This Place is Not a Place of Honor 492
macnigel writes "DOE tries to find a good warning sign for the nuclear waste dump out in Nevada. This is one of those scary yet true things our government actually does; research into finding what exactly can be interpreted as "dangerous" 10,000 years from now." I was sure we had run a story about this before, but I don't see it in the archives. The report on how to mark the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (complete version in pdf 19.5Mb) makes chilling, yet somehow inspiring reading, and IMHO is much less deserving of mockery than the Salon author makes it out to be.
Deep Time (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.physics.uci.edu/~silverma/benfo
My proposal (Score:5, Funny)
I think that'd probably do.
Re:My proposal (Score:2)
Skull and Cross Bones (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Skull and Cross Bones (Score:5, Funny)
Exactly, plus it'll attract Goths, so it'll be a two-birds-with-one-stone type of thing.
Re:Skull and Cross Bones (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Skull and Cross Bones (Score:2, Insightful)
It's a cultural thing... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Skull and Cross Bones (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Skull and Cross Bones (Score:3, Funny)
Unless... (Score:2, Insightful)
Imagine the horror if thousands of years from now that were the surviving culture, and they stumbled upon this: "OOH look! a celebration of the dead! let's go see!"
Not likely, but just goes to show that the skull is not necessarily a feared symbol everywhere.
Re:Skull and Cross Bones (Score:2, Insightful)
They made a point specificly about the skull and bones, and that it would be useless, because even in some cultures today, the skull and bones has a non-negitive meaning.
They seem to give the conclution that it would be better off making the place unreachable, as opposed to using warning signs. Black sand (too hot to walk on etc) or something was part of on idea (or maybe just an example). But they pointed out that this was also useless, because it would get blowen before 100,000 years.
I think the basic conclution that the program came to, was that it would be f'n hard to make sure no one accidently stumbles across it for 100,000 years.
Personaly. I think that we would be better of keeing it here, and waiting untill space travel get a bit more relible and safer, then just send it on a course to the sun.
Re:Skull and Cross Bones (Score:3, Funny)
I'm sorry? (Score:3, Funny)
They should also put up automated laser turrets (of course nuclear powered so they work for a few eons) to vaporise everyone who approaches so that nobody dies from that deadly radiation.
Re:I'm sorry? (Score:3, Insightful)
It originally meant peace. The crossbones were recently turned (1500's) to the X it is now. Before they were the "t" (aka cross).
However, while watching all this on a college documentary/classroom , they also considered the solution. The signage is that of stick figures. Essentially, people arent going to change (unlesss they get too close...) so figures are acceptable. Now, they show figures going close. Then they fall. They don't show the figures getting back up.
Another problem is how they marker this. There are about 10 very heavy stones with the stick carvings in them. If you draw the circle around these and find the center, that's where the waste hatch will be at. They fill it with bunches of heavy stuff (concrete, metal, mesh). The whole idea is that if we digress to a stone type culture, they wont be able to penetrate it. If they can, they're probably as smart as us (or use slave labor).
Re:I'm sorry? (Score:2)
It originally meant peace. The crossbones were recently turned (1500's) to the X it is now. Before they were the "t" (aka cross).
Another symbol where the meaning has changed very recently is the swastika.
Re:I'm sorry? (Score:2)
Re:I'm sorry? (Score:2)
Re:I'm sorry? (Score:2)
Ah, but then the problem would be...
[ Laser turrent vaporizes people +
People get angry & blast laser turrents =
"What was buried here that was VALUABLE enough to defend with lethal force?" Then the mass excavation begins. ]
[ On the upside the Plutonium isotopes could power the turrents for a pretty long time ]
Want a better idea? Build something that nobody ever visits or would want to visit: A perpetually running slide show of the winners of the "least interesting vacation spots". Another choice would be to put a ambient-radiation powered subsonic nausea-inducing highly-redundant chain of emitters which kick on for a day then switch to another emitter for the next day. If any emitter fails then the other emitters change the routine so as to spread the wear and tear for a long time. Or they could each be sealed in highly rust-proof containers which open and begin emitting when the current emitter fails.
Heck, the best trick would be to seal the area over in our best and hardest materials. A primitive culture would never be able to penetrate it and a smart culture would know how to avoid or handle dangerous radiation. Leaving it a bare uninteresting patch of earth is for the best. If it kills any primitive culture that builds over it, then they still cannot dig it up to endanger other folks. It would be nice to protect cavemen or preindustrial cultures from our deadly radioactive waste, but any marker we left would just be left as a curiosity spot from the "ancients". It would be far better to just wrap it in lead, cover it with super-strong barrier materials, and then cover it with plain dirt.
