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Warning Future Generations About Nuclear Waste
Smivs writes "How do we warn people 10,000 years in the future about our nuclear waste dumps? There is a thought-provoking essay in the The Guardian newspaper (UK) by Ulrich Beck concerning this problem. Professor Beck also questions whether green issues are overly influencing politicians and clouding our judgement regarding the dangers of nuclear power."
Everybody knows that people in the future are afraid of Zeus.
I would think the increasing number of skeletal remains as one approaches the dump would be sufficient.
Simple: we don't. Future generations of 10.000 years will probably have the means to detect radioactive sites from the other end of the galaxy. And mabye they'll even have the means to dispose of them quickly and safely. So why warn them? We should be more concerned about how to warn people in the more near future, like 200-500 years...
fuck yo' couch mutherfucker
Thats damn interesing
Reprocess the waste, and then "burn" the long term waste off in breeder type reactors.
We can get 10,000 year hazardous waste to 100 year hazardous waste....
We simply wrap high grade nuclear waste in blocks of gold and help future generations by wiping out all the greedy fuckheads who ruin it for everyone else
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
I'm pretty sure 10k years from now, big bad piles of radioactive waste will still be pretty easy to find with the right equipment.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/06/0143244/
MMO Vampire Role Playing
I'd guess there may be SOME off chance that these guys will have a geiger counter.
Whale
http://www.futureme.org/
Let's just send ourselves tons of emails!
Just carve in a really big version of the normal skull-and-bones poison symbol, only replace the human skull with an ape skull.
sudo ergo sum
10,000 years won't matter.
We'll provide plans so the ignnorant people of the future can build one of these
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geiger_counter
-- Boycott Shell
Make a fairy tale about it and some moral that trespassing a particular place causes you to be captured by the devil and that you'll burn for eternality.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/06/0143244
I'm pretty sure it was discussed earlier than that as well.
The World is Yours.
Thats ... typically american. "Don't do anything, it'll fix itself" ... *sigh*
then again, warning people 200-500 years in the future shouldn't be hard, thats only a few generations, and we can't expect human language to change that much...
Name the sites after atomic scientists. That way, even if civilization takes a turn for the worst and the usual safety systems go under, our great*10^5-grandchildren will know to avoid Mount Einstein while they are roaming the lands hunting polar bears.
Rather than bury them, why not use them to make more energy in a fission reactor?
Welcome our new sociologist overlords
From the article:
I can't think of a better person to solve our energy crisis than a sociologist. They have insights that we scientists and engineers simply lack. They understand how to guide policies based on feelings and such, whilst we are just stuck with our equations and physical laws.
I disagree with him, but that is probably due to my dogmatic, close minded acceptance of the laws of thermodynamics. Clearly, his subjective interpretation of mass human behaviour gives a much better insight into future energy policy.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Why not just send it into space? Aim the rocket at some distant galaxy, and there's no need for us to worry about it. Unless, of course, we happen tu discover a Stargate address leading to that galaxy...
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
Place a black monolith there
Lovins stated that nuclear power isn't that cost effective. If it were, the nuclear industry would have easily built more plants. Regulation isn't that big of a blocker. He didn't give any hard numbers and I have never seen them myself, but an interesting point of view, never the less.
I personally think the environmental excuse is just that: an excuse. The industry folks want to say something better than - we can't make enough money off of it - not PC.
The same goes for oil refineries. Refineries haven't had to work at full capacity, but the AM radio guys love to blame the "environmentalist whackjobs" for our gas prices.
Hell, they are going to be actively seeking out these uber rich pockets of energy, that we have the gall (or stupidity) to call waste.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Brrrr... In the future we will have reverted to using our children as geiger counters!!
Familiar with Oklo? It was a natural nuclear reactor formed underground in Africa. Its waste has been held in place (within 10 feet) underground for over 2 billion years. No one needed to warn us about that...
and the sites must also be on a beach.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Or we can hope that we simply won't devolve enough over the next 10,000 that we don't know what a Geiger counter is...
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
...saw that on the news yesterday, and the houses around the area cannot be sold because they keep finding live ordinance buried around the area... so for nuclear waste just look for the glowing houses that some developer duped people into buying?
