Environment News Service: A single-celled green alga that can tolerate extreme conditions may soon be widely used to clean up radioactive effluents and wastewater from nuclear facilities in an inexpensive and environmentally-safe manner.
Most organisms are killed by the radioactivity, but the micro-alga Coccomyxa actinabiotis is extremely radioresistant and strongly accumulates radionuclides.
Coccomyxa actinabiotis can resist a radiation dose of 20,000 grays (Gy), about 2,000 times the lethal human dose. The gray is...