Warning (Score:2, Funny)
Will curiosity kill mankind after all? ;) (Score:4, Insightful)
But what does a "Do not enter" sign mean to the average geek? It raises his or her curiosity why exactly whatever is behind closed doors should be left alone. Hence the number of mummys lying in museums instead of pyramids.
If the knowledge is lost why our generation took so much precaution, not even the best signs or defense systems or whatever will keep the curious out. But maybe the humans of the future will just scan the sites from their orbiting starship while sipping a cup of hot earl grey tea .... ahh, drifting off again ...
Re:Will curiosity kill mankind after all? ;) (Score:3, Informative)
Had you actually read the article, you would see that the plan is to tell as clearly as possible what is under there. In the actual document they said that the in the first warning structures there would be not only 'keep out' message in seven languages (space left to add new languages) but also some information about the site. It would say that the place is believed to be completely safe as long as you don't dig or drill the ground. And it would say that for more information you'll just have to enter the building inside the area.
The main information room (actually five identical rooms, one on surface, four buried in different depths) would then contain exact information about what is buried there and where it is, including the floor plan of the WIPP facility. For those who don't know about our current calendar system, there would be star charts that tell when the site was constructed and when its radioactivity is at the level of natural uranium ore. Also there would be a map of other nuclear waste sites where you should find documentation to confirm this one. And if that doesn't tell you what is down there, there would be a chart of the periodic system with samples of the non-precious elements (precious elements would get stolen and give hints that there are other things to steal too) and marks that would tell which ones the waste contains.
Most of the more advanced information would be only in English and maybe Spanish. The authors believe that isn't much a problem as there probably will be scholars that can read English around for a long time (think about the volume of archived material from these days). Also, there are instructions to rewrite the material if English becomes hard to understand. The star charts and maps should stay readable though the language changes.
See? No need to dig there. You can get all the information from the surface.
how stupid can you get? (Score:2)
It's not like we can't change the sign if a new language comes along. And it's not like civilization will forget that there's a whole bunch of really nasty shit in the Nevada.
Re:how stupid can you get? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:how stupid can you get? (Score:2)
if i was an alien visiting Nevada in 10,000 years. I'd either make sure I'd said 'hello' to the locals beforehand or I'd be carrying at least one geiger counter. I've flown 500 parsecs to get here, I'm not going to let myself get ill because I've stepped in a puddle of goo some idiot left there 10,000 years ago, now am I?
Re:how stupid can you get? (Score:4, Interesting)
This is stupid. Thousands of years is a long, long time, and catastrophic things can happen. 'We' might not be around to update the signs into new languages, and people most certainly do forget where important things are buried.
We're still discovering about one new pyramid every two years in Egypt, but I bet you were the guy back then who said we didn't need maps and signs because who would forget where we put a fucking huge pyramid?
tech solves? nature takes its course? (Score:2, Insightful)
I realize that there's a chance that the technology might not happen, but it's relatively logical to think that people will still be dealing with radiation in the future (it'll probably be even more significant).
Who knows, maybe civilization will take a dive backwards, and we'll forget our tech,etc. Even then, though, there's a chance that a nuke was involved somewhere (and that would keep the idea of radiation in the civilization?).
I guess the last thing is, if people at a particular point in time don't have the tech to read the signs we put up, then they probably won't know about radiation, either... Then, if the place were not really interestingly marked, people who randomly decided to settle there would just die relatively quickly, and "the valley of death" would soon be discovered for what it was. If, however, it was something interesting, then people might not notice the connection between the people dying around them while they're exploring/bringing back objects from the place.
Apologies for the randomness of these thoughts --
classmate from cs160.
Re:how stupid can you get? (Score:4, Funny)
Fuck. I forgot where I put Atlantis. Anyone?
Re:how stupid can you get? (Score:3, Funny)
Over here! You can come by and pick it up when you want. I'm having some Aztec friends over tonight for a beer. If you pick it up tonight, you're more than welcome to have a drink with us. I think those crazy, stone-carving guys from Easter Island are comming over to, they're always great people to have over....I just wish they would stop carving rude things out of my concrete wall.
