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Radioactive Wasp Nests Worry Nuclear Cleanup Workers
foxnews ^ | June 11, 2009 | foxnews

Posted on 06/14/2009 5:55:47 AM PDT by JoeProBono

YAKIMA, Wash. — If workers cleaning up the nation's most contaminated nuclear site didn't have enough to worry about, now they've got to deal with radioactive wasp nests. Mud dauber wasps built the nests, which have been largely abandoned by their flighty owners, in holes at south-central Washington's Hanford nuclear reservation in 2003.

That's when workers finished covering cleaned-up waste sites with fresh topsoil, native plants and straw to help the plants grow — inadvertently creating perfect ground cover for the insects to build their nests. Nearby cleanup work also provided a steady supply of mud, which the wasps used as building material. Today, the nests, which could number in the thousands, are "fairly highly contaminated" with radioactive isotopes, such as cesium and cobalt, but don't pose a significant threat to workers digging them up.

(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...


TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: radioactive
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To: JoeProBono

Wait! This is a great way to get super powers!


21 posted on 06/14/2009 7:14:17 AM PDT by Cyclops08
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To: Oratam

Ah yes this was foreseen in the 1954 sci-fi movie Them! I was scary on an old black and white with rabbit ears.


22 posted on 06/14/2009 7:16:52 AM PDT by McGruff (Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency - Obama)
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To: Daffynition

I wonder if his skin stayed stretched after everything went down?


23 posted on 06/14/2009 7:51:23 AM PDT by Born Conservative (Bohicaville: http://bohicaville.wordpress.com/)
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To: dr_who

Mud-daubbers? No problem. Yellowjackets? Problem.


24 posted on 06/14/2009 9:51:16 AM PDT by Slings and Arrows ("If Dick Cheney is Darth Vader, then Barack Obama is Jar-Jar Binks!")
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To: Slings and Arrows

Certainly. Hated those little things when I was a kid.


25 posted on 06/14/2009 10:25:31 AM PDT by dr_who
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To: JoeProBono

BURN IT WITH FIRE.
SEND IN THE SPACE MARINES!


26 posted on 06/14/2009 2:22:38 PM PDT by John Will
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To: Cyclops08
Wait! This is a great way to get super powers!

Good call!

27 posted on 06/14/2009 2:25:25 PM PDT by SIDENET ("Join me or die. Can you do any less?" -Mr. Sparkle)
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