Bacterial spore with high tolerance to concentrated acid and nuclear radiation for uranium recovery from nuclear wastewater

Abstract

The increasing global reliance on nuclear energy highlights the critical need for uranium recovery from nuclear wastewater. However, due to the harsh environment of concentrated acid and nuclear radiation, the development of new adsorbent for uranium recovery from nuclear wastewater is highly needed. The bacterial spore has been reported to exhibit high tolerance to these harsh environments and contain functional components with reliable uranium binding ability, while there is still no report on the use of bacterial spore for uranium recovery from nuclear wastewater. Herein, the potential of the bacterial spore for being used in uranium recovery was analyzed for the first time. The result shows that the bacterial spore realizes a high uranium adsorption capacity of 245 mg g⁻¹ in uranium-containing aqueous environment. With a low dosage of 0.1 g L⁻¹, the bacterial spore achieves a high uranium removal performance of 99.03 % in simulated nuclear wastewater. Additionally, when the concentration of HNO₃ reached 12 M, the adsorption capacity can still reach 156 mg g⁻¹ after 24 h of treatment, proving its high tolerance to concentrated acid. Moreover, after being irradiated by γ-ray with the radiation dosage of 500 kGy, the bacterial spore retains 95.94 % of the uranium adsorption capacity, indicating its high resistance to nuclear radiation. These findings indicate that the bacterial spore would be a highly potential adsorbent for the recovery of uranium from nuclear wastewater with concentrated acid and nuclear radiation.