Re:how stupid can you get? (Score:3, Funny)
Damn those stupid Egyptians for not updating all their heiroglyphic inscriptions to English.
Re:how stupid can you get? (Score:2)
and the ejyptians didn't even mention that in their scribblings.
Re:how stupid can you get? (Score:4, Insightful)
-sam
Re:how stupid can you get? (Score:2)
who are we trying to protect here? some visiting aliens who'd be smart enough to stay away if they saw an atmosphere filled with radiation from a disaster/war, or a bunch of mindless idiots who were foolish enough to blast themselves back into the stone-age?
fuck it, i say, if we're too stupid not to blow ourselves up then we deserve to die a long, horrible, toxic death from forgetting how to heed our own warnings.
the very real threat of nuclear disaster is much more important than the remote possibility that someone might stumble into nevada and not know what the hell's going on there. I can't believe taxpayer's mony was spent on this. Jesus, feed the starving children or something, for fuck's sake.
You know this will get the message across! (Score:4, Funny)
Neurohazard (Score:2)
Why bother? (Score:5, Funny)
How about a sign with amorous stick figures, hearts, and in every modern language, "Procreate here and you will have interesting offspring"?
I swear, government takes the fun out of everything.
-b
Anyone remember OMNI Magazine? (Score:4, Informative)
In dark ages past, my aunt would renew my subscription to OMNI as my birthday present. Gawd... that was 15, maybe 20 years ago. As I aged, I kept that subscription -- all the way up to when they quit publishing. (They "embraced a fully electronic format" or something like that... sound familiar?)
Now, here's the kicker:
- I remember an article about this same subject!
And now here we are... the internet has come, grown, the bubble has burst, my favorite Sci-Fi magazine is no more, and we STILL haven't answered one (seemingly) simple question! Nuclear power plants are storing every fuel rod they've ever used on-site, Germans are willing to disable their rail system to prevent nuclear waste transport, and Nevada residents (read: voters) will only allow the Yucca Mountain Facility if the rest of the country rams it down their collective throat!(It was complete with artists' renditions of the ideas... fields of giant spikes, etc...)
The more things change, the more they stay the same, I suppose.
The Little Engine That Could... Kill Us All (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Anyone remember OMNI Magazine? (Score:2)
We're not talking aliens, we're talking the offspring of rats or cockroaches... or whatever else that might evolve sentience on this planet should we ever bite the bullet.
I swear I even remember the goofy illustration next to the article showing some tribal cockroaches and rat shamans worshipping the universal nuclear hazard symbol in some cavern/ storage silo.
Re:Anyone remember OMNI Magazine? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, I can tell you, as a Nevada resident, that public opinion here is across the entire spectrum. Opinions are mostly broken down like so:
To date, the largest act of "interference", that I've heard of, has been the cutting off of water to the site. Without water, drilling has been basically stopped dead.
A little thought experiment (Score:5, Insightful)
Now imagine that the pyramids were nuclear waste disposal sites and that all those dread pictorial warnings of demons and death adorning them to warn off graverobbers that you know from Indiana Jones actually were warnings about nuclear radiation.
"You will die a slow and horrible death, if you enter here!"
Yeah right, said graverobbers throughout the millennia. Egyptian jewelry and pottery from those graves have adorned houses and women everywhere. They were fashionable in the 1920's, I believe.
Mummies were used for fuel in the USA a hundred years ago.
Hundreds of thousands of people would have been exposed to radiation before we finally gained an inkling into its dangers in the fifties.
It's rather improbable that our culture will last the 100,000 years that our nuclear waste will remain highly dangerous, so the above scenario is inevitable. People are curious and they do not believe in warnings of unseen, tasteless, odorless dangers. Better think of a way to hide the stuff well enough to stay inaccessible for that time.
Impossible? Well fancy you saying that! That's exactly why I have a problem with nuclear power generation!
Architect, idealist, pragmatist William McDonough (Score:5, Informative)
Sustainable technology sounds like pie in the sky, but he has really focused on using things that work, and he understands the economic realities.
He does think that we have the wrong metric of prosperity.
His speech starts at 3:56, and listen especially to 4:45 into the speech. 5:45 talks right to your point about the lunacy of using technologies that will require 100,000 of cleanup.
And I challenge anyone to listen to the first 2 1/2 minutes and be able to turn the rest of his speech off.
Also contains interesting quotes from /.'s favorite president, Thomas Jefferson.
