By Tyne Eckmyn, Publishing Associate: Researcher and Writer at Save the Water™ | August 31, 2026

Edited by Rory Dickinson, Publishing Associate: Editor at Save the Water™

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Nuclear energy is one of the safest and cleanest ways to make power. For each unit of power made, it produces less greenhouse gas and  causes fewer deaths from accidents and air pollution than any other source except solar. But nuclear waste is still hard to manage. New research in the Nature Communications journal may offer a new way to handle one type of this waste: uranium in groundwater.

The Sources of Uranium Contamination in Water

When water touches uranium, it can dissolve tiny bits of it and carry them along. This can happen in a few ways.

• Naturally: Groundwater can pick up uranium on its own as it moves through soil or rock. This type of contamination is usually low and low-risk. But it can still occur — and can still harm human health.

• Nuclear Fuel Production: Mines and mills leave behind tailings — waste left over from grinding and processing ore. These facilities also leave behind large sites, like open pits or tunnels. These sites can cause contamination in many ways. For instance, flooded underground mining tunnels.

• Nuclear Power Generation: Nuclear plants use water to cool reactors and make steam. This water picks up a small amount of contamination. It only needs light treatment before it can go back into the environment safely.

• Agriculture and Coal: Other sources add to the problem too. These include phosphate fertilizer, coal burning, and other types of energy production.

Turning Uranium Contamination Into Microbe Cell Walls

Researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) lab in Germany recently made a new discovery. They found that when given glycerol as food, a certain bacteria can use dissolved uranium in their metabolism. 

First, the team gathered water samples from a flooded uranium mine. The samples held both bacteria and dissolved uranium. In laboratory settings similar to the environment of the underground mine, they then provided the bacteria with glycerol. 

The bacteria used the glycerol as a food source and began metabolizing the dissolved uranium and incorporating it into their cell walls. Only five percent of the dissolved uranium remained in the water after 130 days. 

The bacteria also changed the uranium's form. They combined it with iron and oxygen to make a new compound. This new form, called pentavalent uranium, had previously not been thought to be stable for long periods of time. In the newly formed compound, however, the uranium remained stable, both in anoxic conditions (like would be found in the mine shaft) and when exposed to oxygen, as it would be on the surface.

Using Microbes to Clean Up Uranium Contamination

Dissolved uranium in places like flooded mines is a threat to people and ecosystems. It is both toxic, and groundwater can carry it far. 

Water treatment already uses microorganisms in many other ways. The 95 percent reduction in dissolved uranium observed is a promising result for microorganism use in this context as well.

To use this method for cleanup, however, it needs to do one of two things. It must lower the uranium's toxicity, or it must stop groundwater from carrying it. 

The researchers at HZDR plan to keep studying this process. They aim to better understand the bio- and geochemical processes involved in the bacterial uranium sequestration, and to develop possible applications for the remediation of contaminated sites.

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