Microbial reduction of uranium by anaerobic microorganisms isolated from a former uranium mine

The former uranium mine Königstein (Germany) is currently in the process of a controlled flooding for remediation purposes. However, the flooding water still contains high concentrations of uranium and other heavy metals. For that reason the water has to be cleaned up by a conventional waste water treatment. The aim of this study was to investigate the interactions between anaerobic microorganisms and uranium for possible bioremediation approaches due to the fact, that microorganisms could be used as an alternative for the intensive and expensive waste water treatment.
Flooding water from the former uranium mine was directly sampled and gas-flushed with N2. 10 mM glycerol was added as carbon source. The approaches were incubated for six weeks at 30 °C. Samples were taken three times a week for measuring of the redox potential. Every week samples were taken to investigate the redox state of uranium by XANES (X-ray absorption near edge structure) measurements. During the incubation time the redox potential decreased from 660 mV to 300 mV. By Iterative Target-Factor Analysis (ITFA) it was determined that 100 % of uranium(VI) was reduced to uranium(IV) within six weeks of incubation. In addition, investigations of the supernatant with UV-vis resulted in the same findings. The results show that naturally occurring anaerobic microorganisms within the flooding water of the former uranium mine Königstein are able to reduce the soluble uranium(VI) into the less soluble uranium(IV). In conclusion, anaerobic microorganisms within the flooding water could be used as an alternative for bioremediation approaches.