Researchers Race To Recover Radioactive Rabbits

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."

Nuclear Paranoia

[Martin Spamer]

Cesium is more dangerous as a toxic heavy metal than as a radioactive source and the level of Cessium was insufficient to kill the rabbit via toxicity, because it's still only as toxic as common salt. When Cesium decays it emits Beta radiation which doesn't penetrate heavy clothing and barely penetrates the skin. The level of Radioactivity was insufficient to kill the rabbit but they still go to all that trouble to track it down. All the hallmarks of Nuclear Paranoia.

Re:Science

[RsG]

The problem would be if a hunter caught the rabbit and ate it. Then he/she would ingest both the rabbit and the radioactive materials, putting him/her at higher risk for certain diseases (most notably cancer). However, he/she would not be radioactive either.

I agree with your post, but wanted to add something.

Aside from the scenario you set up in the passage I quoted, there are a couple of other ways a contaminated rabbit could cause problems. To wit, the animal could die to some cause other than a human hunter and spread the contamination through other parts of the food chain, via scavengers and decomposition . Or the rabbit could get adopted or otherwise come into contact with human beings and cause health problems via contaminated droppings. Or, if the animal remained wild, its contaminated droppings could find their way into agricultural soil (this last one is a long shot).

The good news is, the total quantity of radioactive material is finite, and will become more diluted over time. And rabbits are not especially radiation resistant, meaning if the quantity of contaminants per rabbit is probably fairly low already (or else they'd have died at or near the site they were contaminated at).

Plus, any really nasty isotopes they've absorbed will also have a shorter half-life. 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.

Seagull Shit in Sellafield Similarly Shines

[phonewebcam]

Which is not only an older story but totally owns your feeble bunny piece in the alliteration league: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7040256.ece

Oak Ridge Duck Poo

[supercrisp]

I live near Oak Ridge, and they had a problem about two years ago with radioactive duck droppings. The facilities from WW2 are sometimes poorly documented. So there were some unknown of pipes running under a small pond. Radioactive stuff leaked, plants grew from that soil, ducks ate it, and then waddled around the area doing what ducks do(o). It was moderately expensive to clean up. Though I think worth the cost in (grim) chuckles. The clean-up of the whole facility up there has been going on for some time, and will likely continue. I'm not all surprised to read about radioactive rabbit poo at Hanford. Lucky it's not pigeons....

Re:Science

[Anonymous Coward]

Deer/elk hunting is a more popular sport in the eastern Washington area (including the TriCities; I'm a former resident) than rabbit hunting. I'd be more worried about somebody eating a mule deer that had been eating contaminated material.

The TriCities have been living with the Hanford site now for over fifty years. You can't walk down the street there without tripping over three engineers along the way. I don't know anyplace else I've lived where they routinely check the rabbit sh*t, so I'd have to say they were on top of the problem.

Re:Science

[Charliemopps]

Unless of course, the rabbit used the materials to build it's nest, and it's children do the same. The problem here is that they've left these materials, that are easily identifiable, laying around for the wildlife to consume.