Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
     Tugain’s team hypothesized that the “melanized fungi” might be growing successfully because of the way that melanin interacts with radiation. Their research has confirmed this theory. They found that ionizing radiation altered the structure of melanin molecules in a way that encouraged those fungi to grow faster than identical samples that were not exposed to radiation. The closer the fungi were to the source of radiation, the more melanin they expressed. In short, the black fungi were not growing in spite of radiation; they were growing because of it.
     Additional research by Tugai, Zhdanova, and John Dighton of Rutgers University found that fungal bodies containing melanin were actually attracted to radiation. This phenomenon is called “positive radiotropism”. It is “the capability of fungal organisms to sense radioactivity and grow directionally toward the radiation source.” The Berkeley National Lab microbiologist Tamas Torok had samples of these radiation-resistant fungi in his lab for years. He notes that the process isn’t really analogous to metabolism or photosynthesis. Instead, it is another form of energy conversion.
      Ekaterina Dadachova and Arturo Casadevall of Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University created a team and acquired some samples of the black fungus. They confirmed the Ukrainian team’s conclusion that melanin was behind the black fungi’s unique ability to thrive with radiation. Casadevall said, “We began to expose the fungi to radiation. What we noticed was they would grow faster, and this was associated with melanin. If they didn’t have melanin, you didn’t see the effect.”
     The implications of this research are incredible. In 2016, SpaceX and NASA sent samples of melanized fungi into space to see if it could mitigate radiation there. In a peer-reviewed study published in BioRxiv in 2020, they reported that the fungi could cut radiation levels in space by about two percent. The black fungi could potentially “negate the annual dose-equivalent of the radiation environment on the surface of Mars.” This would make it easier for astronauts to live in space.
     Melanized fungi could also play a critical role here on Earth. Further research by Dadachova and her team have proposed that a unique relationship between fungi, melanin, and radiation could proved new insights into to ways to reduce radiation and generate energy in a warming climate. It could also help in the case of another nuclear disaster. Tugai wrote, “To date, a significant amount of [radioactive] hot particles have already decomposed under the action of soil fungi. This indicates that microbiological processes can play a decisive role in the processes of destruction and migration of radionuclides in the environment.” Torok notes that while radiation cannot be completely bioremediated or removed from the environment by biological action, the black fungi can help immobilized some of it. The fate of Chernobyl is still of grave concern and unique solution could still be necessary.
     Black fungi continues to grow inside the Chernobyl reactors and in the radioactive soil around them. When she first went to the exclusion zone, Tugai found that while most of the soil had been cleared of the majority of radiation through brutal, labor-intensive cleanup. “no one touched the soil around the cemetery where the level of background radiation is still dozens of times higher than the norm. When radiation first hit the area around Chernobyl, it caused some of the pines in and near the cemetery to turn red, creating the infamous Red Forest. It later became a burial ground for particularly radioactive tree trunks. Over the years since the disaster, new trees have grown amid the graves and birds now fly and sing in their branches. Deep in the soil, webs of black fungi pass signals through roots as they “alchemize” radiation, transforming it into something new.

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Ambient office = 64 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 126 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 123 nanosieverts per hour

Red bell pepper from Central Market = 91 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 106 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 95 nanosieverts per hour

 Part 1 of 2 Parts

     Russian troops invaded the Chernobyl Exclusion zone in northern Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The closed nuclear power plant is undergoing cleanup and decommissioning after the nuclear disaster in 1986. The Russian seized the plant and took the staff hostage. Before the end of March, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed that the Russian troops had pulled out and IAEA sent in experts to assess security and safety at Chernobyl.

