Reports from the United States say contractors engaged on the $2.4bn, 10-year, 220 square mile River Corridor Closure remediation project on the 586 square mile Hanford nuclear site in Washington State are still facing challenges from radioactive rabbits.
The country's media was fascinated to hear that a rabbit was caught in the 300 Area of the site - close enough to the site boundary to encounter the public.
To avoid public contact, the Department of Energy's contractor Washington Closure Hanford, spent an afternoon collecting rabbit droppings to see if the public was at risk and found some were contaminated.
Subsequent trapping of rabbits found one highly contaminated internally with radioactive caesium.
After the animal was removed, the level of radioactive droppings fell, suggesting it was just one animal that had penetrated the 327 building, a cold war structure used for testing radioactive materials.
It is possible that spraying water to suppress dust during recent demolition may have left puddles drunk by the rabbit.
The 327 Building has since been fenced off and sprayed with fox urine to deter rabbits.
The level of contaminated animals on the site has been dropping in recent years but the contractor maintains a programme to check for them and found 33 contaminated animals or droppings last year.
In earlier times, radioactive liquid waste was discharged to the soil in the centre of the site and rabbits are subsequently believed to have contaminated 13.7 square miles of sage brush before the sites were sealed in 1969.
More recently radioactive wasps' nests had to be removed from soil.
