RE: Bacteria in Nuclear Reactors

["Joe Alvarez" <jalvarez@auxier.com>]

It is amazing what bacteria can find to eat.  Gallionella eats iron.  Got any iron in a reactor?

Joe Alvarez
Auxier & assoc.
jalvarez@auxier.com

-----Original Message-----
From:	Bob Flood [SMTP:bflood@SLAC.Stanford.EDU]
Sent:	Tuesday, May 12, 1998 4:20 PM
To:	Multiple recipients of list
Subject:	Re: Bacteria in Nuclear Reactors

At 01:20 PM 5/12/98 -0500, you wrote:
>     Don't have my class notes anymore, so I 
>     can't verify this, but I believe the report of a bacteria adapted to 
>     life in a reactor is correct.

OK, I can accept the idea of bacteria that have adapted to high
temperatures (especially in water) and to high pressures (deep sea
conditions). I can even accept the idea of bacteria that have adapted to
high radiation environments (although the evolutionary sequence where the
bacteria encountered the high radiation fields isn't obvious to me).

What I can't see is a bacteria colony in primary coolant water of a power
reactor. The control of water chemistry is such that I think we would also
be looking at a bacterium that has somehow adapted to starvation, and I
don't think that likely.

Once a reactor is opened, bacteria could get in and perhaps thrive on the
surface in a substantial gamma radiation field, but there would be a food
supply from the air. Once the reactor was closed up again, the bacteria, if
not filtered out, would face starvation. Hard to adapt to that.

Or am I missing something?

---------
Bob Flood
Dosimetry Group Leader
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
(650) 926-3793
bflood@slac.stanford.edu