Radioactive Warning for Future Generations

tengu1sd writes "The Los Angeles Times discusses the problems with trying to leave a message for generations down the line. From the article: 'Symbols tend to lose their meaning over time. Exactly how and why Stonehenge was built, for instance, has long remained a mystery. Warnings, they argue, would be misunderstood or dismissed, the same way ancient grave robbers ignored curses inscribed on the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs to seize the riches inside. The curse of plutonium packs a painful penalty.'"

Simple solution

[by Anonymous Coward]

Just write it in every major language. Several languages have survived thousands of years through today, which is how the Rosetta Stone worked.

Re:Simple solution

[networkBoy (774728)]

Na, just type:
Warning, Lawyers buried here.

No-one will ever dig it up.
-nB

Re:Simple solution

[Scrameustache (459504)]

Just write it in every major language. Several languages have survived thousands of years through today, which is how the Rosetta Stone worked.

FTFA

It would be surrounded by 48 granite or concrete markers, 32 outside the berm and 16 inside, each 25 feet high and weighing 105 tons, engraved with warnings in English, Spanish, Russian, French, Chinese, Arabic and Navajo, with room for future discoverers to add warnings in contemporary languages. Pictures would denote buried hazards and human faces of horror and revulsion.

Stonehennge 2 ???

[EmbeddedJanitor (597831)]

Hippies will dance around it naked at the full moon....

Burial in Ancient Rock!

[BigBlockMopar (191202)]

It would be surrounded by 48 granite or concrete markers, 32 outside the berm and 16 inside, each 25 feet high and weighing 105 tons,

Or here's another thought: just bury it.

Bury it in a pluton of ancient rock, several hundred meters down, as most current proposals suggest. When the site is filled, backfill it with concrete from the top to the bottom of the shaft.

Any society with sufficient resources (technology, tools, time) to cut through that to see what we buried will also undoubtedly have an archaeo

Re:Burial in Ancient Rock!

[Itchy Rich (818896)]

Again, any society capable of getting there will also have discovered the periodicity of chemistry...

So, you're saying that before 1896 the human race would have been incapable of mining out a couple of hundred metres of concrete? Any pharoah worth his salt could have that concrete shaft carved into a tasteful spiral staircase within his lifetime.

Re:Simple solution

[darkmeridian (119044)]

There are interesting considerations that have gone into the design of the warnings. For the Yucca Repository, the warning contains a disclaimer akin to, "No achievement of ours is worshipped here." The fear is that future generations will think we buried our treasure there, or set up some elaborate tomb like King Tut's. Future generations may understand the warning about sickness and death, but consider it a "curse" meant to dissuade grave robbers or the like. Perhaps they'll all be cavemen in the future i

Re:Simple solution

[spiritraveller (641174)]

I agree. If you put warnings all over the place, there will eventually be some crazy people who think it's just a big stash of treasure and go dig it up.

As the FTA points out, people who robbed the pyramids in Egypt didn't pay any attention to the warnings about curses and such... we can't be sure that a potentially uneducated group of future beings will believe all that mumbo jumbo about radioactivity.

Re:Simple solution

[Firethorn (177587)]

Do we really care about the grave-robbers and such? If we're trying to protect against the future equivalent, I'll note that most grave robbers were illiterate and did unmeasurable harm to archeology with their destruction. They'd note our warnings, however many languages we put them in, about as much as the historical ones paid to the egyptian writtings.

For that matter, I can see scientists not leaving well enough alone and digging in there to find out what the horrible hazard is.

Personally, I think that it's sad that we're this worried about the stuff and harming 'future generations'. Besides, most high-level waste is very recyclable, and what remains would be 'safe' radioactive wise within a thousand years. Warnings written in English, Spanish, Chinese(same written language, remember?), Japanese, Arabic, and Latin should be fairly easy to translate for longer than that. I'd throw Hebrew in there as it's seemed to survive well over time. Heck, we might just be making the Rosetta Stone of the future! On the other hand, Navajo? Isn't that pretty close to a dead language already?

For that matter, if we bury it right, by the time anybody has the skills/technology to dig a half mile down into the earth they should be technologically advanced enough to know most of the hazards.

Finally:
A third plaque was pried off, perhaps as a souvenir. According to earlier visitors, it read, in plain English, "This site will remain dangerous for 24,000 years."

This makes me think, but at what level of dangerous? Hiroshima and Nagasaki were rebuilt and are inhabited today. Would a society at a victorian technological level even have the average lifespan to notice minor radiation poisoning?

