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Scotty be damned! If anyone can change the laws of physics through sheer will-to-power, its Michael Powell.

We've actually seen this before - it's true that guided reflectors are the way to go for solar power generation, but you don't want to aim them at a water column if you need electricity after dark. Instead, use the light to head up molten salt, which can hold lots of thermal energy for a fair amount of time, then pipe the salt past water pipes to make the steam to run your turbines. Yes, it seems more indirect but you can keep to power flowing up to 100% of the time without relying on batteries. Keeping the energy in thermal form and transferring it from one medium to another is more efficient than converting it from thermal to kinetic to electrical to chemical (when you store it in a battery), then back to electrical. Here's the extensive (though a couple years old) Boeing Solar Power Tower page, and here's an update on applications of the tech from people planning the nuke dump in New Mexico.

A simpler kind of solar tower is a chimney made of lightweight drawing air through a sprawling greenhouse. The floor of the greenhouse absorbs heat all day and reradiates it at night to drive turbines continuously. Australia may soon have a gargantuan solar chimney built for them by a company called Enviromission.

The maddening thing about that article is that it contained no useful links. Typical Salon sloppy journalism.

A (dull) report on warning signs at a New mexico facility is here.

The Archaeology Magazine article (more of a blurb) is here.

Excerpts from "Expert Judgement on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant"

A design exhibition of warning markers.

-adso

Note that this is for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, NM, which is already in use. (You can take a tour!)

Note that this is for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, NM, which is already in use. (You can take a tour!)

Less physical waste, yes, probably. But, look at the type of waste it produces. Radioactive nastiness that has to be wrapped in lead and buried deep within the earth, at least at the moment, with threats of accidental radioactive seepage into groundwater and plant life. (see WIPP, a project in southern New Mexico for radioactive wastes produced from the manufacture of nuclear weapons, to see what I mean) We're still trying to figure out what to do with the material from the past decades of nuclear power usage, and now we want to build dozens more reactors? I think we're jumping the gun a little here. Let's let the scientists, who, granted, know a hell of a lot more about it than I ever will, figure out what to do with the end product before we start junking up our childrens' planet.