Researchers Race To Recover Radioactive Rabbits 145
Ponca City writes "The Tri-City Herald reports that radioactive rabbit droppings were recently found near the old Hanford Nuclear Site in southeast Washington that produced nuclear materials for 40 years and is now being decontaminated. The Department of Health looks for contamination off-site to make sure there is no public hazard and a rabbit trapped at the 300 Area caught their attention because it was close enough to the site's boundaries to potentially come in contact with the public. Joe Franco, an assistant manager for the Department of Energy, said workers erected fences, removed potential food sources and even sprayed the scent of a predator around the perimeter to prevent any other rabbit contamination and the Department of Energy said only one of 18 rabbits surveyed were deemed contaminated. Researchers narrowed the area of possible contamination to the 327 Building used during the Cold War for testing highly radioactive materials, particularly fuel elements and cladding that were irradiated at Hanford reactors as part of plutonium production for the nation's nuclear weapons program. Because the number of contaminated droppings being discovered on-site has decreased, officials now believe it's possible that just one rabbit might have been contaminated and they now are finding old droppings from it."
Researchers Race To Recover Radioactive Rabbits (Score:5, Insightful)
Say it 5 times quickly. Go on, I dare you!
Biology (Score:2, Insightful)
Just to elaborate, if this rabbit mates, it's children will not be radioactive nor will they receive radioactive materials. The problem is only with this generation.
That would only be true if it were a male since I doubt a significant amount of material will be carried into the female in the seaman. If the rabbit is female, the radioactive materials will be in the mother's body while the fetus is developing. At this point the question becomes whether the materials are capable of being digested and incorporated into the mother's system, assuming this is true, the materials could very well be teratogens and thus incorporated into the next generation. This really isn't a problem though. Only a fraction of the radioactive materials would be able to pass onto each consecutive generation, it won't take long for it to reach normal levels. If the levels are high enough to be life threatening, the mother would most likely die before giving birth or any future generations from radioactive rabbits will be sterile or die before they even reach reproductive age, which is what, six hours?
Re:Science (Score:3, Insightful)
So this isn't a long term problem, provided that whatever circumstances resulted in the rabbits getting contaminated in the first place have been rectified.
The rabbits are contaminated with Cs-137 and Sr-90, both of which have ~30 year half-life. So their droppings are going to remain "hot" for a long, long time. Long-lived contamination being move off of the reservation is definitely a long term problem, as long is it exceed safety limits.
How to make a dirty bomb (Score:2, Insightful)
I am sure if some terrorist had released such rabbits in some western city some poor country would be bombarded right now.