In ancient Egypt, in the time of the Pharoahs, medicine was stored in specially made clay pots which had a face moulded into the pot. In that way, the patients could differentiate between cooking herbs and medicinal products.
Maybe a giant scary face would be one way. But there was an early slashot article where the solution was to have the area covered with black marble and have lots of sharp points triangles sticking up out of the ground.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
if they have the knowledge and tech to deal with it, they will know anyway, if they don't know enough to know its dangerous, they can't deal with it.
doesn't matter much if we leave warning signs or not, that is really just a psychological thing to make ourselves feel better
But I don't think we are going to survive for another 10.000 years considering that the last 100 years we have destroyed quite a lot. Earth will still be here of course, and it will do just fine.
But us? Please, we are fleas on interstellar cattle.
Here's the deal. Assuming that nuclear fusion doesn't hit it off anytime soon, or fission just ends up being cheaper in many cases, it'll be far less than 10k years before we're digging the stuff up to run in breeder reactors. After all, current high level 'waste' is still 90-95% uranium.
I'd say less than 500, actually. Given active storage sites, language/skill drift won't be enough to really matter for the hazards - they'll probably want to re-assay the stuff again anyways. So, we're spending a massive amount of effort on something where it, honestly enough, won't matter. The remaining isotopes after reprocessing have shorter half-lifes, so again, much less hazardous in a shorter time.
To the point that if they're digging as deep as we're burying it, they already have substantial enviromental concerns anyways. So yes, they should be knowledgable.
I don't read AC A human right
Just contract it out to the Long Now foundation. Maybe, some sort of large clock...
So instead of figuring out ways to clean the nuclear waste, we should warn the future guys about it in a hope that they will clean it... Nice.
The truth is Einstein was not a healthy man.
First off his wife helped him come up with the e=mc^2 theory, yet she received no credit for it.
In the original publishing of the theory in 1905 she was credited with co-author credits
Einstein himself spoke to her as an equal in respect to science. He all but admits to collaborating with her on his 1905 papers which made him famous.
In a 1901 letter he refers to the theory of relativity as our work
Another small piece of Einstein history that few people know is the terms of his divorce from his first wife (The woman mentioned above) was that she received all prize money when he wins a Nobel prize for the theory of relativity. He agreed to this and in fact Einstein never saw any of the money when he won the Nobel prize.
Einstein awarded Nobel PrizeAfter seven nominations, Albert wins the 1921 medal for physics. He gives the prize money to Mileva, per their 1919 divorce agreement. It is the smallest cash award since the Nobel Prize was created, worth about $348,000 (in 2003 USD).
Sorry, I canâ(TM)t link to it but it is in the PBS timeline.
The kicker is that after his divorce from the woman who helped make him famous, the guy married his cousin. Yup, his COUSIN!!!!
cousin fucker
So there you have it folks, the man so many think of as a symbol of modern science not only stole ideas (or at the very least refused to acknowledge getting help) from his wife but also decided that it would be fun to screw his cousin.
Let's just shoot it into the sun and get it over with. What could possibly go wrong?
Seems to me if we'd just glassify the waste and spread it out thinly across subduction zones, there'd be no need to worry about warning anyone after a couple of decades.
Then we won't have the knowledge to understand any warnings. Linguistically modern English would not be intelligible, scientific knowledge of radiation would be insufficient and a means to communicate in a way that doesn't require immediate proximity to the very thing we're warning against mean those neo-cavement would be boned.
Why not just put one of those green "Mr. Yuck" stickers from the doctor's office on every container of nuclear waste?
We would just leave Post-it notes reading "Very Dangerous Toxic Waste" on the most dangerous bits, obviously. Also, make sure that funding is up in the linguistics departments at universities so that when we get around to it, someone will know how to read said notes.
If you don't know what you're doing, you can't make mistakes.
Most likely, a pointy-haired hero armed with only his sword and a rag-tag bunch to back him up will attack the nuclear waste to death, after finding the vague hints we've left for no reason in our oceanfloor palace. I wouldn't worry about it.