     It was a very stressful time for people around Chernobyl. On the day that the site was invaded by the Russians, Russian artillery was raining down shells on Kyiv where Tatiana Tugai lives. Even as her life if Kyiv was in danger, she thought about Chernobyl. Decades ago, she and a team of scientists had conducted groundbreaking research in the aftermath of the 1986 disaster there. That research still continues to be relevant in new ways even today.
     The radioactively contaminated land around the ruins of Chernobyl has been managed and studied in the decades between the worst nuclear meltdown in history in 1986 and the Russian invasion. The most radioactive areas are covered by a stadium-sized steel and concrete sarcophagus. Unfortunately, the current war could still lead to leaks, new plumes of radioactive dust, or even worse. Ukrainian officials have reported that radiation levels increased follow the invasion and the IAEA is currently investigating whether Russian soldiers stationed Chernobyl experienced radiation poisoning during their occupation. 
      Since the 1986 nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, wildlife has adapted to life in the exclusion zone. This is the area around Chernobyl where visitor access is heavily restricted. It is one of the places on Earth where researchers can study the effects of radiation on nature. The researchers have made many discoveries including revelations about a particularly extraordinary kind of fungus.
      In 1991, five years after the nuclear disaster, remotely piloted robots discovered a jet-black fungus growing on the inside of the Chernobyl reactors. Intrigued by the discovery of the strange fungus, microbiologists from the Kyiv Institute of Microbiology and Virology began visiting the area regularly.
     Tugai wrote in an email, “The first impressions from my personal trips to the Chernobyl zone were very sad. The zone resembled frames from a science fiction film about a dead city. Empty houses without windows.” As the years passed, life began to return to the zone and “the closed exclusion zone gradually began to look like a nature reserve. Scientists constantly walked with a dosimeter, and it reminded us that radiation was nearby.”
     Conditions were especially dangerous close to the remains of the damaged reactors. Tugai wrote, “It was only possible to be directly there for a very short period of time. Therefore, the first samples taken from the walls and water from the interior of the destroyed fourth block … were selected for further research.”
     Tugai and a team led by Nelli Zhdanova found more than 200 fungal species at Chernobyl, including the jet-black fungi with melanin. Melanin is a pigment that influences the color of human and animal hair, skin, and eyes and can protect against ultraviolet light. At the Institute for Nuclear Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the scientists studied the new fungi’s ability to thrive in the presence extreme radiation.
Please read Part 2 next

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Ambient office = 72 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 103 nanosieverts per hour

Carrot from Central Market = 70 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 125 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 105 nanosieverts per hour

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Ambient office = 108 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 109 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 109 nanosieverts per hour

English cucumbers from Central Market = 125 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 88 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 76 nanosieverts per hour

Dover Sole from Central = 107 nanosieverts per hour

      Stellarators are a type of fusion reactor design that rely on twisted magnetic fields to compress and heat a plasma. They are considered to be a major contender for the development of commercial fusion reactors. Investigators have discovered a possible critical issue for stellarators. They have clarified the potential impact of a concern that has been largely overlooked.
     The research carried out at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) demonstrates how periodic changes in the strength and shape of stellarator magnetic fields can facilitate the rapid loss of confinement of high energy plasma particles that fuel fusion reactions.
     Roscoe White is a senior physicist at PPPL and the lead author of a Physics of Plasmas paper. His paper identifies a new type of energetic particle loss according to Felix Parra Dias who is the head of the Theory Department at PPPL. He said, “Studies have so far focused on controlling other types of energetic losses that are dominant, and we are now trying to reduce energetic particle losses even more. The paper on which these findings are based identifies a mechanism that we need to include when designing the optimal shape of stellarator magnet fields.”
“While this mechanism is included in our more detailed analyses of stellarator configurations among many other effects, it had not been singled out as a problem that needed to be addressed. We cannot use detailed analysis for stellarator optimization due its computational cost. This is why Roscoe’s paper is important: It identifies the problem and proposes an efficient way to evaluate and optimize the stellarator shape to avoid it. This gives us the opportunity to develop stellarator configurations that are even better than existing ones.”
     The plasma mechanisms that create this issue are referred to as “resonances”. They describe the paths that particles follow as they orbit the magnetic fields that run around the reaction chamber. When particles are resonant, they return again and again to the point they started from. These returns allow instabilities, or modes, in the hot charged plasma gas to create what are called islands in the path of orbits. These islands allow the particles and their energy to escape confinement.
     White utilized a high-speed software code to search for instabilities called “Alfven modes” that can create islands in donut shaped tokamak. Tokamaks are more widely used in experimental fusion laboratories than stellarators. White said, “So I thought, ‘Okay,’ I’ll go look at stellarators too.” He found that in stellarators, “something very different is happening.”
      White went on to say that it “Turns out that in a stellarator you don’t need modes. In stellarators, when the number of periodic changes in the orbit of resonant high-energy particles matches the number of periodic changes in the magnetic field, particle losses can occur. It’s like pushing a child on a swing. When you want the child to swing higher and higher, every time the swing comes back to you, you push it again, and that’s a push in resonance.” He went on to say, “The problem up until now is that people have been focusing on the form of the magnetic field. But high energy orbiting particles drift across the field, so you must also consider the particle orbits.” He added that “seeing whether particle resonances in stellarators match the magnetic field period has got to enter into design conditions for finding a good reactor.”

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