Algae. You don’t often think about it, and being that it barely qualifies as life, it doesn’t think much about you. But it’s going to help you out, whenever the next nuclear spill happens.
It turns out that a certain type of algae, C. moniliferum to be specific, sucks up strontium like a sponge and it precipitates in crystal form. This is good news because strontium-90 is, medically and chemically speaking, some pretty nasty stuff. It’s chemically similar to calcium, so it swaps out for calcium wherever you may find it…like your bones. If that sounds like bad news, it is, very much so, in fact.
Nobody is sure how this algae deals with radioactivity, so they have to do the usual tests: you know, does it die, does it mutate, does it turn into a giant algae monster that consumes everything, those kinds of things. But we’re coming up on the day that pond scum actually has a use.
[ via the nuclear ninjas at 80beats ]