August 24, 2003

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  Published on Friday, August 15, 2003 by the Tri-City Herald (Kennewick, Wash)

  Radioactive Nests of Hanford Wasps are Science Fact

  by John Stang   These wasps use their stingers mostly to paralyze spiders to stuff one each into a mud tube before implanting an egg on that spider. At H Reactor, these 1Ú2- to 3Ú4-inch-long wasps are picking up their mud from the complex's contaminated spent nuclear fuel basin.   In the past, Hanford has faced hordes of radioactive ants, hunted marauding radioactive fruit flies in 1998 and constantly combats tumbling radioactive tumbleweeds. Unfound radioactive nests will shelter larvae hibernating with their dead spiders through the fall and winter. When spring comes, the larvae will awaken.

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