Four radioactive wasp nests were found near the Savannah River site. Experts say they will not harm the surroundings like the air and citizen health. But the discovery questioned the credibility and legitimacy of the environmental contamination control in the area.

The Savannah River Site, known formerly as the Savannah River Plant, is located on 310 square miles in South Carolina. It was built in 1950 as a large producer of materials used in nuclear weapons. The site was created to support the United States military during the Cold War. After the end of the war, production significantly decreased. Therefore, the Department of Energy began cleaning the area during approximately 1996, although the due date was dragged on indefinitely. Government officials estimate the cleaning to be finished by 2065, a total of sixty-nine years or more. That is, until the first Trump administration in 2018 officially announced a goal for the place to be used as a site for plutonium “pit” production. This is for the making of the innermost or core component for nuclear weapons. Officials say the project will start implementation in 2030.

Radioactive wasp nests initially form when wasps use contaminated wood to build a nest. The wood was in range of “on-site legacy radioactive contamination” according to the Department of Energy report. Workers in charge of routinely monitoring the grounds in the border of contamination search for signs of radioactivity. Subsequently, they uncovered a radioactive wasp nest on a post near a tank used to store nuclear waste. There were four such nests formed near the site. “The wasp nest was sprayed to kill wasps, then bagged as radiological waste,” the federal report said. “The ground and surrounding area did not have any contamination. “It was not far-fetched to imagine

that they came across some contaminated rotting wood that had escaped previous detection and used the material to make their nest,” said Dr. Mousseau, a biologist at the University of

South Carolina, who studies organisms and ecosystems in radioactive regions of the

world, including Chernobyl, Ukraine, and Fukushima, Japan.

Potential risks include the question of whether larger areas of contamination have escaped surveillance. “Alternatively, this could indicate that there is some new or old radioactive contamination that is coming to the surface that was unexpected,” said Dr. Mousseau. Currently, the radioactive wasp nests are not a threat, but they should be seen as a wake-up call calls for more surveillance and a perspective on the big picture.