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This Place is Not a Place of Honor
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.
For a pure and simple "You're gonna die" motif, you just can't beat the tried and true skull and cross bones. We may evolve, but we know what our ancestor creatures looked like and it they'd marked anything with something that looked like a skull with bones we'd know to avoid it. That's my two cents.
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 ...
Line 9: Argument of type SIGNATURE expected.
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!
>and IMHO is much less deserving of mockery than the
>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.
Actually, they considered that. After doing research into the meanings of the Skull and Crossbones is that of Adam's body (Adam and Eve/Christanity).
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).
I don't think you understand what 10,000 years is. The greek's history was mostly lost in a fire, as was numerous others in different ways over the time of a mere 2500 years we have been shedding information as much as we have been gathering it. 10,000 years could see us as a species spread out amongst the stars, perhaps not remembering where exactly we came from.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
There is one thing that keeps echoing through my mind, and I hope to God that the people working on this project are thinking it too: What the hell are we doing?
-- I'll cut you up so bad, you'll wish I'd never cut you up so bad!
Question (possibly stupid): Why can't we just heave it into space? Is it due to sheer volume? Do we have plans to produce a whole lot more of it?
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.
-sam
Hey, isn't security through obscurity a bad thing?
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
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-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
You are of spanish/latin descent, as most of central and southern America is. In these cultures the dead are respected, not feared. Death is seen as a natural process that should be celebrated rather than grieved like many others believe (e.g. Dia de Los Muertos in Mexico is a very festive occasion where people dress up as skeletons, parade around, eat dulce, etc.).
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.
Quote "5.3 Personal thoughts (WS) Working on this panel, always fascinating and usually enlightening too, has led to the following personal thoughts: (a) We have all become very marker-prone, but shouldn't we nevertheless admit that, in the end, despite all we try to do, the most effective "marker" for any intruders will be a relatively limited amount of sickness and death caused by the radioactive waste? In other words, it is largely a self-correcting process if anyone intrudes without appropriate precautions, and it seems unlikely that intrusion on such buried waste would lead to large-scale disasters. An analysis of the likely number of deaths over 10,000 years due to inadvertent intrusion should be conducted. This cost should be weighted against that of the marker system.
(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.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
What we should be crying over an mocking is our current "no nuclear power plants" policy. Almost on the very day that Carter blocked the licencing of any new power stations a woman at Fermi-Lab (spelling?) was finishing up work on what I have heard referred to as "the french process".
/sigh)
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.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
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.
there is no thing
what else could you want?
You're all assuming that a sign will last 10,000 years in the open and still be readable? And it'll probably take only a few weeks before someone spray-paints their tag on it anyway...
Does this make my brain look big?
Well, the way I figure it, hopefully we'll inspire our progeny to wave geiger counters and other quantum particle detectors around the site before they start digging. It's not like the stuff will be so close to the surface that you cant dig for a few few feet first. In fact they are putting underground rooms to stop further digging if it should start.
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.
There is a real lack of critical thinking involved in the nuclear waste issue.
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.
It seems the authorities are giving a lot of thought to dealing with radioactive waste in a very inefficient manner - burying it in the ground and letting it sit. Instead, why not use that waste?
New nuclear reactor designs, like the helium-gas core reactor, are capable of using as fuel the high-level waste produced by "standard" reactors, and especially by naval reactors (which use ~90% enriched fuel). A system of these reactors could be set up to accept waste, separate the dangerous isotopes from the dross, then "burn down" the waste by reacting it to a short-lived isotope. Or, better yet, we could simply refit existing plants with advanced reactors, thus avoiding the problem of moving highly dangerous waste.
The real problem is the people who try to pretend this is a clear-cut issue and call you stupid if you don't take their side.
Seriously, this seems to be another issue people are forgetting. Suppose we can make effective signage to ensure curious archeologists do not stumble upon the site by accident: are we not forgetting that there are those who'll find what's under there very useful, and very useful for all the wrong reasons? Isn't such signage going to help them?
Civilisations may (and will) crumble in the next 10,000 years, but something tells me that extremism and the willingness to kill for a cause will never end.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
You want a solution? Here it is. Make it as difficult as possible to get to the waste (stone, concrete, iron, let engineers call the shots). Then make sure than the place is flooded with signs in various medium (stone, metal, ceramic, you name it), each one depicting the best graphical representation of what danger lies in there....bodies slowly curling up as waves pass through them, animals dead, it's not hard to visualise it. After that if any future civilization is foolish enough to ignore every single sign, and break through all those barriers then those who tresspass deserve what they get for being just as stupid as you are!
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.
As others have said the Skull and Cross Bones can be mistaken by other cultures in the present and will likely lose it's meaning in the future. I think that a better sign would be a skull with a bullet hole in it. Even if this sign is read by a pretechnological culture they would recognise the the shape of the skull and that it was damaged. And since a damaged skull usually results in death the warning would be as clear as is possible
"The moment "pride" is lost, "freedom" is also lost." - Ramza.
Then make sure than the place is flooded with signs in various medium (stone, metal, ceramic, you name it), each one depicting the best graphical representation of what danger lies in there....bodies slowly curling up as waves pass through them, animals dead, it's not hard to visualise it.
Yeah, just like the great pyramids! Good thing we're all smart enough to stay away from those fucking things 'cause nobody wants the wrath of those dead pharoes coming down on them!
Do you seriously think that this would deter anyone from investigating further?
Obfuscation is the only answer that makes any sense. Building monuments on top of the site or doing anything else to attract attention to it will only turn it into a future tourist attraction/religious site/etc.
I'm all for warnings, but they need to be placed AFTER all the obfuscation and most of them need to be consistant with the warnings we already have at facilities with similarly long-life waste (otherwise the place could be mistaken as being much older than it actually is -- an archealogical find that even we didn't notice). There should be detailed information on nuclear energy. We can assume that any civilization able to find the warnings shouldn't be too far from having nuclear capabilities of their own.
The only thing you got right is that it is fucking stupid to include a nuclear bomb in the mix.
Yah... there's lots of thing wrong with this, but it bears consideration.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
I can't conceive of any change in our genetic makeup that would cause them to be non-toxic.
Besides, 10,000 years is not as long as you make it out to be. It is not enough for any natural evolution to take place, and although drastic eugenics might occur, we will still remain eukaryotic, DNA-based organisms, just like every other animal, and as such vulnerable to radiation.