NextBigFuture - Researchers at the UK's Birmingham University have recovered uranium from the radioactive waters of uranium mines using bacteria and inositol phosphate, a chemical parallel of a cheap waste material from plants. The same technology can also be used to clean up nuclear waste.
Professor Lynne Macaskie Sunday presented the group's work to the Society for General Microbiology's meeting at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh.
Bacteria, in this case, E. coli, break down a source of inositol phosphate, also called phytic acid, a phosphate storage material in seeds, to free the phosphate molecules.
The phosphate then binds to the uranium, forming a uranium phosphate precipitate on the bacterial cells that can be harvested to recover the uranium.
This process was first described in 1995, but then a more expensive additive was used and that, combined with the then low price of uranium, made the process uneconomic. (abstract pdf)
The discovery that inositol phosphate is potentially six times more effective as well as being a cheap waste material means that the process becomes economically viable, especially as the world price of uranium is likely to increase as countries move to expand their nuclear technologies in a bid to produce low-carbon energy. See Lynne Macaskie staff profile and read full at NextBigFuture