First It Was Hantavirus And Now It’s Radiation Contaminated Mouse Found In Building Hanford Gave To Port Last Week

Call it the mouse that roared. Or maybe the mouse that glowed.

The radioactive rodent was discovered in a former Hanford Nuclear Reservation building - one of several the Energy Department turned over to the Port of Benton just last week.

The find prompted a one-day closure of a food-bank branch while volunteer workers with Geiger counters tried to determine where the mouse had come from. They found no trace of radioactivity except in the area - about 2 feet square - where the trap had been.

DOE is doing more tests on the dead deer mouse.

“We don’t know the level or degree of contamination,” department spokesman Mike Fergus said. “But our employees are saying the radioactivity was no more than the background contamination people get daily and naturally.”

The hot critter, now deceased, was discovered Tuesday in a metal building in Hanford’s 3000 Area, about three miles from City Hall.

A week earlier, with considerable fanfare, the Energy Department turned ownership of the area’s 71 acres and 16 buildings over to the port. It was the first formal DOE transfer of any Hanford lands.

Westinghouse Hanford Co. workers who oversee rodent control at Hanford found the mouse in a live trap they had set in one of the buildings - the one used by the Richland branch of the Tri-Cities Food Bank, a port tenant.

The trap, near a refrigerator, was one of 10 in the building. But it was the only one that contained a mouse, Fergus said.

The workers killed the mouse, put it in a plastic bag and took it to a Hanford lab where it was tested for radioactivity Wednesday morning - all business as usual.

But the rodent and its droppings tested hot.

That’s not so routine. Hanford pest-control workers have caught 187 mice in the 3000 Area since 1990, but this is the first tainted one. It’s also the first “hot” mouse found south of Battelle’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, considered the last outpost for Hanford radioactivity risks by nearby Richland residents.

Westinghouse Hanford personnel alerted a volunteer team that specializes in investigating radiological events in the region. They also contacted the local health department, the food bank, DOE-Hanford manager John Wagoner, the DOE’s quality and safety division, and the Port of Benton.