Re:A little thought experiment (Score:2)
/. hAxOrS - this is what good GUI design is all about.
The only thing that can put people off from buying Hershey bars is a corpse draped across the shelf with a half-eaten Hershey bar in his hand. Any other sign is open to interpretation - even the traditional skull & crossbones sign will be interpreted by pirates as their equivalent of "Stars & Stripes"
Re:A little thought experiment (Score:2)
Wha?
How?
Where?
When?
Who?
Re:A little thought experiment (Score:2, Interesting)
The dead of egypt has been used for brown butcher paper (its still colored so it looks the same), as fuel and a source of fibers.
There at least 50,000 mummies transported to the US for industrial uses. Maybe as many as a 1/4 million.
Modern Egypt has little connections to it past. for example its name was given to it by the french during the time of Napoleon when they figured the area had to have been the part talked about in the bible with moses and such so they named the area Aegypt which is now Egypt. There is no archaeological of connections between the people involved with the bible and the area now known as Egypt.
Re:A little thought experiment (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:A little thought experiment (Score:2, Informative)
Its actually pretty harmless (Score:3, Interesting)
The dangerous part with plutonium is accidently inhaling dust particles of it, having them settle into your lungs and cause lung cancer.
The bad stuff is that with an intermediate half-life of up to a few centuries. Short enough to be really nasty and radioactive, but also long enough to stay aroung for too long. Also, that and isotopes that get impregnated into your tissues. (like strontium into bones)
Stuff like strontium which gets into your bones
Salon - feh (Score:4, Insightful)
>Salon author makes it out to be.
I agree...this article contains most of the requisite elements of a Salon author's work: an obvious disdain for science and especially those who practice it, a lot of unfunny non-humor, contrived anti-government cynicism, and the obligatory stab at George W.
It's fine, though - as long as the scientists keep doing what they do, and the pseudo-intellectual hipsters at Salon confine themselves to their useless pursuits, real progress should remain unimpeded.
My Sign Idea (Score:3, Funny)
Two words: Neverland Ranch.
My (serious) pick: (Score:4, Interesting)
For those of you who didn't read the shorter site: A grid of massive, roughly hewn 25' black cubes with about 5 feet of separtation between them.
You could get in, but it'd be a distinctly uncomfortable place to be. It'd be unbelievably hot a lot of the year, it'd be tought to do anything useful in the area, etc. It says "stay out" without trying too hard and inciting curiosity.
Of course, I also think "Most gross danger" in the top hundred most popular languages and Welch would be a good addition. Hell, it might even serve as a rosetta stone some day...
Ummm..not a chance (Score:3, Interesting)
10,000 years from now the place will be a magnet for the sort of people who visit stonehenge now.
The best possible marker would be none at all.
--
Re:Ummm..not a chance (Score:2)
This should be possible -- after all, if you want to knowingly go walking around on a nuke waste dump, be my guest.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
boom! (Score:4, Funny)
Oh wait, it's Nevada. Nevermind.
Just put a casino nearby, then nobody will care where the nuclear waste is.
Well.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, 4 in the morning, weeeeeee. (Score:4, Funny)
What we should do rather than a sign we should make the hole facility a death trap, so anyone curious enough to explore it will never get close to the deadly radiation. Kind-of like the Scarab of Ra (really old game I played on a Mac), we can keep mummies, lions, leapords, spike traps, or whatever the hell they had in that game all throughout our nuclear waste pyramid.
To make it more of a challege we can give them points for every level down they get, up until the last level when they find the nuclear waste and die.
wonder (Score:2, Insightful)
If so, i'll want to find another planet, but i'll probably be barred from entry due to our reputation. We need a legal system which allows people to be sued by their hypothetical descendants.
Ok... (Score:3, Interesting)
100 shuttles from now one blows up. Oops. You just dumped a shitload of nuclear wasted into the atmosphere.
Then 10,000 years from now the stuff recrosses the earth's orbit and crashes into the planet. Imagine how embarassed we'll feel then...
Re:wonder (Score:3, Interesting)
No such thing as a stupid question, only stupid answers...
Why can't we just heave it into space?
Sure we can. Even better: launch it into the sun. Pretty much guaranteed it won't bother anyone there, ever. It's kind of expensive to do this, though. Minor additional problem: space launches are not 100% safe. The stuff might fall down on earth if a launch goes wrong.
Is it due to sheer volume? Do we have plans to produce a whole lot more of it?
