Microbes and Plants Offer a Greener Way to Lock Away Plutonium

Plutonium is one of the most formidable contaminants humanity has ever released into the environment. Produced during nuclear weapons testing, fuel reprocessing, and accidents at civilian reactors, the element combines intense radiotoxicity with half-lives measured in tens of thousands of years, meaning that every gram released today will remain a hazard for geological timescales. A new review published in Environmental Science and Pollution Research by Shaghayegh Zafar, Mostafa Hadei, and Mahmood Alimohammadi of Tehran University of Medical Sciences takes stock of a rapidly maturing alternative to conventional cleanup: bioremediation, the use of microorganisms and plants to sequester, transform, or immobilize plutonium in contaminated soils and waters.

The conventional toolkit for plutonium remediation is brutally physical. Soil excavation removes contaminated ground wholesale and ships it to licensed repositories; chemical stabilization binds radionuclides in place with cementitious or phosphate matrices; vitrification fuses soil into a glassy mass at extreme temperatures. Each of these approaches works, but at staggering cost, with heavy machinery, energy demands, and landscape destruction that can rival the original contamination in ecological impact. Worse, excavation and processing generate secondary radioactive waste streams that must themselves be managed for millennia. The review argues that these limitations have created an urgent need for cheaper, less disruptive, and more sustainable strategies, and that biology is increasingly able to deliver them.

The central insight underlying biological cleanup is that plutonium’s behavior in the environment is governed by its oxidation state and speciation. Plutonium can exist in multiple oxidation states, from Pu(III) through Pu(VI), and its mobility depends dramatically on which form it takes. Higher-valent, soluble species such as Pu(V) and Pu(VI) can travel through groundwater, while reduced Pu(IV) tends to sorb strongly onto mineral surfaces and organic matter, becoming essentially immobile. This chemistry gives microorganisms a powerful lever: by changing the oxidation state of plutonium, bacteria can either immobilize it in place or, conversely, mobilize it for extraction. Understanding and steering these redox transformations is the intellectual core of the field.

Metal-reducing bacteria have emerged as the most studied biological agents. Laboratory work with Geobacter metallireducens and Shewanella oneidensis, two model organisms famous for their ability to breathe metals, has shown that they can enzymatically reduce Pu(V) and Pu(VI) to Pu(IV), converting mobile species into forms that bind to sediments and cell surfaces. Research by Boukhalfa and colleagues demonstrated Pu(IV) reduction by these organisms, and follow-up studies by Icopini and Renshaw confirmed their impact on plutonium speciation more broadly. Intriguingly, the review highlights work showing that riboflavin, a simple vitamin, enhances the radionuclide-reducing capacity of Shewanella, suggesting that inexpensive electron-shuttling molecules could amplify bioremediation performance in the field. Anoxic biostimulation experiments on contaminated sediments, reported by Kimber and coworkers, showed that these microbial processes operate under realistic subsurface conditions, not just in pure cultures.

Immobilization is only half the story. Some microbes can also mobilize plutonium, and the review treats this duality as both an opportunity and a caution. Francis and Dodge documented microbial mobilization of plutonium and other actinides from contaminated soil, where bacterial siderophores and organic acids chelate the metal and pry it loose from mineral binding. On the one hand, mobilization can be harnessed for extraction: if contaminant plutonium is coaxed into solution, it can be captured downstream or pumped out. On the other hand, uncontrolled mobilization risks spreading contamination further. The review stresses that any field deployment must account for the full biogeochemical context, because the same microbial community that locks plutonium in place under one set of conditions may release it under another.

Biosorption and bioaccumulation offer a third mechanism. Bacterial cell walls, extracellular polymeric substances, and fungal surfaces present negatively charged functional groups that bind actinides efficiently. Studies of Pseudomonas species interacting with plutonium through their extracellular polymeric substances, work by Ohnuki and colleagues on plutonium association with bacteria and kaolinite clay, and experiments by Lujaniene’s group on plutonium sorption to groundwater bacteria and fungi all demonstrate substantial binding capacity. Even cyanobacteria such as Arthrospira platensis, the familiar dietary spirulina, have been evaluated for biosorption and bioaccumulation of radionuclides. Magnetotactic bacteria add a clever engineering twist: because they internalize magnetic iron crystals, contaminated cells can be recovered from wastewater simply by applying a magnetic field, an approach demonstrated for continuous radionuclide recovery as early as the 1990s.