Re:Simple solution

[Firethorn (177587)]

Would it be possible to refine the waste in a couple of thousand years? :). I figure I could start a company now, buy it all and store it, then sell a shitload of uranium to the iranians or jihadis or whoever else needs it in only a few lifetimes (assuming good cloning tech to harvest some new organs as I need them...)

Try 90%+ recyclable, depending upon the reactor you took it out of and what you're looking to put it into. Also, no need to wait a thosand years, 40-60 seems to be enough. The problem you run into is that it's so radioactive when it first comes out of the reactor that handling it safely is difficult. So you move it just enough to place it into a containment pool. After spending a decade or two in that, it's something like 1% as radioactive as when it came out. Some point after that, you stick it in a cask to free up your pool, as it's now not generating enough heat to need active cooling/monitoring. After 20-40 years in that, you crack the cask and recycle the now relativly cool materials without the need for extreme radiation measures.

At least, that's what Bush is looking at doing.

Re:Simple solution

[Scrameustache (459504)]

As the FTA points out, people who robbed the pyramids in Egypt didn't pay any attention to the warnings about curses

Yeah, um, curses? Should I worry about black cats too?

Re:Simple solution

[Andrzej Sawicki (921100)]

So right. This reminded me of a Terry Pratchett quote:

Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying "End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH," the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.

Radioactive mutant zombies? Pfff!

[Scrameustache (459504)]

Meh. I think we ought to just do a really thorough job of hiding it, with warnings inside the perimeter. Obvious warnings will just draw attention to the site.

I say we build a necropolis there.

What says "deadly danger" more than a bunch of stiffs?

Re:Simple solution

[Preeminence (784375)]

I would suggest writing in not in major languages of today, but ancient languages that are still understood/studied. Latin, (Homeric) Greek, and Hebrew come to mind. Who knows if anyone will want to study Tom Clancy novels 10,000 years in the future, but if civilization still exists, they will still be studying the Bible, the Iliad, the Aeneid, etc.

Re:Simple solution

[larry bagina (561269)]

addendum: Perhaps future archaelogists will be fascinated to learn that the ancient romans colonized north america and utilized nuclear power.

A cantilcle for leibowitz

[goombah99 (560566)]

If you never read A canticle for Leibowitz, well you need to, it's part of any liberal education. In any case what is the most enduring instituion bar none. Religion. Start a religious order that protects the sites.

Re:A cantilcle for leibowitz

[iamlucky13 (795185)]

That's not quite the story. It wasn't an order that survived but the church. In Canticle for Leibowitz the Catholic church survived a nuclear holocaust and an ensuing uprising against all technology. While some clung to hope, most started destroying any technology they found in a desperate effort to prevent the same thing from ever happening again. Humanity would've been completely back in the stone age but for a Catholic engineer dedicating his life to preserving it. It's pretty much all lost anyway, and the book follows the course of humanity trying to re-achieve the modern world based on what he was able to rescue, long after he and everyone else who understood it was dead. It often presents situations that suppose how a person not familiar with a technology might react. For example, when some monks who had studied Leibowitz's documents figured out how to make a light bulb, one of their brothers was scandalized that they were messing with devilish powers, while others recognized that there was some impressive knowledge that had long been lost.

It's not a decidedly Catholic book, although the author was a member of the church and some issues like euthanasia and seperation of church and state enter into the story line. The Catholic chuch has maintained Apostolic succession for 2,000 years and is basically independent of political boundaries, so if any entity seems capable of enduring a nuclear war, the Catholic church is it, and it is a fitting structure for the plot to make use of.

The church did not exist in the book for the purpose of preserving the works. The church was there, as it was before the war, to try to understand and bring humanity closer to God. One order of the church was founded on the idea that preserving the technology of the past could aid in that, just like Mother Theresa's Sister's of Charity was founded for providing care to the poor.

A big tunnel filled with stuff that makes people sick hardly seems like something that could effectively inspire a religious devotion. At the very least, it would make a poor premise for a religion and an rather uninspiring reason to maintain an order. I think merely attempting to maintain the message that the stuff in the tunnel should be left alone (with further details for any potentially advanced civillization) is going to be the safest way to handle this.