This presumes that people in the future will be stupider than we are now...
Which is really quite a stretch.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
BNFL really F'ed up the whole reprocessing idea at Windscale, err, Selafield, by occasionally "accidently" dumping radioactive waste into the Irish Sea (which is now the most radioactive in the world). The sea spray contains measurable levels of plutonium. Cancer levels are something like 100 times background levels. A burst pipe contaminated so much of the infrastructure of THORP that it is unclear if it can ever be made safe. And this is the center that was taking radioactive waste from nuclear power stations across the globe, on account of nobody else wanting something like that in their backyard.
Nuclear reprocessing is a must. At the current rate of development and fuel use, uranium ore will run out 25+ years before we are due to have a commercially viable fusion reactor, never mind enough such reactors that fission reactors can all be replaced. Well, either reprocessing is a must, or we need to invest an order of magnitude more in fusion research, but Governments don't like funding speculative research much and the decades of fuel we currently have will outlast the career of any politician currently with sufficient influence to actually bring about radical funding programs.
However, if we do have reprocessing, it absolutely needs to be far better managed than BNFL can do. Oh, and don't get Group 4 to carry the nuclear fuel, either. They tend to lose things a lot.
The World is Yours.
The parent is right. I don't know a whole lot about Nuclear Physics, but it's something I've been trying to read up on lately. The thing about 'spent' nuclear fuel, is that it still does have, as the parent points out, the potential to be reprocessed and burned again. I'm not entirely clear on this, but from what I've read, I think they can reprocess it quite a few times, until it's eventually at a fairly low energy and stable state to where, like the parent said, it's only dangerous for a short time.
What people don't realize is back in the 70's, the US was looking into the possibility of setting up breeder reactors to reprocess fuel. The Carter administration made the decision to, for the time being, defer re-processing the fuel, with the given reason that they were concerned about the ability to secure the Plutonium which is produced in the re-processing. That is, breeder reactors process 'spent' Uranium into a mixture of Uranium and Plutonium, I think (which can then be used as a fuel for a plutonium power reactor). The problem is, if someone diverted even *very small* amounts of the plutonium, which might be hard to detect because of how small an amount is missing, they could over time possibly accumulate enough material to build a small but powerful bomb, or at least a dirty bomb. Steal a few grams here, a few grams there, eventually you have a few kilograms.
Plus, there was an economic argument against it at the time - Uranium was cheap and abundant, so it was simply cheaper to keep burning 'new' Uranium, than to reprocess the spent Uranium. My understanding is that, at least currently, some of the processing and enrichment necessary to turn it into Plutonium fuel, hasn't been figured out how to do very econically effectively. There have been various Breeder reactor's put up in other countries, I think I read there are some in Europe and Asia, but so far the current designs, I guess, haven't turned out to be very economically competitive against other energy sources.
Personally, as I indicate in my subject for this post, I view Yucca Mountain not as a waste site, a dumping ground, but more like the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. We are saving the spent Uranium until the time we need it and and have figured out the technologies necessary to efficiently and cheaply reproccess it, and how to secure it better. Because it stays 'hot' for 10000 years, it means we have plenty of time in which to figure out how to reprocess it and make an economically viable energy source out of it. In that regard, the extremely long time spans might be quite to our advantage, as it means we aren't, really, losing significant potential energy each year it's sitting in storage. In the meantime, we just keep buying 'new' Uranium and building up our strategic reserve.
Come on really why do we care.. I'll be dead before the turn of this century so why on earth would I give a tupney about about people in 10000years..
besides by that time 1 of 2 things will have happened.
1) Humans will be extinct (ironically) due to a nuclear war.
2) Humans will have left earth and be living onboard battlestar galactica and looking for a new earth as this one will have been raped of all its resources & only a inhabitable husk will remain.
He gave a lot of credit to her...
How do we warn people 10,000 years in the future about our nuclear waste dumps? We don't because we don't have to because we don't have to store waste for 10,000 years.
It is possible to reprocess fuel to remove the actinides, which have a long decay time, and recycle them into new fuel. The remaining radioactive waste has a much shorter decay time, on the order of a few hundred years.
