Four Radioactive Wasp Nests Found Near US Nuclear Storage Site (nbcnews.com) 76
The Washington Post reports:
In early July, a wasp nest with a radiation level 10 times what is allowed by federal regulations was found inside the grounds of a sprawling Cold War-era nuclear site in South Carolina that today partly serves as a storage area for radioactive liquid waste. Federal officials said Friday that at least three more contaminated wasp nests were found within the 310-square-mile Savannah River Site, which encompasses an area more than four times the size of the District of Columbia...
[F]ederal authorities said that the discoveries were not cause for alarm and experts noted that the discovery of radioactivity in wildlife near nuclear facilities did not necessarily indicate the likelihood of a major leak... In a statement sent to reporters, Edwin Deshong, manager of the Savannah River Site's Office of Environmental Management, said the wasp nests had "very low levels of radioactive contamination" and did not pose health risks to the site's workers, nearby residents or the environment... The Savannah River Site's 43 active underground waste tanks have more than 34 million gallons of radioactive liquid waste. The oldest tanks have previously "developed small hairline cracks" that led to small-volume leaks, the Savannah River Site says on its website.
A July report after the first nest was found said there was "no impact" from the contaminated nest, the Post reports, with the nest's high radioactivity level due to "on-site legacy radioactive contamination" rather than "a loss of contamination control." More from the Associated Press: The tank farm is well inside the boundaries of the site and wasps generally fly just a few hundred yards from their nests, so there is no danger they are outside the facility, according to a statement from Savannah River Mission Completion which now oversees the site. If there had been wasps found, they would have significantly lower levels of radiation than their nests, according to the statement which was given to the Aiken Standard.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger for sharing the news.
[F]ederal authorities said that the discoveries were not cause for alarm and experts noted that the discovery of radioactivity in wildlife near nuclear facilities did not necessarily indicate the likelihood of a major leak... In a statement sent to reporters, Edwin Deshong, manager of the Savannah River Site's Office of Environmental Management, said the wasp nests had "very low levels of radioactive contamination" and did not pose health risks to the site's workers, nearby residents or the environment... The Savannah River Site's 43 active underground waste tanks have more than 34 million gallons of radioactive liquid waste. The oldest tanks have previously "developed small hairline cracks" that led to small-volume leaks, the Savannah River Site says on its website.
A July report after the first nest was found said there was "no impact" from the contaminated nest, the Post reports, with the nest's high radioactivity level due to "on-site legacy radioactive contamination" rather than "a loss of contamination control." More from the Associated Press: The tank farm is well inside the boundaries of the site and wasps generally fly just a few hundred yards from their nests, so there is no danger they are outside the facility, according to a statement from Savannah River Mission Completion which now oversees the site. If there had been wasps found, they would have significantly lower levels of radiation than their nests, according to the statement which was given to the Aiken Standard.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger for sharing the news.
If you're a wasp (Score:5, Funny)
Re:If you're a wasp (Score:4, Funny)
here I thought it was how you got 40 ft tall wasps.
Re: If you're a wasp (Score:2)
Re:If you're a wasp (Score:4, Funny)
This definitely falls somewhere between Godzilla and Spiderman.
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ok we will sent out an 250M committee to look into it. Or For 1B we can send the top men.
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Of course if you get bitten by a radioactive talk show host you get chintastic Powers but that's different.
Re:If you're a wasp (Score:5, Funny)
So this is how low the movie industry will go... planting radioactive origin stories.
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I'm Waspman, thanks to radiation, my wanker is now the size of a wasp.
Just a little cancer- (Score:3)
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The entire post is a B-Movie, save the misunderstood public danger from just crappy construction. I wonder what else they'll find.
Marvel should get the rights. Maybe a Disney movie about WaspMan, to compete with the aging and tired Spiderman franchise.
While no one was looking, apparently, there was other news, like CPB going dark and Tesla being fined nearly a quarter billion dollars in liability due to premature auto-driving feature use.
But no, wasps. Radioactive wasps.
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The entire post is a B-Movie, save the misunderstood public danger from just crappy construction. I wonder what else they'll find.
Marvel should get the rights. Maybe a Disney movie about WaspMan, to compete with the aging and tired Spiderman franchise.
While no one was looking, apparently, there was other news, like CPB going dark and Tesla being fined nearly a quarter billion dollars in liability due to premature auto-driving feature use.
But no, wasps. Radioactive wasps.
Watch this story closely. We're gonna find out in a few years this is a stealth Disney campaign to try to revive the dying superhero genre.
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Can a wasp get cancer? Poor things!
It's Them! (Score:1)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]!
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Sounds like a (Score:1)
Superhero origin story.
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Or a super villain origin story. NucoWasp sounds like something that would battle Spiderman.
