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Plutonium production site hosts radioactive rabbit poo
Michael Marshall, reporter
The more we find out about the Hanford site in Washington, which the US used to make plutonium in the early stages of the cold war, the more it sounds like a 1950s sci-fi B-movie.
Earlier this year researchers discovered radioactive wasp nests, and the world’s first (more or less) weapons-grade plutonium turned up in a glass jar on a rubbish dump.
Now a helicopter survey has turned up another, er, quirk of ecology: radioactive jackrabbit droppings.
The mutagenic poo is the result of liquid wastes from plutonium production.The more we find out about the Hanford site in Washington, which the US used to make plutonium in the early stages of the cold war, the more it sounds like a 1950s sci-fi B-movie.
Earlier this year researchers discovered radioactive wasp nests, and the world’s first (more or less) weapons-grade plutonium turned up in a glass jar on a rubbish dump.
Now a helicopter survey has turned up another, er, quirk of ecology: radioactive jackrabbit droppings.
These wastes, which included salts of caesium and strontium, were dumped in underground tanks.
Jackrabbits, burrowing in the area, discovered the tanks. They liked the salty taste of the liquids, so they began drinking and licking them routinely.
Subsequently, the digestive process ran its usual course, and the jackrabbits left radioactive scat around the site.
The helicopter survey means that there is a ready-made map of the droppings, which should allow for a faster clean-up.
So everything should go smoothly, barring the intervention of the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog.