Away from the fictional side of things, while I think some measures should be taken to make it clear that the waste is a hazard, I doubt it will be a problem. First of all, I don't believe a massive collapse of civillization and loss of scientific knowledge will happen. We're unaware of anything like that happening in our past (discounting myths like Atlantis). Secondly, this isn't going to be easily accessible. The Yucca Mountain proposal places the waste something like 1000 feet down. It's also all in a very hard and chemically stable ceramic form, encased in concrete and steel. It will be hard for anybody dumb to get to and get out of the tunnel. Finally, it would not be the first time mankind has discovered harmful things. Bubonic plague comes to mind as one thing we handled in our history.

Use a skull, DOH!

[Spy der Mann (805235)]

That's the UNIVERSAL symbol of death. And engraved depictions of people and bones, and stuff.

Very Easy Solution.

[by Anonymous Coward]

Write it in English.

If civilization ever devolves to the point where English is no longer recognized/understood, then guess what?

The cavemen who have replaced us won't be our problem to deal with. We'll all be happily dead.

Seriously, if such a warning is ever needed, to hell with Humanity 2.0. I can see it now:

Ogg (sipping a skull full of blood): Me say, is nice of other human to warn us of glowy shiny.

Eck (nodding his head before picking something out of his hair and eating it): Mmmm. Yes, is pity they stupid and bash selves.

Ogg and Eck: Ahahahahaha!

Well, screw you, future savages - may you all wilt and die from radiation poisoning.

Re:Very Easy Solution.

[oudzeeman (684485)]

Thats right - in 10,000 years English will be unchanged!

Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum, eodcyninga, rym gefrunon hu ða æelingas ellen fremedon.

Re:Very Easy Solution.

[by Anonymous Coward]

Good for you, you can recite Beowulf.

Oh - wait, you've proved my point. English may change, but the knowledge to decipher it isn't likely to disappear.

Try to keep in mind that there's almost certainly never going to be another 'Dark Ages'. The world's population is a damned sight higher, and the idea that every last person who understands English is just going to disappear off the face of the planet is ludicrous, at best.

We have no Library of Alexandria to burn to the ground - in the US alone, we have libraries in every moderately sized town. Not to mention countless brick and mortar stores. And college campuses. And elementary schools.

And let's not forget the Internet(tm). While reading it on the Internet doesn't make it true, there's a hell of a lot of knowledge that's scattered across the world.

So, where is Rome, that it might fall and plunge the world into the damnable darkness? Rome no longer exists, and that weakpoint of our civilization has been condemned with her.

Re:Very Easy Solution.

[Jesapoo (929240)]

Are you kidding me? A CITY? You do realise that we have enough nuclear weapons to wipe out every living thing on this planet, right? Destroying a civilisation nowadays doesn't require the destruction of a city by a marauding army. That's far too much effort...

A Biological Weapon is accidentally released. In an attempt to protect the population, nuclear weapons are fired at supposed infection hot-spots. Anarchy errpupts as the deaths from this plague start killing all over the world, spread by the rap

Re:Very Easy Solution.

[compro01 (777531)]

its not that English will no longer exist, its that it will change so significantly, that what we've written will no longer be recognised.

compare old English (around year 1000) to modern English. a good deal of change. then multiply that change by a factor of about 15.

Re:Very Easy Solution.

[BobNET (119675)]

Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum, eodcyninga, rym gefrunon hu ða æelingas ellen fremedon.

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!

Re:Very Easy Solution.

[wile_e_wonka (934864)]

What am I learning in law school then? And it's on our currency!

I can tell any Roman "E pluribus unim" and "res ipsa loquitur." "Caveat emptor" "contra referendum"

Yeah, I'm fluent. I just can't say anything useful.

Just post it on the internet

[by Anonymous Coward]

Then future generations can look it up on the wayback machine.

Tourist signs

[dotslashdot (694478)]

Today's warning sign is tomorrow's tourist attraction. If anything, the warning signs will attract tourists, exposing them to more radiation. "Hey lookie here FuturoBillyBob, these ancient symbols must lead to treasure, because no ancient symbol would ever be a warning, right?" This will inevitably lead to naturally selecting out curious tourists who will die out from radiation poisoning and not pass on the curious gene. The "Where's Waldo" series will plummet in sales, causing its publisher to go out of business, reducing the sales of red and white horizontally striped sweaters, thick glasses, blue pants and brown shoes as well as stocking hats, unleashing an economic chain reaction leading to a global economic collapse that will start nuclear war, resulting in the annihilation of mankind. So don't mess this up, LA!

Well, to crib an idea from Larry Niven ...