We could put the waste in giant pyramids.
Seriously, we can put it anywhere.
By then, we have spent all the oil long ago.
This waste is the new oil.
It will be more useful than dangerous.
But I would assume that any useful waste would already be utilized by then.
And 10,000 years is a long time. Either we have no harmful waste, or we destroyed ourselves.
In subduction zones part of the material keeps getting pushed around the edge for a long time before being dragged under. In 10000 years a lot of the material would still be sitting there.
But there are some parts of the ocean bottom that have remained stable for at least a billion years. We could enclose the material in glass or ceramic cylinders and bury them in the bottom of the sea. If anyone has the technology and the motive to dig 100 meters in mud that's under 5000 meters of water, one can assume they will have knowledge of the dangers of radioactive material.
Besides, that's a good way to keep it away from terrorists, too. Even if they could locate the exact spots where to dig, they wouldn't want to go to so much effort, there are easier ways to accomplish their ends.
There is no reason to make waste that's dangerous for 10,000 years. In advanced countries like France, which has the cleanest air and the cheapest power in Europe, the waste from its many reactors is separated and the heavy atoms (which are responsible for almost all long-term radioactivity of unprocessed waste) are fissile and are used to make more electricity.
They thought about making dumping sites for what remains (and it's far less dangerous than the 10,000-year figure), but nobody liked that, so the waste is stored at the plant itself waiting to be used for something in the future.
I'm pretty sure that we'll need that stuff for something, and it will be a pain to dig it up.
With proper reprocessing, reactor waste can be made less radioactive than the mined ore in a span of 300 years, so nuclear power could potentially reduce the radioactivity in the world.
Just put a big picture of (insert humorous person to have a picture on here), they're so bad that in 10,000 years, people will still remember!
stuff |
Mostly because launching stuff into space isn't anywhere near 100% reliable, and honestly enough, what the politicians are calling 'waste' that has to be safely stored for 10k years is actually still 90-95% of what a nuclear engineer would call 'potential fuel'.
Let Uranium double in price and reprocessing is suddenly profitable, and not that expensive to do on rods that have been cooling off for the last hundred years.
I don't read AC A human right
I think a comic strip with stick figures getting sick from radiation poisoning, or simply dying, would be the most effective way to pass on the message that the radioactive waste stored here is dangerous. I'm sure the guys at XKCD would be willing to do it.
I'm critical, not cynical...
I thought we all agreed on just writing GTFO all over the place?
This is well trodden land for /. :
This Place is Not a Place of Honor
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/05/11/011235
Radioactive Warning for Future Generations
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=185062
Check out the official SANDIA report:
http://www.prod.sandia.gov/cgi-bin/techlib/access-control.pl/1992/921382.pdf
the no
Wow. It's not like Gregory Benford addressed this same problem back in 2000 or anything. Nope. This is a brand-new problem that nobody's thought about before.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
A circle of pairs of stone pillars with a big stone lying horizontally across the top of each pair.
Humankind is already doing it's best to remove itself from the gene pool as soon as possible. The last Darwin Awards will go to us all.
IFuckedMommaOnTheTrain writes from his gay nigger time machine:
"How do we warn people 2,000 years in the future about our gay nigger waste dumps? There is a thought-provoking essay in the The Cracker newspaper (UK) by GNAA Mayor Penis Bird concerning this problem. Mayor Penis Bird also questions whether nigger issues are overly influencing white cracker bitches and clouding our colons regarding the dangers of gay nigger power."
If only we could make the dangerous area give off some sort of "radiation" that could be detected using some kind of instrument.
Hey if we regress that far I'd think humanity has bigger problems. Modern humans KNOW that living near Chernobyl is probably not a good idea. But still a lot of people do, are we so sure a less advanced civilization would act differently?
Maybe a better question is, how do we warn whatever replaces us? Do we care? We have no problem killing other living things. As long as it's not US, mostly.
> no, yes, maybe (tagging beta)
They'll be clearing the area for a hyperspace bypass in 3...2...1...
