Radioactive Rabbit Killed at Hanford... Elmer Fudd at work

Where’s Elmer Fudd when we need him??? This story on another radioactive rabbit at Hanford has made news across the US. Heart of America Northwest notes: Radioactive Rabbit killed at Hanford was near town and the Columbia River… It is not likely that it was the only one or that it didn’t move over a wide area. It’s hardly the first, and won’t be the last. Heart of America Northwest has two concerns:
1) There’s a significant source of radioactive contamination in the vicinity which may be running into the Columbia via groundwater, or exposing birds (including owls and hawks which eat rabbits), and blowing into the air.
2) This is a warning about USDOE’s unwillingness to plan to remove wastes from 44 miles of unlined radioactive waste burial grounds and many more miles of ditches into which USDOE dumped liquid wastes. Picture three lanes of interstate highway running 44 miles. Now picture this is a ditch with waste fifty feet deep, and then try to justify never cleaning it up. Leaving waste will expose future generations to unacceptably high radiation risks – especially the Tribes who want to exercise their treaty rights to use Hanford’s resources (e.g.,fish,hunt gather plants).

Radioactive rabbit trapped, killed at Hanford
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS November 5, 2010 (Seattle times, Seattle P-I.com)
RICHLAND, Wash. -- A radioactive rabbit was trapped on the Hanford nuclear reservation, but there is no sign any people were exposed to the animal.
Washington state Health Department workers with the Office of Radiation Protection have been searching for contaminated rabbit droppings. None have been found in areas accessible to the public, regional director Earl Fordham said Thursday.
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 Tri-City Herald reported Friday.
Contaminated animals occasionally are found at the nuclear reservation, but more often they are in the center of Hanford, far from town.
The rabbit trapped at the 300 Area caught the Health Department's attention because it was close enough to the site's boundaries to potentially come in contact with people - if it had been caught by a dog or if its droppings were deposited in an area open to the public.
Workers first found contaminated rabbit droppings last week in the 300 Area, said Todd Nelson, spokesman for Washington Closure Hanford, the Department of Energy contractor cleaning up Hanford.
Several rabbits were trapped and the one was found to be highly contaminated with radioactive cesium. It was killed and disposed as radioactive waste, he said Friday. Routine monitoring for radioactive droppings continues.

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