Reporters like Mr. Williams love to spread hysteria and fear. Like the experts say, yellowcake is not that dangerous. Even if terrorists got their hands on it, they couldn't even make a dirty bomb without a sophisticated refining facility. Both uranium ore and yellowcake are properly classified as low-level hazardous materials. They should be handled properly, but they are not an imminent danger to the public or environment.

America needs to have a reasonable discussion about whether nuclear energy should be a part of our energy portfolio. We need to move away from the fear and innuendo of articles like this, and look at the science and facts. No energy source is perfect, even enviro's beloved wind and solar (where do the rare-earth minerals come from to make them – mines!!)

America's nuclear industry has compiled an impressive record of safety and reliability. The uranium industry is now heavily regulated and not controlled by the US government pushing to build our nuclear arsenal. The uranium mining tragedies of the past cannot happen today. And, even in the past, no deaths or illness were eve linked to uranium mills.

America needs nuclear energy and, the people of Nucla and Naturita are overwhelmingly for the Pinon Ridge Mill. I say we build it.

Using the bacteria along with inositol phosphate, the bacteria breaks down the phosphate–also called phytic acid–to free the phosphate molecules. The phosphate then binds to the uranium forming a uranium-phosphate precipitate on the cells of the bacteria. Those cells can then be harvested to recover the uranium.

The findings were presented at a Society for General Microbiology's meeting by Professor Lynne Macaskie from a research team at Birmingham University. Though, the process was first discovered back in 1995 but at the time was not economical.
In early research a very expensive additive was used and the low cost of uranium just didn't make it feasible. But the discovery of inositol phosphate being six-times more effective–as well as a cheap waste material–made the venture more viable.

Not too shocking. More countries are clearly looking to expand their nuclear technologies and the price of uranium is likely to increase. Another option for bringing down the cost of inostiol phosphate is that it can easily be obtained from agriculture waste.

“The UK has no natural uranium reserves, although a significant amount of uranium is produced in nuclear wastes. There is no global shortage of uranium but from the point of view of energy security the EU needs to be able to recover as much uranium as possible from mine run-offs (which in any case pollute the environment) as well as recycling as much uranium as possible from nuclear wastes,” commented Professor Macaskie.

And while the cost of uranium concerns me as much as the next guy (actually, I don't really care that much) there is obviously huge environmental and health impacts to this process.

“By using a cheap feedstock easily obtained from plant wastes we have shown that an economic, scalable process for uranium recovery is possible,” Macaskie ended.

Source: Science Daily