No cause for Alarm (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No cause for Alarm (Score:4, Funny)
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Ever been to Utah? Ra-di-a-tion. Yes, indeed. You hear the most outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-box do-gooders telling everybody it's bad for you. Pernicious nonsense. Everybody could stand a hundred chest X-rays a year. They ought to have them, too.
Re: No cause for Alarm (Score:3)
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Didn't they track this to hairline cracks found in tanks used to store waste from nuclear weapons?
No, they didn't. The articles simply found mention of the existence of those cracks. There is nothing I saw that indicated they had actually traced the radiation in the nests to that source.
Regulations (Score:5, Funny)
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Gotta wonder how the wasp lobby feels about that. Maybe they want to be radioactive!
Re:Regulations (Score:4, Funny)
We should probably hire a dictator to eliminate those wasteful and clearly fraudulent wasp net regulations.
Re: Regulations (Score:2)
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So the first thing a sane organization would do is find the source and clean it up.
Yes granite has a natural radioactivity, it is called NORM, Naturally Occurring Radio active Materials but Natural does not necessarily mean safe or even healthy!
Once I had to do a NORM measurement for Shell and later in the day I had to return the Geiger counter to their local office.
Regretfully th
So, about 1 grocery banana display (Score:5, Interesting)
a wasp nest with a radiation level 10 times what is allowed by federal regulations
Disappontingly, that is not a specific federal regulation for radioactive wasps.
Digging into the actual measurement a bit more... The linked report claims 100,000 dpm/100 cm2 beta/gamma. If the wasp nest is about 10x10cm, that would be 100,000 disintegrations/minute = 45 nanocuries, or about the same as 100 bananas (~0.5 nanocuries/banana). Which is about what was on the shelf at my grocery store when I bought bananas yesterday.
If there were four radioactive wasp nests in my grocery store, the problem isn't the radiation. It's the wasps.
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If the wasp nest is about 10x10cm, that would be 100,000 disintegrations/minute = 45 nanocuries, or about the same as 100 bananas (~0.5 nanocuries/banana). Which is about what was on the shelf at my grocery store when I bought bananas yesterday.
But ... but ... how can I get panic and outrage out of that???
Re: So, about 1 grocery banana display (Score:2)
Re: So, about 1 grocery banana display (Score:2, Offtopic)
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But as has been pointed out numerous times here, the banana scale is flawed because your body regulates the amount of potassium it absorbs, and keeps it away from areas where it could do damage. That's very, very different from something in the environment causing a random wasps nest to experience this amount of exposure.
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But as has been pointed out numerous times here, the banana scale is flawed because your body regulates the amount of potassium it absorbs, and keeps it away from areas where it could do damage. That's very, very different from something in the environment causing a random wasps nest to experience this amount of exposure.
The "banana equivalent dose" is flawed because a banana is expected to be eaten while a wasp nest is expected to be kept at arm's length regardless of how radioactive it might be.
They found four wasp nests, with an elevated amount of radiation, on the grounds of a controlled federal facility with very high security standards. I'm supposed to be concerned about this? I'm glad they are doing surveys on the property to the point they found a few radioactive wasp nests. That tells me they are taking some pre
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Clearly there is some escape of radioactive martial.
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But as has been pointed out numerous times here, the banana scale is flawed because your body regulates the amount of potassium it absorbs, and keeps it away from areas where it could do damage. That's very, very different from something in the environment causing a random wasps nest to experience this amount of exposure.
Ok, so think of it as one banana tree with a normal, non-radioactive wasp nest up in the bananas. That's the same threat, from both radiation and stings.
Yes, they should figure out where the exposure is coming from.
No, it does not even make my top 100 list of "things to panic about in the US in 2025".
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No it isn't. A banana poses little risk. You can choose to eat it, and your body will make sure the potassium doesn't harm you. Some unknown element in the environment, however... A lot of the stuff that gets emitted from nuclear plants can be quite nasty if it gets inside you, or even on you.
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No it isn't. A banana poses little risk. You can choose to eat it, and your body will make sure the potassium doesn't harm you. Some unknown element in the environment, however... A lot of the stuff that gets emitted from nuclear plants can be quite nasty if it gets inside you, or even on you.
Maybe don't eat the radioactive wasps, then.
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It's not the wasps, it's whatever irradiated them. Clearly it is accumulating.
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It's not the wasps, it's whatever irradiated them. Clearly it is accumulating.
The article didn't say what kind of wasps, but I'm guessing it's ones that build mud nests. A small water leak could leach through contaminated soil and make nice radioactive mud. In an otherwise dry area, that's what the wasps would use for their nests.
Sequel to Oak Ridge's radioactive frogs (Score:2)
Oak Ridge National Laboratory's take [ornl.gov] on the 1991 radioactive frogs.
Musician Fred Small's [genius.com] more lyrical take. "Glub, glub - Oh my God! / Hot frogs on the loose"
we'll just remake Mothra as a wasp (Score:2)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0... [imdb.com]
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but under the trump the EPA fine is now zero for that.
