Radioactive Wild Boars Increase in Number

I wasn’t really all that concerned about wild boars, but now that I know they are radioactive and multiplying, a foul-tempered spider pig mutant becomes a terrifying idea. At least they aren’t zombie boars.

A couple of hiccups in the report

Although the radioactivity has been detected in other animals, such as birds, wild boar are more susceptible to contamination because they often eat mushrooms and truffles that absorb the harmful radioactivity. The radioactivity, in turn, can remain in the soil for years. In fact, levels in mushrooms and truffles are predicted to rise in the not too distant future.

Radioactivity isn’t a substance, it’s a process, so you don’t absorb radioactivity, nor is it left in the soil. (Iterations ofradioactive or radiation are almost universally preceded by harmful or dangerous. It’s apparently part of the pirate journalist code). But this (like heat) is a term that scientists will use carelessly, so it’s no wonder it propagates to the press, and I don’t take 10 points from Gryffindor for that.

Hunters aren’t idly standing by. They’ve found a concoction called Giese salt that supposedly causes wild boar to excrete radioactive substances after the animals have ingested the salt. Work performed in Bavaria, according to the Bavarian Hunting Federation, indicates the salt does the trick, presumably allowing the meat to pass government inspections.

One of the components in the salt strongly binds to the Cesium (or presumably any alkali), rather than just causing them to arbitrarily excrete any and all radioactive substances.

It’s already been 24 years since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, but experts are predicting the problem of radioactive wild boars will plague Germany “for at least the next 50 years.”

The reason being that Cs-137 has a half-life of 30 years. Still, if boars are exhibiting 7000 Becquerel per kilogram (1 Bq is one decay per second. We physicists must have our unit names!), and if this is primarily from Cs-137 being ingested, this isn’t going to drop below 2,000 in 50 years much less the target of 600, unless some other process is present that will get rid of the Cs-137. Otherwise we’re talking 100 years.