Biomineralization represents perhaps the most permanent biological fix. Certain microbes precipitate insoluble minerals, such as phosphates, around dissolved metals, effectively entombing them in a crystal lattice. Macaskie and colleagues showed in the 1990s that enzymatically accelerated biomineralization could remove americium and plutonium from aqueous waste streams, and the review identifies this as a route to genuinely long-term immobilization rather than mere temporary binding. Because the radionuclide ends up incorporated into a stable mineral phase, the risk of later remobilization is far lower than for surface adsorption, making biomineralization especially attractive for treating liquid effluents near reprocessing facilities and waste storage sites.

Plants bring a complementary set of capabilities. Phytoremediation exploits the uptake of contaminants by roots and their translocation into shoots, allowing biomass harvesting as a removal strategy. Comparative studies have measured plutonium uptake by Indian mustard and sunflower, and research on vetiver grass examined chelate-assisted uptake and translocation of plutonium-239, finding that chemical additives can substantially boost accumulation. Long-running field studies in Russia, including work by Edomskaya and colleagues on plutonium accumulation by vegetation across different soils and on plutonium migration in the soil-plant system under varying moisture conditions, provide real-world data on how plants interact with this element. Where complete removal is impractical, phytostabilization uses plant cover to prevent erosion and wind dispersal of contaminated dust, a strategy already proven for mine tailings. The review also notes that plant-microbe partnerships, including arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi symbioses, can enhance both plant health and contaminant handling in the rhizosphere.

The most forward-looking sections of the review concern synthetic biology, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology. Engineered microbes with enhanced metal-binding proteins or optimized redox enzymes could dramatically outperform wild strains, and horizontal gene transfer may spread useful traits through native communities. CRISPR-Cas9 editing has opened the door to precisely tailoring plants for metal tolerance and accumulation, with phytochelatin synthase genes among the targets shown to boost heavy metal uptake in model systems. On the materials side, nanoscale zero-valent iron has been shown to remediate plutonium- and uranium-contaminated solutions, hematite and magnetite nanoparticles mediate Pu(VI) and Pu(V) reduction to less mobile forms, and nitrogen-doped graphene nanostructures have achieved efficient plutonium sequestration from aqueous media. Functionalized carbon nanotubes add oxidation-state-selective sorption, and the review argues that hybrid approaches combining engineered organisms with tailored nanomaterials represent the most promising frontier.

None of this is a free pass, and the review is candid about the obstacles. Genetically modified microorganisms released into the environment raise serious risk assessment and governance questions that regulators are only beginning to address. Microbial biosensors for real-time monitoring of remediation progress exist, but field-scale validation remains sparse, and much of the evidence base still comes from laboratory cultures rather than contaminated sites. The authors frame their contribution as an effort to close these knowledge gaps and chart future research directions, with the explicit goal of establishing bioremediation as a viable, cost-effective, and environmentally sustainable pillar of nuclear waste management. As legacy contamination from the nuclear age continues to leach into soils and groundwater worldwide, the idea that bacteria, fungi, and plants could quietly do the work of excavators and blast furnaces is transforming from ecological curiosity into practical engineering, and this review provides the most comprehensive map yet of how to get there.

Subject of Research: Bioremediation processes for removing plutonium from contaminated environments using microorganisms and plants

Article Title: Bioremediation processes for removing plutonium from the environment: a review

Article References: Zafar, S., Hadei, M., & Alimohammadi, M. (2026). Bioremediation processes for removing plutonium from the environment: a review. Environmental Science and Pollution Research. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-026-38278-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s11356-026-38278-7

Keywords: bioremediation, plutonium, radionuclides, microbial remediation, phytoremediation, nuclear waste management, biomineralization, biosorption, metal-reducing bacteria, nanotechnology, synthetic biology, environmental contamination