YES, THIS IS DANGEROUS! (Score:5, Insightful)
The all-caps isn't yelling -- it's for emphasis. This IS A BIG DEAL and the people who downplay it ("[F]ederal" something other claiming to be authorities, which is just generic LEO mumbo-jumbo for we-won't-tell-you-who-said-it and our-ass-is-covered) are making the situation worse by ostritching themselves.
> [F]ederal authorities said that the discoveries were not cause for alarm
The discoveries are not cause for alarm. The 10x radiation in the wild, that's a cause for alarm. Nuclear radiation is toxic (not poisonous) meaning it builds up over time. If the wasps have them then it's being spread outside the containment zone. That is REALLY REALLY BAD because the rate of radioactive leak, the material which is radioactive, the half-life, these are all unknowns.
>...and experts noted that the discovery of radioactivity in wildlife near nuclear facilities did not necessarily indicate the likelihood of a major leak
Yes, discovery doesn't "necessarily" indicate anything. However, the presence of radioactive materials does indicate a failure of the containment vessel(s) and whether it's "major" (what's that???) or not, it's a leak of a substanc toxic to humans which --abset a dosimeter or Geiger counter-- we are not able to natively detect.
The "urgency" to declare it "not a major problem" instead of promptly investigating it, finding the breach, correcting that breach, sweeping other areas than 'that one wasp's nest" and doing a cleanup is incompetence and disregard for human safety in action.
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Came here to say this, found it at the bottom of the discussion, last visible comment. Sigh.
As a lighter comment: Do you want Cazadores? Because this is how you get Cazador [fandom.com]es.
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Oh look! It's drinkychickenlittle, transliverchickenlittle little brother!
You've got two free rental units in your head? No wonder there's no room for anything else.
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Perfectly controllable drones!
Unimaginative and boring bot complains about being called bot and calls others uinimaginative and boring. Yawn. I've known teenagers who were more effective trolls.
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Re: YES, THIS IS DANGEROUS! (Score:2)
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Exactly.
Even being shot does not "necessarily" indicate the likelihood of death.
Such stupid intentionally misleading statements by Govt agencies, Corporates or Leaders should be prosecuted as strictly as the UK prosecutes social media posts by citizens
New Netflix series "Atomic Waspnado" (Score:2)
Half-life of the liquid waste (Score:2)
Strontium-90: 28.8 years
Cesium-137: 30.2 years
Americium-241: 432.2 years
Plutonium-239: 24,110 years
Uranium-235: 703,800,000 years
Uranium-238: 4,468,000,000 years
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Everyone reading this has likely heard "the candle that burns twice as bright lasts half as long" or something to that effect. This applies to radioactive decay. The shorter the half life the more radiation it produces.
This means the worst of the radioactive materials will decay away in a matter of seconds to maybe a few months. The radioactive waste at SRS is years to decades old, which means the worst of the radiation risk is long gone. Uranium, plutonium, and many other long lived isotopes pose littl
Nothing to worry about (Score:2)
[F]ederal authorities said that the discoveries were not cause for alarm
Federal authorities said this after being stung by radioactive wasps causing human-wasp transformations and joining with their hive. But no danger.. nothing to worry about.
Re: Nothing to worry about (Score:2)
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Wasps definitely DO have hives. The formal word is vespiaries, and also sometimes people refer to them as nests. Did you think wasps just perch at night with no shelter and no protection for their brood at all?
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It could be a lot worse (Score:1)
wasps go further than that when changing nests (Score:1)
That PR spew trying to calm the public was smokescreen or made without research. Wasps go kilometers when leaving a nest to make another, and lone queens can go tens of kilometers. And those were empty nests so...
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Wasn't the radiation found in the nests not the wasps? If the wasps aren't carrying the nests with them then just how much of a risk do they pose in spreading radioactive materials?
Also, this is a site that covers 310 square miles, and it appears the tanks of radioactive material under concern here is in the middle. How quickly could the wasps carry any radioactive material off this site? What kind of concentration could we expect once the wasps build nests beyond the borders of the SRS land?
I see most e
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A 310 square mile area could be 30 by 10 or 17.5 on a side... queen wasps do that all the time.
Since they were abandoned nests.... who knows how radioactive the wasps were?
"Stung by a radioactive wasp, Peter Parker gained the insect's proportional bad temper, until Jane bitch-slapped it out of him"
No danger until they grow (Score:2)
I shall make my way there... (Score:2)
...and I shall let myself get stung by one, so that I may become "The Amazing Wasp-Dude!!"
Then again, I've never been stung by a wasp or any bee-adjacent insect, so I could just as likely be allergic and die.
Only one way to find out :)
I'll start to worry... (Score:2)
when it's grasshoppers. [kaijubattle.net]