There is a thought-provoking essay in the The Guardian newspaper (UK) by Ulrich Beck concerning this problem
I would reword that to "There is a thought-provoking essay in the The Guardian newspaper (UK) by Ulrich Beck about the implications of not solving this problem"
He doesn't actually talk much about what they're doing about it, other than to point out some minor research that the skull and crossbones may not be a good choice... and then goes on to rant for 10 paragraphs about how our governments are misleading us and promising that nuclear is safe.
I was far more interested in the kind of symbology that's being developped than reading yet another tirade about nuclear powers' dangers with neither concrete facts nor suggestive solutions to the problem...
We need THESE kind of technologies, NOW. Not 20 years from now.
I would also note to damburger that the petty despots and terrorists only have power because of state sponsored nuclear terror was practiced live and in action on civilians by the USA (viz Nagasaki and Hiroshima) and held the world hostage in the fear mongering practice of the Cold War by the USA and CCCP. I agree with damburger that it is sad that a small group of asshats is making life exceptionally difficult for the rest of humanity. Remember when you could go to Mexico or Canada and use your Driver's License as ID? Remember a time before the DHS? I do.
This is all a problem of risk assessment which humans largely suck at. 3000 people died on 9/11, and suddenly a multi-billion dollar dept is thrown together making everyone's travelling life difficult and illegal to take cosmetics or liquids on board and all manner of other over-reactive legal nonsense. Every year 50,000 people die on the highways, but I don't see them making cars illegal. How many people died at 3 mile island? Oh that's right - none. Did it shorten some people's lives? Yes. However, the proper response would have been to build IFRs and subcrits, not ban them altogether. Chernyobl is a different deal - that was people being stupid and destructive, so many people died there. IFRs and subcrits and pebblebeds - these are all VASTLY safer technologies, and Mister and Missus John Q Smith from Anytown USA need to pull their heads out of their asses NOW, and get with the program if they have ANY hope of keeping the lights on in 20 years.
I don't fancy freezing in the dark, as it would result in the disappearance of the forests, and THAT would suck...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
The human race doesn't give a rat's ass what happens to our grandchildren, let alone people 10,000 years in the future. We're inherently near-sighted as a species, it's human nature.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
we setup a word document on a network drive somewhere?
Damn interesting had an article about this a year ago: "This is not a place of honor"
I don't see why a simple 'Do not eat of it, for on that day you shall surely die,' wouldn't be best.
It's good enough: either it will actually work, or, should they disobey, or don't understand English, then it's their fault, so we shouldn't have to feel bad about the result in that case.
(Note: yes, I'm plagiarising an old Corman movie.)
I have this amazing idea. Rather than burying that waste and hoping for the best, what say reprocess it until it's not dangerous, getting power off it in the process? Surely nobody could have thought of that before.
What part of "A well regulated militia" do you not understand?
I think a far more relevant issue, in terms of nuclear power, is WHERE the uranium comes from. Shadey uranium mines in poverty striken countries, where the treatment of the workers is barely moral.
How can the UK be even considering funding this?
if some post-apocalyptic humans run into a bit of nuclear waste? If they can't tell it's there, they certainly aren't going to have capability to cause a major breach of the containment facility anyway. What a load of bollocks. You'll forgive me if I keep my old Pontiac...
OMG, in the future we will be living in Never Neverland.
How will we warn future generations about Robin Williams?
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
We need power, and there are only four consistent sources of power:
* Oil
* Natural Gas
* Coal
* Nuclear
Solar and wind are great and need to be exploited, but they can never be primary sources of energy because they are impacted by weather and time of day.
Nuclear power is safe. The only downside is nuclear waste. We need to work on mechanisms for safer and safer storage of nuclear waste, but in the end it is our only option.
I always hear the argument of the lifetime of nuclear waste when people oppose nuclear energy. The reality is, we've already crossed that bridge. Like it or not, we have already created nuclear waste. We are now stuck. So, why not just go ahead and create more if it helps our energy problems? Either way we are going to have to store the stuff for 10,000 years. How much of the waste we have shouldn't matter that much (up to a point).
The article (written by a sociology professor-??!) did make a good point about the realities of nuclear energy:
"The probability of improbable accidents increases with the number of "green" nuclear plants; each "occurrence" awakens memories of all the others, across the world."
