Radioactive wasps have been found at a nuclear facility in South Carolina. Radiological Control Operations found a wasp nest on a post close to a tank at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Energy.
The nest was sprayed to kill the wasps and bagged as radiological waste, officials said. After probing the nest, they found that it was at 100,000 dpm, a moderately high radiation level, WYFF noted.
The discovery was made just before 2 p.m. on July 3. “The delay in reporting was to allow time for reviewing previous wildlife contamination for consistency in reporting criteria,” the report stated.
The nest is viewed as “onsite legacy radioactive contamination” and not connected to a loss of control when it comes to contamination.
Legacy radioactive contamination is the remaining contamination from previous activities. The Department of Energy didn’t cite any other reasons behind the contamination of the wasps, with the officials noting that the ground and surrounding area did not have any contamination.
The finding didn’t impact other operations at the 310-square-mile facility. The site was constructed in the 1950s to produce the materials needed to build nuclear weapons during the Cold War, such as tritium and plutonium-239.
After becoming a Superfund site for the Environmental Protection Agency, cleanup and environmental remediation efforts began.
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