PhD student bioengineers potato plant to detect gamma radiation | Hacker News Reader

PhD student bioengineers potato plant to detect gamma radiation

phys.org

49 pointsPaulHoule11 comments

Sadly missing from article: The (lower) detection limit of the gamma-detecting GMO potato plants. "Starts glowing when safety risk is still minimal" could be extremely useful. Vs. "starts glowing shortly before you do" - not so much.

Kinda-Important Context: The PhD student is at the Univ. of Tennessee/Knoxville's Herbert College of Agriculture - which Google Maps says is 21 mile straight west of the old X-10 Graphite Reactor ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-10_Graphite_Reactor ). That was built as part of the Manhattan Project during WWII, to produce plutonium for nuclear bombs. I'd guess that "fast production, zero stoppages, starting yesterday" were the top priorities at the time. Vs. "no leaks, no spills safety" - not so much.

This is important because whenever I need to know if I am in danger I can just plant a potato and wait three weeks.

Lol

Well I guess it would be useful for growing in space, where there’s no protection from Earth’s magnetic field and stuff

You’ll have to grow some kind of food, and potatoes are famously what Mark Watney ate almost exclusively XD

I was gonna say practically the same thing

Can’t they get a better technical writer? Regardless of the bad grammar (I’m not perfect, and that’s why I don’t write for a major publication) the question is still at what level do they turn color? If it’s at a 100 mR above background then good. If it’s at 100 MR then not as useful.

One step closer to Ray Cats

This always seemed like a bad idea to me. Better to breed a poison ivy that thrives in a radioactive environment...

"Don't Change Color, Kitty", the "10,000-Year Earworm to Discourage Resettlement Near Nuclear Waste Repositories",

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amn3kn0XPLQ

Do NOT make the potato angry.

You wouldn’t like it when it’s angry.

> there is an increased demand for effective and easily accessible radiation detection methods

Is this true?

In the original article, he suppose that nuclear plants are on the rise due to climate change policies, so maybe there will be a demand for gamma ray sensing in environment, to monitor leakage... The idea I extrapolate from his work is that you can plant its potatoes around the plant and control it from a reasonable distance with fluorescent sensors, in relatively large areas. Or put some potatoes in officies and see if it start to glow.

The complete article: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/pbi.14072

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