Friday, October 30, 2009
Eek! Radioactive rabbit poo
Sounds strange, but a massive clean up operation has been launched at the disused Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington State, USA where rabbits have been spreading their contaminated droppings for decades.
The site at Hanford produced large amounts of plutonium for US nuclear weaponry from the start of the Second World War until the 1980s. And rabbits which grazed and burrowed into the area's soil have since spread their little radioactive messages over a large surrounding area.
The site's massive environmental cleanup operation has recently included low level helicopter flights, covering 13.7 square miles, where GPS mapping technology has been used to record the position of any matter which triggered readings as radioactive.
Operatives will then go to each recorded spot, clean up the poo, and dispose of it as low-level radioactive waste.
The contaminated soil has since been paved over to stop any further spread of the dangerous do-do, so fluffy bunny lovers can rest assured that the rabbits are not themselves being targeted - just their droppings.
Image © Joshua Davies via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
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