Green Lawn May Green the Planet

Story Posted: Wed, Aug 6, 2008

Graduate Student Studying Potential Process for Faster, Cheaper Waste Clean Up

Graduate student David Bytwerk is conducting experiments at the OSU Radiation Center greenhouse to study soil uptake of Chlorine-36 in ryegrass.

Chlorine-36 is a long-lived and highly mobile byproduct of the nuclear fuel cycle that has not historically received much attention. In recent years there has been an increased interest in the transport and fate of Cl-36 in the environment. In September of 2006 the French National Agency for Radioactive Waste Management hosted an International Forum on Chlorine-36 in the Biosphere where models indicated that Chlorine-36 will be a significant contributor to long-term potential doses arising from radioactive waste disposal. Dr. Kathryn Higley, Assistant Department Head of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics, was invited to participate in the forum and instigated research efforts into Cl-36 at Oregon State when she returned.

The immediate goal of the C-36 research is a better understanding of how Cl-36 would behave in the biosphere. This information could be used to evaluate and inform potential cleanup methods such as phytoremediation, a process by which plants do the cleanup work by pulling contamination from the ground and concentrating it in the plant tissue. The plants are then harvested. This process would be faster and easier than the current method of cleaning the soil.

David Bytwerk is from Grand Rapids, Michigan. He spent one term as a distance student in the E-campus Radiation Health Physics graduate program before coming to Corvallis. "It was nice to get a feel for the department before fully committing," says Bytwerk. "Now, several years later, I don’t regret my decision to come to OSU at all. The department is supportive of its graduate students, the faculty have international reputations in their fields, and the atmosphere among both faculty and students is very collegial."