As long as we plan to operate fission reactors, yes.
We need a legal system which allows people to be sued by their hypothetical descendants.
It's called responsibility, morality, ethics. Not that anybody gives a damn...
Re:wonder (Score:3, Informative)
Re:wonder (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, it's not the radioactivity of plutonium alone that makes it so lethal. It is a very powerful carcinogen because the body accumulates what it absorbs over long periods of time [speclab.com], although its near-insolubility in water reduces its effective toxicity [russp.org] to far below what many people believe. However, if it reaches the bloodstream, it accumulates in the bone marrow and in the liver, where it has a half-life of elimination of 70 and 35 years, respectively, and inhalation of fine Pu dust can cause significant alpha exposure in the ~500 days that it takes the lungs to eliminate it.
To put it simply, it's neither a massive threat nor a relatively benign substance, and it gets a lot more bad PR in the press than other, much more worthy, scapegoats.
store it in the open. (Score:2)
quality, above ground storage would allow maintainence, monitoring, etc.--heck, in fifty years we might have the technology to turn this crud into baby food.
be a shame to have to go dig it all up again.
Re:store it in the open. (Score:2)
A Canticle for Leibowitz (Score:2)
A few things spring to mind-
The tale of Father Boedullus in A Canticle for Leibowitz. In a post-nukewar world, a Church scholar and his team attempt to reactivate a mysterious ancient site they found. All that's left many years later is a giant crater lake and local legends about evil spirits.
Artifacts from the "Age of Legends" in Wheel of Time. Madness and destruction generally resulted from meddling, but meddling was done all the same.
And finally, every single ancient site we've ever defiled- who knows what kind of things those places were designed to keep *in* rather than *out*...
The problem won't be there in 10,000 years (Score:2)
Re:The problem won't be there in 10,000 years (Score:2)
Plus, just because it's going to be easier to toss it into the sun than it is now, that doesn't mean it's going to be easier than burying it, nor does it mean it will be tossed into the sun.
Microsoft HQ (Score:2)
Let's look at where we DON'T go today (Score:2)
If you don't want anyone to go near something, you need to find out why people don't go to certain places. So, where on the world don't we generally go today?
a) Deep under the ocean.
b) To the center of the earth.
c) Tops of sheer faced mountains.
d) North/South poles.
e) Space.
So, this means that those places are the best place to put dangerous stuff. The End.
Re:Let's look at where we DON'T go today (Score:2)
a) Deep under the ocean
Yeah, that's great...until one of the canisters starts leaking. Then you've just irradiated the entire ocean. Let's not do that one.
b) To the centre of the earth
see a), only with the water table and the mantle. Also, how the heck are you supposed to get it to the centre of the earth? We can barely dig a couple kilometers down with present tech.
c) tops of sheer faced mountains
Ummm...planes/helicoptors? If they're anywhere near our technology level in the future, this won't do.
d) North/South poles
The North Pole is basically water...see a). The South Pole is better, but still faces the ocean problem (the ice does flow off the south pole & into the ocean eventually).
e) Space
See other comments about safely getting it up there without the occasional "problem" dumping irradiated waste into the atmosphere.
Keep trying...
Why is everyone being so damn obscure? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why are we trying to design something to prevent someone from discovering what we are hiding? That is not only counter-intuitive but doomed to failure.
I too remember reading about this long long ago. My first thought was to construct a giant thorn patch from metal and concrete. Giant spikes, each with protruding spikes, each with protruding spikes...layer them all over the area. First of all, I don't care what century you come from, thorns are thorns and things that poke give you pause. Even after hundreds of centuries they should last well enough to make it clear that this was not a place that people travelled through easily or often.
But now I'm thinking that even that might be construed as some kind of complex art project. Which brings me to my question...
Why don't we lace the site with the toxic chemicals themselves? Wouldn't that make it painfully obvious to future explorers?
Here we are at ground level. A big concrete/metal box with sharp pointed spikes sticking out of it. Inside the box...a tiny tiny microgram of the bad stuff.
Go down several feet. A bigger box with the same unfriendly exterior. Inside...a miligram of the bad stuff.
Go down several more feet...again bigger, again more bad stuff.
There should be a pattern here. If the future explorers know anything about chemistry or science in general...then they will want to know what this substance is that has been protected in this manner. Through trial and error and maybe some people getting burns on their hands, they'll llearn it's not good. When the dig down further, and find ever increasing quantities of the stuff...they'll figure out it's not going to get better and them might want to stop digging, unless they figure out a way to diffuse the material in which case...please please please do dig it up.
