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.

Comments

Deep Time

[scrod]

These effors were written about in more depth and detail by Gegory Benford here:
http://www.physics.uci.edu/~silverma/benfor d.html

My proposal

[Skyshadow]

If you've seen the Red Dwarf episode "Quarantine", recall the 'Most Gross Danger' sign which featured an illustration of a man stick-figure grabbing his throat while his guts exploded from his abdomen.

I think that'd probably do.

Skull and Cross Bones

[akmed]

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.

Re:Skull and Cross Bones

[beertopia]

marked anything with something that looked like a skull with bones we'd know to avoid it

Exactly, plus it'll attract Goths, so it'll be a two-birds-with-one-stone type of thing.

Re:Skull and Cross Bones

[XNormal]

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.

Re:Skull and Cross Bones

[edwdig]

It's radioactive material. It's not going to kill them instantly - it'll take a long time. And it'll cause them to have really messed up children, which would most likely just make things worse... mutant goth children, shudder...

Re:Skull and Cross Bones

[linzeal]

Not if hilary rosen has anything to do with it. They will probably think it is a massive illegal mp3 database and try to destroy it to appease the great RIAA gods who circle the earth in their massive space fortress.

Re:Skull and Cross Bones

[Squid]

In some cultures, skulls mean LIFE, not death. To a Maya priest, for example, a building emblazoned with skulls and crossbones would look like a holy place, an altar or king's temple or someplace similarly inviting. Imagine our descendants are cannibals: a building covered in skulls would, to them, mean "restaurant."

I'm sorry?

[Rolo Tomasi]

How about the old and proven death's head, maybe with some crossed bones? Seems to be pretty widely accepted if you look back in history ...

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?

[josh crawley]

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).

Will curiosity kill mankind after all? ;)

[CyberQ]

Ancient cultures were able to communicate to us that dark and demonic pictorials mean "Do Not Enter!".

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? ;)

[Joutsa]

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.

Re:Warning sign

[killeroonie]

No one will *ever* top this as a symbol of universal terror: http://www.goatse.cx/

You know this will get the message across!

[toupsie]

Just post a sign with the goatse guy on it. That should scare away most any intelligent being.

Why bother?

[brooks_talley]

C'mon, this is a great chance to play a practical joke on future generations.

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?

[Raetsel]

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!

  (It was complete with artists' renditions of the ideas... fields of giant spikes, etc...)

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!

The more things change, the more they stay the same, I suppose.

Re:Anyone remember OMNI Magazine?

[cybermage]

Nevada residents (read: voters) will only allow the Yucca Mountain Facility if the rest of the country rams it down their collective throat!

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:

• Tiny minority that supports the project for some random reason (jobs, war time nationalism, etc.)
  
• Small minority that accepts the project because it's a little late now to back out. (We accepted the money to build it, after all.)
  
• Large majority that can't hear the news over the din of slot machines.
  
• Small minority that opposes the project because it doesn't pass many environmental tests.
  
• Tiny militant factions that oppose the project for more radical reasons. Most of these either are actively interfering/sabotaging or plan to.
  

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

[Frantactical Fruke]

Imagine for a moment that the ancient Egyptians used nuclear energy four thousand years ago, and that all knowledge of it was lost in the following upheavals. We did after all only relearn to read Egyptian hieroglyphs during the last century.

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!

Salon - feh

[Coldwar]

>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.

My Sign Idea

[DarkHelmet]

How do you design a "Keep Out!" sign to last 10,000 years?

Two words: Neverland Ranch.

My (serious) pick:

[Skyshadow]

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...

Ummm..not a chance

[yoyoyo]

I will bet any amount of money you like that soon after they build the thing they will have to pass laws to keep souvenir hunters out...and this is while we know what is buried underneath.

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

[squiggleslash]

if you want to knowingly go walking around on a nuke waste dump, be my guest

What if your name is "Osama Bin Laden" and you're wearing a suit that protects you against radiation?

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.

boom!

[vinnythenose]

You could bury it in Nevada then nuke the area. Once people see the desolate waste land that destroys all life and sucks your will to live right out of you...
Oh wait, it's Nevada. Nevermind.

Just put a casino nearby, then nobody will care where the nuclear waste is.

Re:how stupid can you get?

[KFury]

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?

Re:how stupid can you get?

[KFury]

And it's not like civilization will forget that there's a whole bunch of really nasty shit in the Nevada.


