There is a pretty interesting wikipedia page dedicated to these type of fungi if someone wants a read
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus
The mysterious black fungus from Chernobyl that may eat radiation
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Re: The mysterious black fungus from Chernobyl that may eat radiation
#12I feel like I'm taking crazy pills every time I read about this fungus. Let us grant the premise of a fungus somehow harnessing ionizing radiation using melanin; such a fungus could in principle be used to shield radioactive sources, but it won't "eat it up"; the radioactive isotopes emitting that radiation won't be disposed of in any way by the fungus. They don't eat those, and even if they did it wouldn't get rid of them, only incorporate them. Neither chemical nor any kind of biological process can make radioactive isotopes stop being radioactive, you need some sort of nuclear process to do that. The absolute best the fungus could do is bind up the radioactive isotopes to aid in their collection, but epoxy resins sprayed over the contaminated areas are far more effective than that could ever be.
Also, making spacecraft shielding and even furniture out of this stuff? It's the stupidest thing I ever heard. The mass of the fungus doesn't come from ionizing radiation anymore than the mass of a plant comes from sunlight. You might as well claim that you're going to grow trees in space using the abundant sunlight. They power themselves with light but still need to be made out of something! Are they also hoping these fungus like to eat lunar regolith? It makes zero sense, but here we've got the BBC and apparently NASA taking the idea seriously. Where is the fucking biomass meant to come from?? I must be crazy, or they all are.
Re: The mysterious black fungus from Chernobyl that may eat radiation
#13Related:
"Fungus in Chernobyl nuclear disaster zone has mutated to 'feed' on radiation (2024)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45901149 12-nov-2025
"Fungus found in Chernobyl might process radiation and act as a shield (2024)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43534021 31-mar-2025
"A Black Fungus Might Be Healing Chernobyl by Drinking Radiation" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43148355 23-feb-2025
"Radiotrophic fungus" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41085406 03-aug-2024
"Chernobyl fungus could shield astronauts from cosmic radiation" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35181146 16-mar-2023
"Fungus at Chernobyl absorbs nuclear radiation via radiosynthesis" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24166994 15-aug-2020
"Radiotrophic fungus" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20342750 03-jul-2019
"Chernobyl Fungus Feeds On Radiation (2007)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6763520 19-nov-2013
"Black Fungus Found in Chernobyl Eats Harmful Radiation" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=127626 02-mar-2008
Re: The mysterious black fungus from Chernobyl that may eat radiation
#14I did some basic calculations to compare the energy in the radiation vs the energy required to grow 10% extra. - If we assume they are working in the reactor we get radiation levels of something like 1 mGy/hour. But we can prop this up to mabye 500 mGy/hour since i dont know how they grew their culture - That leads to 0.05 J of extra energy per gram of microbial bio material. - Energy needed to grow 1g of microbial b…
There's another parameter worth considering - how efficient is it to convert sunlight vs. gamma radiation into biologically usable energy. What if for some reason gamma radiation changes the equilibrium constants for ADP --> ATP?
Another hypothesis to test would be if the radiation is being used as a catalyst somehow.
E.g. Could be denaturing something else, unlocking a previously inaccessible energy source. Possibly some radiochemistry creating a new food source for the fungus too.
Re: The mysterious black fungus from Chernobyl that may eat radiation
#15I feel like I'm taking crazy pills every time I read about this fungus. Let us grant the premise of a fungus somehow harnessing ionizing radiation using melanin; such a fungus could in principle be used to shield radioactive sources, but it won't "eat it up"; the radioactive isotopes emitting that radiation won't be disposed of in any way by the fungus. They don't eat those, and even if they did it wouldn't get rid o…
Something the fungus COULD do (in a hypothetical world) is concentrate radioisotopes along with some moderator to accelerate the fission process and harvest more energy.
Would probably require a lot more time than it would have, however, considering the relatively low amounts of radioisotopes in todays world (due to the halflife of most of them, and the age of our planet).
Several billion years ago it could have been a thing though!
Re: The mysterious black fungus from Chernobyl that may eat radiation
#16> Zhdanova suspected that the melanin of these fungi was acting as a shield against ionising radiation. Wouldn't that be very easy to measure? My guts tell me that using the melanin as a shield against gamma radiation has a negligible effect, if any at all.
You are assuming a molecule good at shielding against UV light is probably a poor shield against gamma rays, many orders of magnitude shorter wavelength. That sounds probable ...
But how about the theory that systems to clean up smashed up proteins from UV light is also good to clean up smashed up proteins from gamma radiation?
And one of the parts of that system, or upregulated with that system, is melanin.
Re: The mysterious black fungus from Chernobyl that may eat radiation
#17I did some basic calculations to compare the energy in the radiation vs the energy required to grow 10% extra. - If we assume they are working in the reactor we get radiation levels of something like 1 mGy/hour. But we can prop this up to mabye 500 mGy/hour since i dont know how they grew their culture - That leads to 0.05 J of extra energy per gram of microbial bio material. - Energy needed to grow 1g of microbial b…
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Re: The mysterious black fungus from Chernobyl that may eat radiation
#18I did some basic calculations to compare the energy in the radiation vs the energy required to grow 10% extra. - If we assume they are working in the reactor we get radiation levels of something like 1 mGy/hour. But we can prop this up to mabye 500 mGy/hour since i dont know how they grew their culture - That leads to 0.05 J of extra energy per gram of microbial bio material. - Energy needed to grow 1g of microbial b…
I'm not sure where you're going with this, but since they have actually researched how it grows, I think it's more likely your calculations/assumptions are incomplete. For example: > Energy needed to grow 1g of microbial biomaterial based on what? Edit: Maybe you meant that radiation alone wouldn't be enough for that growth, so there'd be other components that it's helping with.
Initially i asked a AI for standard values but here is a proper source:
- Negentropy concept revisited: Standard thermodynamic properties of 16 bacteria, fungi and algae species ( https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.00494)
> Maybe you meant that radiation alone wouldn't be enough for that growth, so there'd be other components that it's helping with.
Yes. Clearly it grew as it grew, but the question is what drove/powered the growth.
Re: The mysterious black fungus from Chernobyl that may eat radiation
#19I feel like I'm taking crazy pills every time I read about this fungus. Let us grant the premise of a fungus somehow harnessing ionizing radiation using melanin; such a fungus could in principle be used to shield radioactive sources, but it won't "eat it up"; the radioactive isotopes emitting that radiation won't be disposed of in any way by the fungus. They don't eat those, and even if they did it wouldn't get rid o…
Something the fungus COULD do (in a hypothetical world) is concentrate radioisotopes along with some moderator to accelerate the fission process and harvest more energy. Would probably require a lot more time than it would have, however, considering the relatively low amounts of radioisotopes in todays world (due to the halflife of most of them, and the age of our planet). Several billion years ago it could have been…
Maybe in principle, but neutron radiation from fallout/etc is relatively minimal and you really just have to wait out the decay of those isotopes.
The good news is radiation detectors are insanely sensitive so you can map where the hotspots are and mitigate much of the risk using exclusion zones and / or various cleanup techniques to collect the radioactive material so it can be safety stored.
Re: The mysterious black fungus from Chernobyl that may eat radiation
#20I wonder if you could power something of this? If the fungus have some type of melanin that will turn ionized radiation into energy, could we then use that to power something of background radiation? Also interesting to see how close this fungi will grow to the radiation source, or will it be able to mutate to completely envelop the radiation source.
Just dry the fungus and burn it. The process is fairly analogous to photosynthesis in plants, so we've basically already been doing this since we learned to make fire, just with a different source of radiation.