Featured Image Credit: Savannah River Site/YouTube
Topics: South Carolina, US News
Callum Jones
Workers made a frightening discovery at a former US nuclear bomb plant, and it's left one biologist a bit concerned.
According to a new report from the US Department of Energy (DOE), the unusual discovery was made earlier this month at the Savannah River Site (SRS) near Aiken, South Carolina.
The site, which once produced plutonium and tritium for nuclear bombs during the Cold War, is now used in the modern day as an environmental cleanup site and for storage of leftover radioactive waste.
The site has several large underground tanks, which are said to store millions of gallons of liquid nuclear waste. Currently, 43 tanks are still in use, while eight are closed, according to the BBC.
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And during routine safety checks at the site, workers stumbled upon a terrifying sight perched on a post near large underground tanks.
On July 3, a wasp nest with radiation levels ten times the regulated amount was found. But that's not all, as three more contaminated nests were also uncovered during 'routine work activities'. Luckily for them, no wasps were found at the site.
The DOE said that the contamination was not related to a nuclear waste leak, adding: "The ground and surrounded area did not have any contamination.”
They also said that the first nest had been 'sprayed to kill wasps, then bagged as radiological waste'. Edwin Deshong, the manager of the department’s Savannah River Operations Office, told The New York Times: "The US Department of Energy is managing the discovery of four wasp nests with very low levels of radioactive contamination.
"The nests do not pose a health risk to SRS workers, the community, or the environment."
As for the cause of the nest's contamination, DOE believes it likely came from what’s known as 'onsite legacy radioactive contamination' from the site's past of making parts for nuclear weapons.
However, Dr Timothy Mousseau, a biologist at the University of South Carolina, has suggested the contaminated nests could pose a potential risk.
"This is an indicator that there are contaminants spread across this area that have not been completely encased and protected," he told The New York Times. "The main concern relates to whether or not there are large areas of significant contamination that have escaped surveillance in the past."
While he agreed that the wasps posed little threat to the public, he continued to suggest that it may indicate that 'there is some new or old radioactive contamination that is coming to the surface that was unexpected', adding that it was a 'red flag' which should require more investigation and surveillance.
Dr Mousseau said: "We would like to know a lot more about what this actually represents, and just how common it is and whether there is any evidence of these radionuclides being moved through the ecosystem."
A spokesperson for Savannah River Mission Completion (SRMC), who is heading up the cleanup of the site, has said (via The Daily Mail): "Wasp flight patterns keep them within about 200 yards of their nest typically, with a rare exception of half a mile from their nests.
"Also, the typical lifespan of these wasps is less than one month. The nests became contaminated by wasps that brought light contamination to the nests because of intrusion into areas with legacy contamination."