Fuck. I forgot where I put Atlantis. Anyone?

Well..

[wysoft]

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?

Ok, 4 in the morning, weeeeeee.

[Xenopax]

Alright, so now that I've been up all night, here's my suggestion:

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.

Re:how stupid can you get?

[ipfwadm]

It's not like we can't change the sign if a new language comes along.

Damn those stupid Egyptians for not updating all their heiroglyphic inscriptions to English.

The Little Engine That Could... Kill Us All

[mosch]

There's no if left, regarding the rest of the country. Votes in Washington were 3 to 1 that we should fill trains with nuclear waste, and send them to Nevada.

Ok...

[Greyfox]

So you start chucking the stuff into space on, say, the space shuttle.

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

[cheezehead]

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...

Re:how stupid can you get?

[sunking]

If a warning sign were tranlated as well as the Bible it would probably come out reading "Radiostation Active, Come On In."

-sam

Re:wonder

[aklschnapps]

Just out of curiosity, have you ever taken a class on nuclear energy? The "fact" that a tablespoon full of plutonium could kill every human on earth is the most blown out of proportion ridiculous fact ever. Consider this, uranium is a natural element. It exists everywhere, everywhere! Directly under you right now is uranium. Uranium and plutonium are both alpha particle emitters. Alpha particles cannot penetrate your skin, thus the only danger lies in inhaling them, and even this is a slight danger since you would have to inhale a large amount of it for it to have any chance of staying in your lungs and doing any damage. In order for a tablespoon of plutonium to kill everyone it would have to be inhaled and then each person would have a 1 in 30,000,000,000,000(maybe another set of zeros, not sure) chance that their particle of plutonium would cause cancer in them that they could eventually die from.

It's a cultural thing...

[PontifexPrimus]

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.

What should REALLY be mocked...

[IBitOBear]

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".

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"... /sigh)

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...

[c_ollier]

You will find some details here (link to frameset, check the link "How is waste managed" at the bottom of the main frame) about the "french process". This is the web site of the Cogema, a French company (partially state controlled, I believe). They seem to work also in the USA (http://www.cogema-inc.com/).

From the French web site :

reprocessing of spent fuel as practiced at La Hague:

• 
  
• reclaims reusable uranium and plutonium,
  
• provides safe, internationally accepted conditioning suitable to the technical and radiological properties of each type of final waste,
  
• reduces the amount of final waste requiring disposal by at least a factor of 5, as compared with approaches in which the spent fuel itself is waste,
  
• removes almost all (99.8%) of the plutonium, a leading contributor to nuclear waste toxicity, from the final waste.
  

Not everybody's happy with having a nuclear waste processing plant near cities, though... Check here for instance.

Architect, idealist, pragmatist William McDonough

[jerryasher]

Here's a recent speech (real player) by Designer William McDonough. Very interesting how he moved to sustainable architectures and sustainable ecosystems. It wasn't his first inclination, but fear of a negligence lawsuit moved him in that direction.

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:how stupid can you get?

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Fuck. I forgot where I put Atlantis. Anyone?

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.

Sure it will

[vspazv]

You've never watched Teletubbies have you?

Re:wonder

[CTachyon]

Just out of curiosity, have you ever taken a class on nuclear energy? The "fact" that a tablespoon full of plutonium could kill every human on earth is the most blown out of proportion ridiculous fact ever. Consider this, uranium is a natural element. It exists everywhere, everywhere! ...

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, although its near-insolubility in water reduces its effective toxicity 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.

Historical perspective (or lack of it)

[GangstaLean]

Instead of pondering whether people will be able to read signs or remember or whether civilization will disintegrate, for a second let's think about how previous civilizations have left "messages" for us:

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.

Nuclear Waste

[Veteran]

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.

Re:Best Marker = No Marker

[SEWilco]

That does sound reasonable: seal it and hide it. There's enough land that nobody might dig there for 10,000 years. (back of the envelope: how many acres in the USA, and what is the chance of a 10-acre quarry being in a certain 10 acres?)

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.

Re:Best Marker = No Marker

[DarkZero]

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.

Its actually pretty harmless

[Convergence]

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

We shoulda started storing it on the Moon...

[TWX_the_Linux_Zealot]

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...

Re:Nuclear Waste

[XNormal]

Every single atom of Uranium in the Earth is going to decay - producing all the same radioactive wastes whether mankind is involved or not.

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

[Evil Pete]

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.