Scientists Discover a Bacterium That “Breathes” Uranium and Renders it Immobile

A strain of bacteria that "breathes" uranium may hold the key to cleaning up polluted groundwater at sites where uranium ore was processed to make nuclear weapons… A team of Rutgers University scientists and collaborators discovered the bacteria in soil at an old uranium ore mill in Rifle, Colorado, almost 200 miles west of Denver. The site is one of nine such mills in Colorado used during the heyday of nuclear weapons production… "After the newly discovered bacteria interact with uranium compounds in water, the uranium becomes immobile," said Lee Kerkhof, a professor of marine and coastal sciences in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences. "It is no longer dissolved in the groundwater and therefore can’t contaminate drinking water brought to the surface."