This article was taken from the June issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online
Nature and nuclear contamination don’t generally mix -- though as scientific illustrator Cornelia Hesse-Honegger’s paintings show, the results can sometimes be strangely beautiful.
She collects so-called "truebugs" living near nuclear facilities and areas affected by chemical pollution. True bugs "suck liquid from the plants they live on," she says. "So if the plant is contaminated, they take a lot of radioactivity into their bodies."
Conventional wisdom holds that nuclear power stations don’t leak enough radiation to create mutants. But in some locations, Hesse-Honegger discovered mutations, such as asymmetrical wings and eye-cysts, in as many as 30 per cent of the bugs she gathered. "For me," she says, "the mutated bugs were like prototypes of a future nature."