Radioactive wasp nest found at Energy Department site in South Carolina

Workers found and disposed of a radioactive wasp nest at an Energy Department site once used to make material for nuclear weapons.

Personnel at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina found the nest on July 3 in an area containing nuclear waste holding tanks, the department said. The workers sprayed the nest to kill any wasps that could be inside.

Testing thereafter found that the nest was exhibiting 100,000 disintegrations per minute, referring to the number of radioactive atoms in a sample that decay or disintegrate and let off energy each minute. The amount of radiation found is more than 10 times the radiation baseline established by federal regulations, the department said.

No wasps were found, Savannah River Mission Completion, the company contracted for nuclear waste cleanup, told the Aiken Standard.

Workers collected the nest as radioactive waste. No radiation was detected on the ground or in the area around where the wasp nest was found, the department said.

The nest is considered a legacy contamination, meaning it was radioactive due to Cold War-era activity at the Savannah River Site as opposed to a new source of radiation.

One watchdog isn’t buying it.