""In a freakish echo of the Spider-Man comic strip, workers at a US nuclear waste facility discovered the growth on uranium last month.
The white 'string-like' material - never seen before on nuclear waste - was found among thousands of spent fuel assemblies submerged in deep pools.
Experts from Savannah River National Laboratory collected a small sample of the mystery material to run tests.
A report filed by the Defence Nuclear Facilities Safety Board concluded: "The growth, which resembles a spider web, has yet to be characterised, but may be biological in nature."
The report said the initial sample of the growth was too small to characterise, and that "further evaluation still needs to be completed".
But the bizarre growth will stoke fears that nuclear fuel can cause Frankenstein-style mutations.
It echoes the plot of Spider-Man, where Peter Parker becomes a superhero after being bitten by a mutant spider at a nuclear waste laboratory.""
""The webs were found at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, a 300-square-mile nuclear clean-up facility owned by the US Department of Energy.
Experts say that any creature inside in the pools of water - which are intended to protect workers - would have been exposed to the nuclear fuel.
This raises the prospect of a creature having morphed into a new species of 'extremophile' after being exposed to uranium.
Organisms with a natural resistance to radiation are said to be 'radioresistant,' and do exist.
Osman Kemal Kadirolu, a former professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Istanbul, said: "As we know life evolves in most unusual places.""
Article Contiues With More Details on the Strange Discovery
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