A critical review on radioactive waste management through biological techniques

• Published in: Environmental science and pollution research international Vol. 27; no. 24; pp. 29812 - 29823
• Main Authors: Natarajan, Varagunapandiyan, Karunanidhi, Mahalakshmi, Raja, Balamanikandan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.08.2020; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Aquatic Pollution; Atmospheric Protection/Air Quality Control/Air Pollution; Bioremediation; Contamination; Earth and Environmental Science; Ecotoxicology; energy; Energy demand; Environment; Environmental and Energy Engineering; Environmental Chemistry; Environmental Health; Environmental science; growth and development; humans; industrialization; lifestyle; Medical treatment; Microorganisms; Nuclear electric power generation; Nuclear energy; Nuclear engineering; nuclear power; Nuclear reactors; Organisms; Phytoremediation; pollution; power generation; Radioactive contamination; Radioactive emissions; Radioactive pollution; radioactive waste; Radioactive waste disposal; Radioactive wastes; Recent Advancements in Chemical; Renewable energy sources; Waste management; Waste Water Technology; Water Management; Water Pollution Control; Radioactive waste; Bioremediation; Biogeochemical cycle; Phytoremediation; Microbial technology
• ISSN: 0944-1344; 1614-7499; 1614-7499
• DOI: 10.1007/s11356-020-08404-0

Our world is subject to various kinds of pollution and contamination due to rapid growth and development of industrialization. Though, industries are helping to improve the human life style in many ways in day to day life such as power generation to treatment of diseases. At the same time, industries emit the waste which causes major environmental pollution and leads to harmful for all living organism. As the renewable energy sources are depleting, energy/power generation become a major research around the world. Nuclear energy is one of the promising energy to sort out the energy demand, but the problem associated with the nuclear energy is the management and treatment of radioactive waste/emission/effluent since which is more dangerous to all living organism. There is a large scale contamination of radioactive waste associated for the past 60 years of global nuclear activity. It is necessary to pay special attention to the management of radioactive wastes in order to approach pollution-free environment and avoid diseases to living organism through various clean-up strategies. In this review, we discussed the wide ranges of strategies available for radioactive waste management such as physical, chemical, and biological methods. Bioremediation may be the powerful tool for treatment of radioactive wastes. Additionally, discussed on recent advancement have been made in treatment of radioactive waste through microbial transformation as well as phytoremediation which play a major role in disposal of radioactive waste.