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Radioactive wasps found at South Carolina nuclear facility (www.wyff4.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago by yogthos@lemmygrad.ml to c/news@hexbear.net

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[–] mrfugu@hexbear.net 33 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

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.

[–] barrbaric@hexbear.net 29 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

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.

[–] SacredExcrement@hexbear.net 19 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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

[–] mrfugu@hexbear.net 9 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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

[–] SacredExcrement@hexbear.net 9 points 2 weeks ago

Some do, but the term encompasses a variety of species, many of which just make above ground nests out of mud as well

[–] mrfugu@hexbear.net 13 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Word thanks for the insight! That should be the scandal but the article doesn’t seem to frame it that way: that it’s a failure of the management or operating procedures.

Do you have any idea how common something like this is? I know where I work it’s very easy for contaminated waste to end up in the wrong bin and it’s not like the bins get sorted before pickup.

[–] barrbaric@hexbear.net 9 points 2 weeks ago

Hard to say, it's really on a site-by-site basis. Most places are very good at managing contamination (because you get in all kinds of shit if you're not), but I know of at least one (privately-ran) place that had procedures so lax a contractor didn't even realize he'd been contaminated until he drove to a different job at a different site and started setting off detectors. Generally, older sites are worse than newer sites, and this one's pretty old.

[–] woodenghost@hexbear.net 7 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

These wasps hint at a larger leak somewhere. There should be no way of them accumulating this much, so it must get out somewhere. It's not like the plant has radioactive honey just laying around in the yard or something.

[–] purpleworm@hexbear.net 5 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Even if it affected local wildlife, there'd still also be a big leap between wildlife being irradiated and wildlife being radioactive, wouldn't it? I guess if the plant was just releasing radioactive waste that wound up getting ingested, that would do it.

[–] mrfugu@hexbear.net 7 points 2 weeks ago

I think you’re right but the article is so vague with what the actual contamination is they don’t even say if the wasps themselves are actually radioactive, just the nest and that the wasps were disposed of “as radiological waste.” All it would take is a handful of paper that got irradiated and then improperly disposed of that the wasps picked up for their nest. As someone who works in an industrial setting with very dangerous materials, this is incredibly believable.

Like you say, the nest being radioactive wouldn’t necessarily mean the wasps them selves are radioactive.

[–] barrbaric@hexbear.net 5 points 2 weeks ago

The distinction you're looking for is between wildlife being contaminated with radioactive material vs the tissues of wildlife being themselves radioactive. Being contaminated involves them picking up loose radioactive contamination in the environment (typically microscopic particulates that are invisible to the naked eye). Being radioactivated requires them to be hit by a source of radiation of an extremely high energy (something like being in the core of a reactor or beside a running particle accelerator), and would afaik be fatal in extremely short order.