Radioactive Warning for Future Generations

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Friday May 5, 2006 @01:59PM from the do-not-stay-here dept.

tengu1sd writes "The Los Angeles Times discusses the problems with trying to leave a message for generations down the line. From the article: 'Symbols tend to lose their meaning over time. Exactly how and why Stonehenge was built, for instance, has long remained a mystery. Warnings, they argue, would be misunderstood or dismissed, the same way ancient grave robbers ignored curses inscribed on the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs to seize the riches inside. The curse of plutonium packs a painful penalty.'"

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Plutonium is fuel, not waste by Zobeid · 2006-05-05 14:32 · Score: 5, Interesting

The problem with our current reactors is that they only "burn" a small fraction of their nuclear fuel and leave the rest as waste. With reprocessing and more advanced reactor designs, it's possible to extract far more energy and leave behind waste that's not dangerous for anywhere near as long.

The highly radioactive stuff we're struggling to "entomb forever" at Yucca Mountain is probably the same stuff we'll be scrambling to dig up and use as fuel 50 years from now.