[ScrewMaster (602015)]

just make a huge pile of glowing, long-lived nuclear waste, and surround it with a high stone fence. Put signs on that barrier in every language known to Mankind that say "if you cross this fence you will die". Undoubtedly, some people will cross that fence. Niven called this effect "Evolution in action" and that's certainly the case. However, after a few years, the growing pile of radioactive skeletons would serve as a graphic example to future generations about the dangers of radioactive waste, while simultaneously cleaning the gene pool.

Re:I'd opt for something cheaper.

[TDRighteo (712858)]

Well, Sir James Lovelock (of "Gaia Theory" fame) has suggested the best way to preserve regions of high biodiversity (such as rainforests) is to do just that. The developers wouldn't touch the land (just imagine trying to sell it!) and the critters will only have slightly reduced lifespans - something that they are unlikely to appreciate or care about. Chernobyl is his example of just how well this works.

Of course, this is hardly a long term solution to waste management, as the only reason why it works as a

The monumental task of warning future generations

[mxpengin (516866)]

An article about the same topic here [doe.gov]. Its foccused on the repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

Brainstorming about WIPP in 10,000 years...

[Etcetera (14711)]

Actually, there's a lot more interesting information in the abstract of the report that actually generated that data sheet.

Take a look at excepts from the Expert Judgement on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plan [vanderbilt.edu] for more comprehensive details on how they came up with these concepts, and the team(s) of multi-disciplinary researchers/scientists who worked on them.

If nothing else, I was reminded of other (fictional) mutli-disciplinary teams brainstorming about far-

there should be additional deterrants

[artifex2004 (766107)]

There need to be additional deterrants, in case whoever finds the site later is too stupid, too greedy, or too malevolent to keep away from the site.

This may sound cruel, but I really think some attractively shiny sealed containers with neurotoxins or simple, stable, chemical poisons should be added in another layer under the surface. Perhaps they already plan to do this, and just don't want to make the information public. But would you rather a few people die on the surface, reinforcing the idea that the site is full of death, or let those people dig down and extract some of that waste, before expiring and leaving it out in the open on the surface, later? That would surely end up having a more catastrophic effect on local life.

Re:there should be additional deterrants

[natrius (642724)]

This may sound cruel, but I really think some attractively shiny sealed containers with neurotoxins or simple, stable, chemical poisons should be added in another layer under the surface.

"The people who built this put so much effort into deterring people from entering it. There must be something valuable inside."

weapon technology artifact

[tilminator (970595)]

Future governments might consider it a deposit of weapon technology for them to use if it is too deadly. Don't make the warning sign attractive.

What warning is needed?

[NotQuiteReal (608241)]

If civilization has deteriorated to the point that the future critters no longer have the technology to detect the danger, maybe a good old fashioned dose of mutation will kick-start them back on the path!

Plutonium is fuel, not waste

[Zobeid (314469)]

The problem with our current reactors is that they only "burn" a small fraction of their nuclear fuel and leave the rest as waste. With reprocessing and more advanced reactor designs, it's possible to extract far more energy and leave behind waste that's not dangerous for anywhere near as long.

The highly radioactive stuff we're struggling to "entomb forever" at Yucca Mountain is probably the same stuff we'll be scrambling to dig up and use as fuel 50 years from now.

Good idea. One problem.

[jd (1658)]

BNFL really F'ed up the whole reprocessing idea at Windscale, err, Selafield, by occasionally "accidently" dumping radioactive waste into the Irish Sea (which is now the most radioactive in the world). The sea spray contains measurable levels of plutonium. Cancer levels are something like 100 times background levels. A burst pipe contaminated so much of the infrastructure of THORP that it is unclear if it can ever be made safe. And this is the center that was taking radioactive waste from nuclear power stations across the globe, on account of nobody else wanting something like that in their backyard.

Nuclear reprocessing is a must. At the current rate of development and fuel use, uranium ore will run out 25+ years before we are due to have a commercially viable fusion reactor, never mind enough such reactors that fission reactors can all be replaced. Well, either reprocessing is a must, or we need to invest an order of magnitude more in fusion research, but Governments don't like funding speculative research much and the decades of fuel we currently have will outlast the career of any politician currently with sufficient influence to actually bring about radical funding programs.

However, if we do have reprocessing, it absolutely needs to be far better managed than BNFL can do. Oh, and don't get Group 4 to carry the nuclear fuel, either. They tend to lose things a lot.

Solved.

[llZENll (545605)]

Skull and crossed bones.

In the not so distant future...

[TCQuad (537187)]

Skull and crossed bones.

Cool! Pirate treasure!

Re:Solved.

