Slashdot Mirror
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.
I like the "massive stone grid" approach.
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...
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
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.
--
--
I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me - Churchill
why not have a sign that just says 'radiation: keep out!' in a few common current languages?
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?
Kevin Fox
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...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Question (possibly stupid):
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...
MSN 8: Now Microsoft even has bugs in their ad campaigns.
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.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
how about lauching a satellite that 'paints' the spot with a laser... then if anyone comes near it projects a sound wave that becomes audible over the site only and puts the fear of god in them...
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Skull and crossbones gets it's fearsome reputation from the fact that it was used as a pirate's flag. No pirates, no fear. I saw a documentation on African farmers once, in which they were given pesticides to use on their fields; they thought they had to stand at the fields and bow with their arms crossed below their chins because of the illustration on the packages, which they couldn't read. They didn't think of the chemicals as dangerous.
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
A study was conducted on children for labelling of drugs and other poisonous household stuff. It turns out that children associate the skull and bones with pirates, not with poison. For them it's cool, not a warning. A green face looking sick was suggested as an alternative.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
do a few google searches.
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.
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.
-- Bird in the Bush: The Renewable Energy Blog http://www.birdinthebush.org
Ground up mummy resin was used for medicine once upon a time. Later on, ground up actual mummified bodies were sold as the same stuff, and then ground up mummified executed criminals! Yum!
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.
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, 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.
True.
Although the biggest problem written about in the report is drilling. So they need to be able to stop people from drilling before they have made a conduit for the waste to travel through to water reservoirs for example.
Plutonium's actually pretty harmless, in bulk, unless you have enough of it to near criticality and you irradiate yourself.
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
Cybermage is probably referring to the small minority who oppose the dump because "The government is invading my land and stealing my rights, gol durn it." There is a LOT of that sentiment running around here in northern Nevada. They don't really care about the safety and vew everything as a government conspiracy. I wouldn't be surprised if one of the extreme right groups did try some form of sabotage. It's a pretty weak argument because the land isn't exactly useful for grazing or agriculture due to previous nuke testing, though I oppose the dump for other reasons.
Can you imagine what could have been if NASA had been quick enough to begin the construction of a full-fledged outpost on the Moon in the 1970's? I we could have stored the spent nuclear material on the Moon, where no one can (at least currently) mount a safe expedition. We could have had this up and running by the end of the 1990's, and if worst comes to worst, and the stuff exploded or something, all that would happen is that the Moon would be sent out of orbit or something, off to have it's own adventures...
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
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.
Bitter and proud of it.