic radiation combined with its remarkable oxidation-reduction properties may confer upon melanotic organisms the ability to harness radiation for metabolic energy. The enhanced growth of melanotic fungi in conditions of radiation fluxes suggests the need for additional investigation to ascertain the mechanism for this effect.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1866175/
In particular the part about growing towards contaminated particles, "engulfing and destroying" them, seems like a finding with enormous practical potential.
I wonder what they mean... Perhaps they simply mean "break up"
> Two ways of radioactive particles destruction by C. cladosporioides were established, one of them is a direct way by fungal overgrowth of hot particles and the second one an indirect way only by fungal metabolites.
> It has been found out for the first time that Cladosporium cladosporioides and Penicillium roseo-purpureum are able actively overgrow "hot" particles whose radioactivity did not exceed 3.1-1.0(-7) Ci by gamma-spectrum and to destroy them 50-150 days later.
So it seems that the fungus forms a layer around the particle?
[1] https://europepmc.org/abstract/med/12664550 [2] https://europepmc.org/abstract/med/1753889
I’d highly doubt that.
I.e. if you seed radioactive soil with radiotrophic fungi, wait a few years, and then mechanically separate fungus from soil particles, the separated soil would be less radioactive than it had been previously.
I don't believe neutron activation is significant anywhere on Earth outside the containment of a fission reactor, power research facilities, or nuclear bomb tests. So mostly, places slowly become less radioactive over time unless you get radioactive particulates from one of the aforementioned sources, or from a natural concentration, and release them into the environment somewhere.
Bio-accumulation can occur, such as the naturally radioactive potassium in a banana, but that's just shifting around the radioactive materials already present in the environment.
Wherever you dump the fungus, or the ashes of the fungus, will be more radioactive than before. So a bio-remediation plan would likely grow fungus, separate most of it from the soil, and allow the remaining fraction to regrow, repeating as necessary. The separated fungus would be burned, and any radioactive fractions removed from the exhaust gases and dissolved in liquid or crystallized somehow. The ash would be vitrified into glass pellets.
And then it'd probably still be less radioactive than an asphalt parking lot. But okay, seal it all up inside a drum and forget about it for 10000 years anyway.
Of course significant is in eye of the beholder, but those places do exceed typical background doses a lot.
If you tack up a slab of any stable nucleus higher than iron on the nuclear binding energy curve to the inside walls of a neutron chain-reaction reactor, you can probably get it to absorb neutrons of the appropriate speed and become unstable, promising future radioactivity with an amount of energy between its current state and whatever its final decay product may be. That may be less total energy than the difference between uranium and lead, but it probably runs faster from start to finish than billions of years, and is probably more energy than the absorbed neutron.
So aside from natural reactors, which mostly shut down a long time ago, the only increases in radioactive potential are going to be from human-built reactors. The radon is just moving primordial radioactive potential from where the radium is, which is also where the uranium or thorium is, to wherever heavier-than-air gases can accumulate. If you remove the radium, you stop that. If you encapsulate the radium in a glass that traps gas, you stop that.
Mostly, we don't bother trying to remove trace amounts of uranium and other radioactive isotopes from mineral resources, but if a fungus could do it cheaply, it could make coal ash less dangerous to process and store.
Then sprinkle in some high-melanin humans, to grow your very own super-mutant facility personel. Perhaps also feed them mushrooms, to speed up the adaptation process.
The next generation will be... autotrophic?
[0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/paul-stamets... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI5frPV58tY
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Mycelium-Running-Mushrooms-Help-World...
Might they be a future food source? Radioactive materials could be coated in an inert material and made into pellets which would be easy to filter from the final resulting food.
Most of our "energy generation" is still based on 19th century physics
Sure heating stuff and turning water into steam is easy, but it might not be the most efficient way of turning some sources into energy
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-possible-to-convert-nuclear-ener...
PIDEC sounds like it works well with conventional IV gen reactors, achieving an extra 40% efficiency. ICC (a kind of DEC) seems suited to fusion and can exceed 90% efficiency.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/outdoors/ceramicspeed-chainles...
It's a shaft with a weird gear at the end. The gear teeth spin on ball bearings.
This company is known for selling snake oil products to amateur cyclists.
When I see this on Tour de France I’ll believe it.
if something is too good, like the really aerodynamic handlebars, they won't be allowed
The spirit of racing is that the race should be won largely by the best bicyclist, not the best bicycle. I'd expect a more efficient transmission would certainly be considered.
For now I'm quite dubious, especially the claim that it gets more efficient the faster you go.
Thus almost all bikes and nearly all motorcycles use chains, the higher the performance the more likely they are to use chains. However electric bikes (where efficiency isn't as important) or harley motorcycles sometimes use belts. As do folding bikes where you might come in contact with the belt.
But racing bikes or motorcycles are pretty much always chains.
The only other ways of generating electricity we use are different way of getting mechanical power, like wind or water, and solar cells. The latter is the only one on top of my head that's not mechanical.
Maybe making electrons move sensibly isn't that easy. Heat seems easy.
This is also the reason why kilopower (a replacement for RTGs) is looking to replace thermoelectric conversion with sterling engines that are 30% to 34% efficient.
Improvements come from running hotter or from avoiding producing heat in the first place. Some newer nuclear reactor designs output their heat at very high temperature, and devices like fuel cells and direct capture of beta particles can, in principle, exceed the Carnot efficiency available from using the fuel to heat something.
Direct thermoelectric conversion usually peaks in at about 10% effiency on the top end.
Steam Turbines can hammer down 40% and more easily.
In particular, I learned in the wake of the Fukushima incident that the mycologist Paul Stamets suggests an unusual plan to remove radioactive and other pollutants from soil/land. [1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycoremediation
[1] https://www.permaculture.co.uk/articles/using-fungi-remediat...
i.e., Naturally occurring radiation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reacto...
I imagine fungi and bacteria might have evolved to be able to utilize the radioactive energy in areas with relatively high concentration.
Not to suggest that the melanin with these particular fungi wasn't a wee bit unique to make it better at dealing with converting ionizing radiation usefully, or that natural selection hasn't taken place to improve the existing melanin for even better utilization of this abundant, high-energy source! I just don't think that the fungi created this from scratch after the exposure began.