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Uranium-Chomping Bacteria Found In Bowels Of Mine That Once Supplied Soviet Nuclear Weapons

Could these mine-dwelling microbes be used to clear up radioactive junk?

Tom Hale, IFL SCIENCE, 15 July 26

In the heady days of the Cold War, the USSR extracted vast amounts of uranium from a mine in East Germany, much of it destined for nuclear warheads. Unbeknownst to the bigwigs back in Moscow, strange and potentially useful microbes were quietly lurking in the mine’s backwaters.

Those microbes were discovered in untreated water flowing from the Wismut GmbH Schlema-Alberoda mine in Saxony, Germany. Between 1946 and 1990, when Germany reunified, around 80,000 tons of uranium were extracted  from the site, one of the largest uranium ore deposits in the world.

Strange things live in the mine

Microbiologists at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) recently collected water samples from an inlet trail from the mine and found that they were teeming with anaerobic bacteria. 

Among them were some that can break down metals, like Geobacter and Shewanella, others that run on sulfur, like Desulfovibrio, and a supporting cast of microbes that ferment and break down nitrogen compounds, including Clostridium and Pseudomonas. 

Just as their previous experiments had hinted, the team found this gang of bacteria was able to utilize the highly radioactive uranium, as long as they had glycerol, a basic building block of plant and animal fats, to feed on. 

“There are bacteria that can metabolically utilize the heavy metal, uranium, which is toxic for humans,” Evelyn Krawczyk-Bärsch at HZDR’s Terrestrial Microbiology research group, and co-author of the study, said in a statement. 

“Our group’s investigations had already revealed that bacteria can use uranium dissolved in water for their metabolism when they have access to glycerol as a food source,” she added. 

The researchers decided to dig deeper into how this was happening and whether the bacteria could be used as a handy tool to clear up radioactive contamination. 

They set up an experiment in the lab in which the bacteria were placed in conditions very similar to their natural low-oxygen environment deep below the uranium mine. After being left for 130 days, just 5 percent of the uranium dissolved in the water remained in the samples.

A really weird chemical state

Using advanced microscopic and spectroscopic techniques, the researchers found the bacteria had incorporated the uranium into their cell walls. …………………………………………………………………………………………..

Clean up Chornobyl?

All of this raises the tantalizing possibility of using these bacteria to clean up uranium and other radioactive junk. Could they, for instance, be introduced into the contaminated waters of Chornobyl to lock its loose uranium into a stable, harmless form?

Whether that’s a genuine possibility or just wishful thinking remains to be seen, but it’s a pretty intriguing idea either way.

The new study is published in the journal Nature Communications. https://www.iflscience.com/uranium-chomping-bacteria-found-in-bowels-of-mine-that-once-supplied-soviet-nuclear-weapons-84123

July 22, 2026 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Germany, wastes