Radioactive wasp nest found at old US nuclear bomb-making site

Workers at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina, a former Cold War nuclear bomb production facility, discovered a radioactive wasp nest on July 7, 2025. The nest exhibited radioactivity levels exceeding federal regulatory limits by more than tenfold, measuring about 100,000 disintegrations per minute per 100 square centimeters of beta/gamma radiation. The contamination is attributed to residual radioactive material from the site's historical operations rather than any active leak or loss of contamination control. After discovery, the nest was treated with insecticide, removed, and bagged as radioactive waste, with no radioactive contamination detected in the surrounding soil or environment. The Savannah River Site, operational since the early 1950s, produced plutonium and tritium for nuclear weapons during the Cold War and has since transitioned to environmental cleanup and nuclear material management. The wasp nest was found near underground waste tanks that store approximately 34 million gallons of liquid nuclear waste. Officials emphasized that the wasps