Federal officials said a radioactive wasp nest was discovered at a nuclear facility in South Carolina earlier this month.
A report from the U.S. Department of Energy said the wasp nest was found on July 3 by employees at the Savannah River Site who routinely check radiation levels at the facility.
The site, located about 25 miles southeast of Augusta, Georgia, was once used by the government to create parts for nuclear weapons. Now, it is used for nuclear materials management and research.
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The report said the nest was found near tanks that store nuclear waste, and it had a radiation level that was 10 times higher than allowed by federal regulations.
The nest was sprayed to kill the wasps, the report said, then it was bagged as radiological waste. The ground and other things surrounding the nest did not have any contamination.
Officials said it is believed that the contamination in the nest is a result of remaining radioactivity from when the site was fully operational and is not related to a loss of contamination control.
The agency also claimed that the delay in reporting about the nest to the public was "to allow time for reviewing previous wildlife contamination for consistency in reporting criteria."
According to the Savannah River Site's website, the facility produced tritium and plutonium in the 1950s, but the report did not specify what chemicals were found in the wasp's nest.