This doesn't take modern knowledge. Remember the Star Trek episode where Data lands on this planet searching for radioactive material but gets wonked and the material ends up being made into jewelry by the local Indians or whatever?
Well, sooner or later they figures out the stuff was bad. Of course, there was so much of it around that it caused a lot of harm. So that's why I saw give them a little bit so they can learn the lesson before digging up the main repository and rifling through it.
- JoeShmoe
.
Re:Why is everyone being so damn obscure? (Score:2)
Duh, the obvious solution is... (Score:2)
Yes, I've patented this process. Check IBM's archive, if you don't believe me.
Interresting (Score:2, Insightful)
(b) The design and testing of markers and messages must involve a broad spectrum of societies and people within those societies. So-called "experts" can of course make important contributions, but they must listen carefully to all other people who represent those who might encounter the markers. In the course of working on this project, I received excellent ideas from a wide range of undergraduates, colleagues, friends, and relatives.
(c) The very exercise of designing, building, and viewing the markers creates a powerful testimony addressed to today's society about the full environmental, social, and economic costs of using nuclear materials. We can never know if we indeed have successfully communicated with our descendants 400 generations removed, but we can, in any case, perhaps convey an important message to ourselves."
I particulary like point a. It boils down to : "If it burns , then do not touch it". Althougth it may looks cynical, it is maybe the most cost effective solution.
Message that will last for thousands of years (Score:2)
What should REALLY be mocked... (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically a breeder reactor process that would make it cost and energy effective to reprocess our existing nuclear waste as fuel.
The process/design/whatever (I'm not an expert, but I have spoken to them) produces at least an order of magnitude less waste per unit of fuel. So where 100lbs were produced in the old format less than 10lbs would be produced. Reprocessing the existing waste as fuel would, once it was spent reduce the amount of existing waste by that same 10-to-1 ratio.
Since we never used flammables (graphite) to cool our reactors we were never at risk for a Chernoybl (sp?)...
Since nothing really happened at Three Mile Island (the first safety system in a chain of dozens did exactly what it was supposed to do and released some heat with ZERO RADIATION but it was good "media copy"...
Since fossil feul is messy and obnoxious...
We canceled the best power technology we possess(ed) before it had a chance to mature. And now the people who would know how to revive it are ageing out of the workforce and/or dying off. Prety soon there won't be anybody with experience to get this vital technology back into production.
THAT is what we should mock and resent.
Re:What should REALLY be mocked... (Score:4, Informative)
From the French web site
reprocessing of spent fuel as practiced at La Hague:
Not everybody's happy with having a nuclear waste processing plant near cities, though... Check here [greenpeace.org] for instance.
How long does a sign last? (Score:2, Insightful)
Plastic (Score:2)
What does this sign really need? (Score:2, Insightful)
I am surprised by the omission of latin as a language on the markers. It's a nice, static language, and I bet religious scholars will retain knowledge of it for a long time.
Also, lets consider the kind of ground penetrating, satellite based, detection information they are prolly gonna have. Just a quick glance at a false color topographic map and they will see what it is. "Gee, that's a lot of neutron emissions for a mountain, and all in one spot."
All we need to do is to get future generations to LOOK at the damn thing. The one good thing about a big pile of nuclear waste is that it tends to be a pretty damn good beacon. Sure, maybe a few individuals will die while re-discoveing what it is, but more or less we will avoid the creation of a reservoir there, or a city, or a housing development.
Historical perspective (or lack of it) (Score:3, Interesting)
The pyramids were huge objects adorned with a clear message: this guy is god, mess with his place and you'll die a horrible death.
Did the Egyptians believe that if you raided the tomb, you'd die? Most likely. Is belief enough to kill you or keep you safe? Sometimes (voodoo curses, faith healing). Does exploring the pyramids today actually pose any risk? No.
Ok, I better clarify where I'm going with this one. In ancient times, people _knew_ you could die from messing with evil spirits. Hang out in a cemetary, the evil spirits make you die like them (disease). This goes on in many forms.
While today we think we know that toxic waste is toxic, to future generations of humans, it might be considered safe. Hell, it might even be desirable! Who needs to worry about radiation or poisonous chemicals when your cells use it for food?
