MIGRATING ducks and stray tumbleweeds have been contaminated with
radioactivity after landing fleetingly in ponds of waste water at a nuclear
facility in the US. The news raises questions about the practice of leaving such
ponds open to the elements.
In the mid-1990s, staff at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental
Laboratory (INEEL) realised that tumbleweeds were able to “blow into waste-water
ponds, and wash up on shore and blow out again”, says Ronald Warren, an
independent environmental monitoring expert who is contracted to scrutinise
radioactivity at INEEL. “The tumbleweeds blew against the [2-metre high] fence
where they built up,…
