The Oak Ridge strain doesn’t have residual radiation. However, where found there were some mutated fruiting bodies. The soil got tested for mercury near the area, and no trace amounts existed. And as far as nuclear irradiation, no way, Jose. These mushrooms have long yellow stems with large vivid orange caps.”

Oak Ridge mushroom specifications

Oak Ridge mushroom caps reach 25-75mm wide and have dark red coloration (changing to golden brown when mature). The average height is from 150-200mm, and this strain boasts excellent contamination resistance and the unusual perk of being cold-hardy.

Oak Ridge, Plutonium, and Mushrooms

Also known as the Y-12 National Security Complex, this manufacturing facility located in Oak Ridge, TN has been around for 60 years, performing activities like processing, handling, and storing highly enriched uranium. In addition, they manage the production, dismantlement, maintenance, refurbishment, evaluation, and storage of nuclear weapons components.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is the Department of Energy’s largest science/energy laboratory. ORNL was created in 1943 along with the Manhattan Project to pioneer the method for producing and separating plutonium. 

Oak Ridge Lab isn’t far from the Graphite Reactor (the first continuously running nuclear reactor in the world, now shut down for around 30 years), and it would be interesting to know if there’s any radioactive contamination around this geographical area. In 2014, ORNL reported a radioactive leak, although they claimed it was in a protected basin and posed no threat to the environment. 

Radiation-Loving Mushrooms in Oak Ridge?

We are curio relatively there could be radiotrophic mushrooms around Oak Ridge; radiotrophic fungi were first discovered in 1991 around Chernobyl. These radiation-loving mushrooms use gamma radiation as fuel to grow faster. These mushrooms utilize melanin to convert radiation into energy in a process known as radiosynthesis. Microbiologist Arturo Casadevall thought these mushrooms were growing because of the radiation – rather than despite it.

It’s believed that nearly all radiotrophic mushrooms (like those that could exist near Oak Ridge) use melanin in some capacity to enable their adaptation to radiation. Examples of these species include:

• Cladosporium sphaerospermum
• Wangiella dermatitidis
• Cryptococcus neoformans

These three strains, in particular, were used in research done at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, which demonstrated that these fungi grew more robustly with radiation levels 500x higher than in a typical environment. 

These findings have informed other research projects focused on various aspects of radiation (and its dangers), such as one project headed by Nutrition and Pharmacy Researcher Ekaterina (Kate) Dadachova:

“The published work from ours and many other groups shows that when mice are fed black mushrooms (which are widely used in Chinese and other cuisines), they were protected from high doses of external radiation. It’s not like you can eat one mushroom and be protected forever, but if you experience radiation influx while the mushroom melanin is in your digestive tract, it can protect you from extreme doses of radiation.”

Disclaimer

We sell premium spore syringes made in sterile laboratory environments containing trillions of spores per syringe, suspended inside a 10cc syringe in pharmaceutical-grade distilled water (for research purposes only). All our syringes are made in a negative-pressure HEPA-filtered clean room. Cultivation of cubensis mushrooms is illegal in the United States of America. Psilocybin mushroom spores are legal in 47 of the 50 states, excluding California, Georgia, and Idaho.