An unusual and disturbing find has been made at a former US nuclear facility in South Carolina - a wasp nest that turned out to be radioactive. The radiation level in it exceeded the permissible norms by ten times.
This was reported by the US Department of Energy, the BBC writes.
The discovery was made on July 3 during a routine check of the level of radiation background at the Savannah River Site (SRS), near the city of Aiken. The nest was located on a pole near tanks that store millions of gallons of liquid nuclear waste. Despite the proximity to the storage facilities, no leakage of radioactive materials was recorded.
The nest was immediately treated with insecticide, collected and removed as radioactive waste. The wasps themselves were not present at the time of discovery.
According to the official report, the radioactive contamination of the nest is not related to the waste leak, but is likely the result of so-called "historical contamination" - residual radioactivity from the time when the facility produced plutonium for nuclear weapons in the 1950s. Currently, the SRS focuses mainly on nuclear fuel for power plants.
The report notes that the wasps themselves probably had much lower levels of radiation than their nest. It also emphasizes that the wasps usually fly only a few hundred meters from the nest, so the chance that they spread the contamination beyond the complex is minimal.
Despite this, environmental NGOs criticized the authorities for a lack of transparency. Tom Clements, a representative of the SRS Watch, said: "I'm as angry as a swarm of wasps because we still haven't heard exactly where the radiation came from. Are they keeping quiet about something more serious - like a leak from underground tanks?"
According to official figures, since the Cold War, the facility has produced more than 165 million gallons of liquid nuclear waste. Of the 51 underground tanks, 43 are still in operation.
The Department of Energy claims that neither the environment, nor workers, nor the public were harmed. However, the incident with the wasp nest left more questions than answers.
As a reminder, the International Atomic Energy Agency has not detected an increase in radiation levels at the temporarily occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
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