[Bemopolis (698691)]

Just label it something no self-respecting American would go near, like "Health Food", or "Books".

As for any other nationalities, screw them. That's what they get for winning the war against us and occupying Yucca Mountain.

Bemopolis

To whom may dig here

[hedley (8715)]

I am Nobutu Bangari and I am in posession of a large consignment of gold
that my people left me some time ago. you are free to dig here to find it but
as a token of good faith I ask that you remit to my swiss bank account a small
fee that we will reimburse to you once the bullion is secured by you.

etc

Just translate that and no-one would dare bother digging.

Hedley

Just post it on slashdot

[bunions (970377)]

It'll be reposted about every year, just like this 'news' item.

Take the Gamble

[logicnazi (169418)]

Look their are two possible scenarios we need to worry about.

In the first scenario we continue our impressive technological progress and civilization does not collapse. In this case simple messages in major world languages and records in other places around the country plus the radioactivity itself will be more than enough to pass this information on to a civilization unimagineably more technically adept than we are. Likely this civilization will have found a much better solution for radioactive disposal (or will just want to reprocess the waste) but even if not we can count on them to be better able to solve the problem of warning people away thatn we are.

In short if we expect civilization to continue to progress we don't need to make warnings that will last for more than 500 years and english will accomplish that.

On the other hand if civilization does collapse and humanity returns to primitive existance it seems a bit silly to worry about this radioactive waste. If societal collapse is a serious worry then we should be putting this effort into caching technology and information to help rebuild civilization not making sure future cave-men avoid cancer. The harm from radioactivity is bad and sucks but it doesn't even register compared to the harms and loss of lifespan from global collapse of civilization. Heck, while some people might die discovering the mysterious deadly waves might even help civilization to rediscover scientific knowledge.

Overall I think a lot of this buisness is just silly. Before going and wasting all this time trying to communicate the danger first figure out in what scenarios it will be important to do that and then ask if in those scenarios these sort of warnings really are the most productive thing we can do to help.

The answer is obvious

[Tablizer (95088)]

A Goatse statue/image! It crosses cultural and language boundaries like nothing a bunch of eggheads in a lab can ever cook up.

Try This One...

[Kamel Jockey (409856)]

bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong

COBOL

[Embedded Geek (532893)]

languages die and words once poetic or portentous become the indecipherable marks of a long-forgotten scribbler

Heck, write the damn thing in COBOL. After all, what better language to use than one that refuses to die despite every best effort to kill it?

Re:The proper solution ...

[cdn-programmer (468978)]

What a stupid idea! Wake up and smell the coffee - its not waste and if you think it is then send it to Alberta.

Up here we need about 75 nuclear plants and of course most Canadians have not come to grips with this idea either. But we need those plants and if we have them we'll make gasoline for our good friends just south of us.

So send all your nuclear waste up here. We do know what to do with it. Send up your nuclear engineers too. We need them also.

Re:Clean, safe nuclear energy

[DrBuzzo (913503)]

Right...we'll stop building those deadly reactors and instead we'll use coal burning plants. I'm sure the future generations would love us for that.

Or perhaps we should go with renewable energy. Lets see. We'll need need to use about 2/3 of the land area of the US for the solar panels and the other 1/3 for the batteries, so I guess we'll all live underground.

The fact is this: Perhaps with the exception of hydroelectric dams (of which there are a limited number of suitable locations). Nuclear energy

Re:Nuclear Waste isn't a problem anyway

[PitaBred (632671)]

Ever read the facts about depleted uranium? [osd.mil] I wouldn't want to be shot with it, but I'd daresay that things like radon, burning oil and their own countrymen blowing them up provide more hazards to Iraqi's (that is what you were alluding to, wasn't it?) than depleted uranium shells.

Re:Nuclear Waste isn't a problem anyway

[fredmosby (545378)]

Natural uranium is 99.3% U238 and 0.7% U235. U235 has a half life of 700 million years. U238 has a half life of 4 billion years. Isotopes with longer half lives are less radioactive. Therefore U238 is far less radioactive than U235.

Depleted uranium is uranium that has had most of the U235 separated out. Making it less radioactive than natural uranium

The average natural uranium content in topsoil is about 2 parts per million(that's without any contamination of any kind). Iraq has more than a trillion tons of topsoil. In the first meter of soil there is already more than two million tons of natural uranium. Adding a few thousand tons of depleted uranium will have no effect on the people of Iraq.

The effects of uranium are well known and have been studied by many countries other than the United States. You are just making up a conspiracy theory because you have no facts on your side.