Which got to think more about SERIOUS remediation issues.
What if you plant bioaccumulators for the toxic gick and then pull them off the land and compost it with mycoremediation? Not just radiation but other gicky stuffs. Possible?
I've given this one some pondering, I don't know if serious is the word for it. Cleaning up catastrophic nuclear and toxic waste sites are not within my realm of experience.
But...
Some species bio-accumulate more than others right? I mean plants, fungi, animals - all of um right? And certain areas tend to accumulate of than other often times right?
For example gomphidius glutinosus. according to a Table found on page 106 of Mycellium Running accumulates radioactive cesium at a concentration factor of 10000 times. That's pretty effective. I am not familiar with this mushroom or what its habitats are. But for the sake of discussion lets say there is likely a primary decomposer out there which concentrates at 100x. Lets also - for the sake of discussion - say that wheatstraw, bracken fern, or some other stupidly easy crop concentrates at 5x. Now we are talking about elements her right? In the case of radiation. And molecules in the case of the 'clean up' gick. So Ideally we could probably crop something, in the case of something succulent like horse tail or bracken fern, puree it, centrifuge the slurry mix with carbon, a compost with mushroom, slurry/centrifuge. And from there start building a food chain on up - test the ducks livers and whatnot and see how its working.
If you could somehow include hot compost or fermentation in the process at some stage you could likely capture energy with which to possible offset the use of the centrifuge - which is a total wingnut Idea to begin with.
I would be interested to know what is growing in and around Chernobyl, and where the radiation has gone, and which plants are sequestering it. I would also like to know what species of mushrooms exist where in relation to the site, and what the extent of radiation present in the ground is. I would love to know if anything has evolved (likely something with much shorter generations than ours) that actually metabolizes or simply sequesters the radioactive elements in its tissues. What if you had a lifeform that disregarded the radioactivity and proceeded with life in a manner that accelerated the nutrient cycle and sequestered the radioactivity in a body that could be collected after a lifetime and buried or otherwise disposed of safely?
Chris Kott wrote:I would be interested to know what is growing in and around Chernobyl...
I've been watching some of Geoff Lawtons Q&As from the new PDC and he's answered several questions about radioactive waste. His answers are a little over my head but he does talk about locking up pollutants in the carbon cycle. He said the top predator (wolves) are back at Chernobyl meaning that the system is substantially recovered if the top predator is back.
I don't what that means for humans but the fact that the wolves are back is encouraging.
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