Nuclear/Rabbit

Periodically I write on nuclear issues. And most people in my life call me Rabbit. (Or bunny, or buns, or…perhaps this is too much information?). But it isn’t often that the rabbit and the nuclear overlap. This is one of those times.

I was congratulating a friend’s daughter on her upcoming bat mitzvah. I wanted to sign my email mazel tov, [Hebrew name for rabbit]. So I googled “rabbit in Hebrew” and got:

arnevet (hare)

arnavon/arnavoni (little sweet bunny)

shafan

I found this at the “House Rabbit Society” website, “An international nonprofit organization that rescues rabbits from animal shelters and 
educates the public on rabbit care and behavior.” http://www.rabbit.org/

The site also had news of rabbits around the world, including “Japan's Earless Rabbit Sparks Worries About Radiation, Mutation.” Posted on June 9, the article begins:

“It's no Godzilla, but an earless rabbit allegedly born near Japan's severely-damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant has become the latest poster child for the side-effects of radiation exposure.

The bunny -- purportedly captured on video just outside the crippled plant exclusion area and posted on YouTube on May 21 -- has become big news in Japan and, to a lesser extent, elsewhere, stoking fears that contamination from the damaged facility could cause genetic mutations.”

Here is the YouTube link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqVY9azhH3U&feature=player_embedded

Now you, Dear Reader, may well be saying, Wait a minute, small eared Rabbit. This story is most likely a hoax! Allegedly! Purportedly! And of course you might well be right. First, the YouTube video’s poster has not been found, so this rabbit could have been from anywhere in the world. Second, it is hard to identify the exact causes of birth defects in animals. And third, it turns out this might not be a birth defect/mutagenic problem at all. Mary Cotter, a veterinarian from the House Rabbit Society, reported that she’s encountered two earless rabbits, whose mothers had most likely over-groomed their baby’s ears. (And I thought it was bad when my aunt used to spit on her handkerchief and wipe things off my eight year old’s dirty face!)

For the record, the two earless bunnies were named "Stubs" and "Nubbins."

2

So it is hard to know whether this bunny really is a victim of Fukushima. And I was impressed by the strong assertions in the article regarding radiation and genetic mutation. It cites F. Ward Whicker, professor emeritus at Colorado State University's Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences, to the effect that natural radiation can also cause such anomalies, that usually the cause cannot be determined:

"So far as science has shown, there have never been mutations produced by ionizing radiations that do not occur spontaneously as well."

And then an even bigger gun is wheeled out: nuclear historian Richard Rhodes. He points to the research done after the atomic bombing of Japan:

"In the years after World War II, there was a major American commission that looked into the health ramifications of the atomic bombings, and it found no genetic changes in the populations of Hiroshima or Nagasaki," said Rhodes, who has written extensively on the bombings. "There were no birth defects attributed to the bombing, and no genetic consequences."

Now this was interesting. An American commission you say? And no genetic consequences to the massive doses of radiation encountered by Japanese downwinders/survivors? Or wait…none “attributed” to the bombing. It isn’t that I doubt Rhodes (though I believe he is a strong proponent of nuclear power, which is a different title than “nuclear historian”). But…since much of the article asserts that it is next to impossible to attribute birth defects to a particular cause, then I must assume that the number of birth defects after World War 2 did not rise significantly. Was this the case? How good was the study? Honestly, it is hard for me to imagine that there were no consequences to the bombing. But I’m off to see what the study indeed says, and who conducted it.

3

Meanwhile, the rabbit has become indeed a kind of poster animal for Fukushima in a variety of news reports, all generated by the YouTube viral video (268,298 hits as of today). What happens when you eat nuclear grass. Not good science. Of course, neither, in my opinion, is a nuclear power plant you can’t turn off. Meanwhile, in the absence of a real public debate about the Fukushima accident and its implications, and in the wake of new and ever more frightening revelations about the severity of the radiation releases from the land of Godzilla and Tepco, the viral earless rabbit circles the globe, ambassador of a kind of deep fear of what, after all, is not being heard.