If the thought of a giant-ass nuclear, fire-breathing monster stomping the shit out of your city sends chills down your spine, then brace yourselves ’cause nuclear monsters are not science fiction anymore! Ok, maybe I exaggerated about the “monsters” part and also about the “giant” part but the nuclear part is 100% true. Sort of.
Turns out some scientists at  the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site, in South Carolina discovered a mysterious, white spider-web-like growth on the spent nuclear fuel assemblies. The mysterious white substance haven’t been analyzed yet but they say there’s a pretty big chance that this thing could be biological in nature! BIOLOGICAL IN NATURE!!! As in alive!

Hit the break and go “WTF!?”

This is as fascinating as it is unsettling. Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site — a nuclear reservation in South Carolina — have identified a strange, cob-web like “growth” (their word, not ours) on the racks of the facility’s spent nuclear fuel assemblies.

According to a report filed by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, “the growth, which resembles a spider web, has yet to be characterized, but may be biological in nature.”

 

The Augusta Chronicle reported today that the “white, string-like” material was discovered amidst thousands of the spent fuel assemblies, which are submerged in deep nuclear storage pools within SRS’s L Area Complex. (The image up top is of a similar nuclear storage pool at Italy’s Caorso Nuclear Power Plant, which was decommissioned in 1990.)

The safety board’s report claimed that the initial sample of the growth was too small to characterize, and that “further evaluation still needs to be completed.”

It is believed that this organism (if it is indeed an organism) is a radioresistant extremophile due to the fact that it is growing in such hostile environment.
It hasn’t been determined yet if the bite of one of these organisms will give you x-ray vision or any other superpower but I would stay the hell away from it if I were you ’cause in all likelihood all it can give you is cancer. Also, a severe case of the  heebie-jeebies, because it is gross as hell!

Visit io9.com to read the entire article:
Mysterious “white web” found growing on nuclear waste

While you read, I will be cleaning a mysterious, white cob-web-like growth in my kitchen. I suspect it is spider-y in nature, ’cause no one here likes to cook.

Special thanks to ghosttheory.com, which is where I found the link. Visit them to read another post:
Unexplained “White Web” Found Growing On Nuclear Waste