Safety workers recently encountered a scenario straight out of a sci-fi film while surveying a decommissioned nuclear weapons plant in South Carolina. According to the US Department of Energy, on July 3 a team at the Savannah River Site near the Georgia border, detected an irradiated wasp nest that exhibited a radiation level 10 times higher than the federal regulatory limit.
The hazardous insect abode was located near a set of tanks filled with liquid nuclear waste, although the team didn’t detect any leaks. Instead, experts believe the nest set off Geiger counters through what’s known as “onsite legacy radioactive contamination.” This term refers to leftover irradiation that was originally generated when a facility was fully operational. Officials also said there is no need to head to the bunkers.The surveyors didn’t find any actual wasps, but they still sprayed the nest with insecticide before disposing of it in accordance with radioactive waste procedures.
“No further action was required in the field,” the DOE report from July 22 reads. The team also confirmed there wasn’t any impact to “other activities and operations.”
A statement provided by the Savannah River Mission Completion (SRMC) to The Aiken Standard explained that, “While no wasps were found on the nest, the individual insects would have significantly lower levels of contamination.”
The remediation organization added, “F Tank Farm is centrally located inside the 310-square-mile Savannah River Site. Generally, wasps travel only a few hundred yards from their nest.”
According to The Aiken Standard, the facility’s F Tank Farm consists of 22 carbon steel tanks buried about 23 feet underground. Each 80-100-foot-wide tank holds between 750,000 and 1,300,000 gallons of radioactive waste.
The Savannah River Site’s first nuclear reactor went critical in 1952, creating the means to produce plutonium pits—a core component for the era’s nuclear arsenal. The facility ultimately included five reactors. It generated over 165 million gallons of liquid nuclear waste before the site ceased its original operations in 1988. Today, Savannah River manufactures nuclear plant fuel, while remediation efforts continue on about 34 million gallons of remaining nuclear waste.
The site has faced repeated criticism from both environmental advocates and state representatives for decades. In 2017, a federal court dismissed a $100 million lawsuit filed by South Carolina that charged the state had become a “dumping ground for nuclear waste.” Following years of additional litigation efforts, South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson confirmed a $600 million settlement from the federal government regarding the remaining plutonium waste.
While a comparatively smaller issue, the radioactive wasp nest is already generating blowback from local watchdogs. Tom Clements, executive director of Savannah River Watch, told the Associated Press that he was “mad as a hornet” about the situation. Clements also contended the official report was incomplete at best because it didn’t provide adequate details on the source of contamination or if other similarly irradiated nests may be in the area. The report also didn’t include the species of wasp. Knowing which wasp species may have been useful for searching out other nests, as some wasps build their homes in the dirt while others construct them from other materials.
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