Radioactive wasp nest: Nest with radiation levels ten times what is allowed under regulations found at old US nuclear weapons site - have there been any in UK?
A radioactive wasp nest has been found at an old US nuclear weapons site.
The nest has radiation levels ten times of what is allowed under regulations, federal officials said. "The wasp nest was sprayed to kill wasps, then bagged as radiological waste," says a US Department of Energy report released last week.
No wasps were found at the site near Aiken in South Carolina. Investigators say the contamination is not related to a nuclear waste leak, and that there was no impact to "the environment, or the public".
The nest was discovered by workers who routinely inspect for nuclear radiation at the Savannah River Site (SRS) near Aiken, on 3 July. It was found on a post nearby to where millions of gallons of liquid nuclear waste are stored, but there was no leak from the waste tanks, the report said.
Investigators attribute the dangerously-high levels found on the nest to what is called "onsite legacy radioactive contamination" - the residual radioactivity that remains from the time when the site was actively producing parts for nuclear bombs during the Cold War. The site opened in the 1950s, when it was creating plutonium to be used in the core of nuclear bombs. It continues to operate today, but with a focus on nuclear material for power plants.
The energy department report notes that the wasps that lived within the nest would have significantly lower radiation levels than the nest itself. It also points out that wasps generally fly only a few hundred feet from their nest, and that the nest was found in the middle of the 310-square-mile Savannah River Site - meaning there is little chance they flew outside of the facility.
"No contamination was found in the area," the report notes. "There were no impacts to workers, the environment or the public”.
Savannah River Site Watch, a watchdog group that monitors the site, said that many questions remain unanswered. "I'm as mad as a hornet that SRS didn't explain where the radioactive waste came from or if there is some kind of leak from the waste tanks that the public should be aware of," spokesman Tom Clements told the Associated Press.
Are there radioactive wasps in the UK?
There are no known radioactive wasps in the UK. However, at Sellafield nuclear site in Cumbria, insects—especially those living near contaminated ponds—were found in 2012 to carry very low levels of radiation, which had transferred via ingestion of contaminated water or microorganisms.
This led to detectable radioactivity in swallows that ate those insects. These cases were under strict regulatory controls, and posed no risk to the general public.