Radioactive Rabbit Found in Washington State
A radioactive rabbit was trapped on the Hanford nuclear reservation, and Washington state health workers have been searching for contaminated rabbit droppings.
The regional director of the Office of Radiation Protection, Earl Fordham, said Thursday that no contaminated droppings have been found in areas accessible to the public.
The Tri-City Herald reports that officials suspect the rabbit sipped some water left from the recent demolition of a Cold War-era building used in the production of nuclear weapons.
The rabbit was trapped in the past week and was highly contaminated with radioactive cesium. It was killed and disposed of as radioactive waste.
AP The regional director of the Office of Radiation Protection, Earl Fordham, said Thursday that no contaminated droppings have been found in areas accessible to the public.
The Tri-City Herald reports that officials suspect the rabbit sipped some water left from the recent demolition of a Cold War-era building used in the production of nuclear weapons.
The rabbit was trapped in the past week and was highly contaminated with radioactive cesium. It was killed and disposed of as radioactive waste.
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Best learned lesson: When you are wearing an Oxygen Breathing Apparatus, OBA, with it's re-breathing valves and air flow noises, covered with two or three sets of anti-contamination clothing, all taped securely, each one over the inner one, your vision is restricted but mostly accurate, but your hearing can pose a problem, in certain areas. Our teams had done the same training, in variously contaminated sites, together, for years. We routinely stomped the tiny rattlesnakes we found in areas we were required to closely monitor, with instrument probes shorter than the snakes, to avoid meeting them, several feet longer, ourselves, next year, or having them bite a newbie, unfamiliar with the prevalence of scorpions, snakes and other wildlife, anywhere we trained. Our great stomper, unnamed, to protect the guilty, would run over to any disturbed nest of baby rattlers, throw the tumble weeds they shaded under away, and stomp them with his several layers of rubber and other boots, booties, etc, to protect his feet and legs from the young snakes, mostly less than two feet long. On the day of the Great OBA hearing lesson, we were gathering our data, as usual, when a barrage of tinny rattling sounds interrupted our conversations. Our aspiring student of nature rushed over to the noisy pile of tumble weeds, brushed it aside and leaped into a dance with "Big Mamma" and too many tiny rattlers to count. She was a rattler so large that we all worried she could have penetrated his protective clothing, easily, even though his leaping out was far faster than his leaping in. We never tested our hearing, of larger rattlers, against little ones, to determine just how much attenuation we could expect, or relate it to expected rattler girth, far more impressive than their length, but we all learned to brush away the tumble weeds and "Look before you leap".