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I’m no radiation expert but after some cursory research I’d say this looks like some typical local news fear mongering. They only list the radioactivity in dpm (detections per minute) which is the rate of atomic decay but it doesn’t seem like that tells us much about the actual quantity or type of radiation which seems to make a big difference. I can’t find any worker regulations regarding dpm, they’re all related to absorption rates which I don’t think you can calculate without more information.
Also, the article only mentions the readings coming off of the nest but a lot of wasps will take scraps of whatever they can get from the surrounding area to build their nests so if they were getting materials with residual radioactivity it could be the cause of these observations. The article (imo) makes it seem like the nuclear plant is so radioactive that it’s affected the local wildlife.
100k cpm is pretty high for loose contamination being found in a wasp's nest. You're correct that you can't calculate anything else meaningful from those numbers. I'm going to assume it's gamma radiation because alpha/beta contamination are less common ime. It's probably giving off a weak field within a few feet, the kind of thing where a worker wouldn't get a notable absorbed dose unless they were standing right in front of it for several hours.
You're also almost certainly correct that the radiation is due to the wasps collecting contaminated material. The scandal here is that any such material shouldn't be accessible to random wasps.
Seems the two most common types of wasp in South Carolina are paper wasps, which build nests out of fibers from dead wood and plants, and mud daubers who build theirs out of mud (article doesn't mention wasp type or anything, really). But in either case, the nest being radioactive should be highly concerning as both use material from the ground in the surrounding area to build; best case scenario is that a highly isolated incident just happened to allow them to collect contaminated material
IIRC daubers make nests underground so I would have to imagine they’re talking about paper wasps unless they’re being purposely misleading and meant to say “the ground is radioactive.” …which is possible
Some do, but the term encompasses a variety of species, many of which just make above ground nests out of mud as well