I feel like "radioactive wasp nest" is the sort of goofy pitch that movie producers reject immediately and without hesitation.
Except this time, it's real.
Via CBS:
Workers at a site in South Carolina that once made key parts for nuclear bombs in the U.S. have found a radioactive wasp nest but officials said there is no danger to anyone.
Employees who routinely check radiation levels at the Savannah River Site near Aiken found a wasp nest on July 3 on a post near tanks where liquid nuclear waste is stored, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Energy.
The nest had a radiation level 10 times what is allowed by federal regulations, officials said.
Side note: Today I learned that federal regulations stipulate just how irradiated a wasp nest is allowed to be.
The workers "sprayed the nest with insect killer, removed it and disposed of it as radioactive waste," as one does with radioactive nests.
The official report does not contain any photos of the nest, so we don't know if it was suffused with an alarming glow, or if the wasps inside had mutated to become humanoid freaks.
The government said, however, that there was really nothing to worry about:
The wasp nest is considered an onsite legacy radioactive contamination not related to a loss of contamination control.
A local watchdog group, meanwhile, noted that the government report didn't stipulate "where the contamination came from, how the wasps might have encountered it and the possibility that there could be another radioactive nest if there is a leak somewhere." Which seems like it could be important information!
The South Carolina site previously manufactured plutonium components to nuclear bombs during the Cold War.
Let's hope there aren't any spiders building webs nearby!
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