We have absolutely _no_ idea what will happen in 10,000 years. If human civilization is still around (which it will almost undoubtably be), life will be so different on this planet as to be unrecognizable. Today, we possess through technology the comparable power of the gods for ancient Egyptians. A couple of smart bombs could level the pyramids in a few minutes. Trying to perceive the future in terms of today's rules is a fairly unsuccessful method of prediction.
Chrononauts? (Score:2, Funny)
Anyone know why the inscription includes Navajo? (Score:2)
Re:Anyone know why the inscription includes Navajo (Score:2)
Nuclear Waste (Score:3, Insightful)
1. We are not importing the Uranium from Mars; it all comes from the Earth.
2. Every single atom of Uranium in the Earth is going to decay - producing all the same radioactive wastes whether mankind is involved or not. The natural decay products spread the same amount of radioactive energy over time - but the total radioactive energy from the fission and decay processes is about the same. The only issues involving mankind are the rate of production, the location and the local concentration of the radioactive wastes - not its creation. If we had never discovered fission the radioactivity from Uranium decay would still exist.
3. There was a naturally occurring nuclear reactor in Africa where a deposit of Uranium moderated by spring water fissioned all of the U235 out of the ore. As far as anyone can tell the long term results of this reactor on the local biology were zilch.
4. The total quantity of pollutants produced by fission for a given power production is much less than that produced by combustion - no green house gasses at all. Until fusion is practical on a large scale fission is the best short term alternative available.
"Greens" are massive hypocrites: I have yet to see a Green walk to a protest rally on bare feet while wearing nothing else but crude fabrics woven by hand from natural sources. Greens don't really want to give up the advantages of modern society; they just want to be the ones in charge of their use. Sorry, no sale; it is all just another boring power game played at my expense - how utterly banal.
Re:Nuclear Waste (Score:3, Informative)
Most nuclear fuel is artificially produced Plutonium, not naturally occurring Uranium.
Uranium 238 has a half life of over 4 billion years. When converted in a breeder reactor to plutonium and subsequently used as fuel it produces a variety of isotopes with half lives that are too long to decay rapidly and yet too short to spread their emission over billions of years at safe, low levels. It these pesky midrange half-life isotopes that the site is designed to handle
Technically, the total amount of radioactive waste is the same whether you include human nuclear activity or not - but only if you calculate the total over billions of years. In the range of a few thousand years the results are more disturbing.
Re:Nuclear Waste (Score:3, Interesting)
We are not importing the Uranium from Mars; it all comes from the Earth.
But the nuclear waste is our product and as another poster has said will release its energy in a short period of time.
There was a naturally occurring nuclear reactor in Africa
Yep. But there was no local biology. It started, finished, was 'decommissioned' before life walked on the land. And nature had plenty of time to seal the nuclear waste in the rocks. We can't wait for millions of years.
The total quantity of pollutants produced by fission for a given power production is much less than that produced by combustion
This is a crazy proposition. I am sure that you would rather a smogy day in LA than to have been downwind of Chernobyl. A whiff of nitrous oxides and hydrocarbons is far better than a dose of radionuceides that might kill by themselves or damage my dna, causing cancers etc.
the Reagan administration... (Score:2)
IIRC, they came up with a solution that envolved
creating a "cult" around these sites.
Sounds strange, but once you figure out that religions live longer than any other socio-economic community, it makes sense.
Well, kind of.
They're Certainly Assuming a Lot... (Score:2)
(a) May figure out a way to properly recycle/reuse nuclear waste way sooner than 100,000 years (hopefully within even a few hundred)...
(b) Might not even live on Earth in a couple hundred years, either by wiping ourselves out in a stupid war or calamity, or by rendering the Earth uninhabitable by that time...
(c) That we'd be the dominant species on this planet within 100,000 years...
(d) That some wiz kid in marketing would produce "New Cobalt-14 Coke!", then we'd have morning news hosts and the public lining up around the block to get one...
Re:Warning sign (Score:3, Funny)
Sure it will (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Best Marker = No Marker (Score:5, Interesting)
Then the problem becomes those "basic underground markings". The reports point out that solid barriers can mean "this barrier is protecting treasure". If there are no barriers, future archeologists or curious miners might remove the fill, thinking that the shaft was abandoned for other reasons. (Yes, I know the facility will be much larger than a single 7-foot shaft, and that makes it even more interesting to study)
Remember, Oak Island [unmuseum.org], with a barricaded and boobytrapped shaft still attracts attention from treasure hunters after repeated failures over two hundred years.
Construction workers routinely cut through reinforced concrete. Tunnels are cut through granite. Barriers will only stop someone with wooden tools, and will only slow down hundreds of slaves eroding it with stone tools. Solid metal can be worn away by building an iron-age smelter against it and melting the surface. Modern welding or water/plasma/laser cutters are even faster.
Deception: We could try placing treasure in a barricated chamber with little disguise, and hide the further shaft. But the ancient Egyptians tried that, and both old tomb thieves and modern archeologists went on to find the real tombs. And any treasure is an invitation to find more.
I think there should be a solid barrier behind camouflage, then a backfilled vertical shaft. The real horizontal shaft can be carefully hidden behind the top of the vertical shaft (by "carefully" I mean modern tech used to drop a solid block across shaft and the seams melted and aged to make the wall seem to be virgin mountain rock -- again, old tricks: behind this barrier we can put as many modern physical barriers as we want, as anyone going past the deceptions will always think there is more). The vertical shaft is a time waster which will make many explorers give up before reaching the bottom. At the bottom of the shaft leave broken mining tools, indications of some routine exploration, and a crushed body or two. Success will only prove to be a waste of time, delaying further exploration for perhaps a generation or two while the story of failure lasts.
Large scale: We could use an underground nuclear explosion to make a large cavern (or maybe grotto is the right word, as it is man-made) across the shaft. Then there's both a large pit as a trap, and there is no shaft to follow until climbers explore the far side. But in additional to possible damage to the storage area, a cavern with characteristics different than other caves would attract attention.
We could try talking to miners by leaving broken mining tools in front of the barrier, but youngsters think they can do better than their ancestors.
There is one more thing: A few hundred feet in from the entrances, behind all the deceptions and barriers, put two chambers. Cover the walls with graphic warnings, modern scientific warnings, gold-leaf ionization detector. This is the last chance room -- we already know we can't stop them physically so we hope they're archeologists and figure out the warnings. The word of this is supposed to get out, so if they encounter its twin in the other shaft on the other side of the mountain they'll keep people away for a few generations. The chamber beyond the last warning chamber has a nuclear bomb with a simple mechanical trigger -- it explodes when grabbed. This will either show advanced people exactly what type of problem exists (they defuse it and find it has radioactive material or read the warnings), or detonates and reseals the shafts, or if it is no longer functional but not enough time has passed then its radioactivity poisons the team and warns others of the effects of going further.
We shoulda started storing it on the Moon... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Best Marker = No Marker (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem there, as with almost all solutions, is that there are still common ways that a fairly intelligent person could misinterpret such signs. Cave paintings are filled with depictions of death and horror, but they're always seen as primitive art, rather than warning signs. Similarly, most ancient graves are filled with depictions of death. To archeologists, these signs aren't a warning of danger. They're a marker declaring, "Hey, you, archeologist guy! This is where our dead are buried. It's exactly what you're looking for!".
The best plan that I can think of, which I believe they're already using in some nuclear waste sites, is a Rosetta Stone. A warning sign that's printed in every current language and several dead languages, so that, even in the event of a global catastrophy wiping out most human knowledge, there's a good chance that someone would recognize the warning.
Long Now and Rosetta Projects (Score:2)
Check them out:
Rosetta Project [rosettaproject.org]
Long Now Project [longnow.org]
Re:other ideas for a permanent marker (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Do we really care? (Score:2)
1)
There is a moral obligation to not harm other people, whether your neighbor, or your descendant.
2)
We are driven to propagate our species. The very near example is procreation. A logcal extrapolation of that drive is to preserve our culture. This can be witnessed to varying degrees in monuments and artifacts designed to last a long time. To that end, we should also not leave a legacy that could kill our culture.
Wow this is pretty selfish (Score:2)
Re:It will be useful to future terrorists (Score:2)
But it could be used for dirty bombs.
Pyramids *were* warnings (Score:2, Interesting)
Remember the Curse of King Tut? It went something like, "If you enter here, you will be cursed. You will be doomed to ill fortune. You will wither away and die before your time. Do not enter!". The message is remarkably close to a nuclear waste warning, especially if translated by a culture that does not know about radioactivity.
And, of course, the practical effect was to attract archaeologists :) However, that tomb did stand undisturbed for thousands of years, so maybe the basic approach is sound.