No doubt, if we continue to use nuclear energy, there will be another Three Mile Island type incident. No one was actually hurt by Three Mile Island, but the incident made people very afraid.
(Chernobyl, of course, did really hurt people, but that reactor was a poor design with no containment. With proper designs, I do believe accidents like that can be avoided in the future).
But be consistent! This symbol should be affixed to every nuclear waste site.
Whatever you choose for a symbol be it skull and crossed bones or whatever will attract curious people to look at what the ancients built, and 10000 years in the future, even if you post keep out, nuclear waste, poison, radioactive etc on a bunch of multilanguage rosetta stones ( which should accompany any symbol, because some current language, at least in fragments might well survive 10000 years considering the sheer number of long lived artifacts that our society produces and then burys in landfills ), there is no guarantee that anyone will be able to make sence of them 10000 years in the future.
So, likely someone 10000 years in the future will crack into a drum of radioactive waste, and die so that we might enjoy nuclear power now. How many construction workers die from hammers falling on their heads during the construction of a typical nuclear power plant ( or coal plant or wind farm )? How many people died or were injured mining the uranium fuel?
The number of casualties IN OUR TIME might be less than one per nuclear power plant, but it is surely greater than one when you consider all the nuclear power plants that would contribute waste to a dump site.
So our society considers it ok to sacrifice human life for material benefit. ( Consider how many fatal traffic accidents could be prevented if people stopped driving cars and returned to horse an buggy... Consider how many fatal kicks, and paralizing falls from up on high horses could be avoided if people just walked instead, or better yet stayed home.. )
If it is ok for some minimal number of casualties to occur in the present for our enjoyment of nuclear power, than it is surely acceptable that some minimal number of casualties occur in the future so that we can bask in the warm incandescent glow of light bulbs powered by nuclear fission.
As long as the symbol is constistent throughout the world, then in the future, likely some ONE will crack open a drum of radioactive waste and die. But then the society of 10000 years in the future will have learned that Yellow Happy Face means death, and will avoid any other sites marked with the Smile of Doom from then on.
If you mark the place with a Skull and Crossed Bones, then they will still be curious as to what the strange Skull and Crossed Bones cult was about, and they will still crack open the drum and someone will still die, but because the drum was marked with a frikken SKULL AND CROSSED BONES, the dead person's contemporaries will chuckle silently to themselves when they read about the news and say to themselves 'DUMBASS'.
We want the people of the future to curse us for leaving them with barrels of toxic crap. So by marking the site with the Yellow Smiley Face they will put the blame for the accident on us where it belongs, saying what kind of asshole civilization marks frikken radioactive waste with a Yellow Smiley Face? People 10000 years ago were such jerks!
...
breeder reactors use 10x the amount of fuel of regular reactors, produce 10x the amount of power, produce 1/10th the amount of waste, and what waste that is has a half life of only a century or two
so how come we don't use breeder reactors?
because they can be used to make plutonium
however, given the choice between dramatic fuel and power reduction, dramatic waste increase and massive half life increase, i'd rather just deal with a little extra plutonium
somebody in power ha sdecided otherwise
i don't agree with them
plus, we can thorium as a fuwel source in addition to uranium, like the indians do
its not like this isn't being done outside the united states
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If half the resources that are poured into nuclear development were put into solar technology, we'd all have cheap cheap clean clean energy within a decade.
The Admin and the Engineer
Since global warming is obviously [snicker] going to destroy the world, there will be no one to warn.
Somebody mod parent up. Pretty please?
The NYT magazine had a section of a feature article about this when they were covering Yucca Flats...this must have been close to a decade ago.
Short memories on people, here.
I am the Lorvax, I speak for the machines.
Our Lecturer was explaining ethnographic writing, and a study undertaken on warning future Anthropologists, who may have uncovered a mysterious archaeological site (which happened to be one of our longterm nuclear storage locations, and entering posed a danger to their immediate health). :)
The study looked at finding a universal sign or signal for danger, which could basically be posed on the door of places like Yucca Mountain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain ). The symbol needed to be relatively static over time and uniform across as many cultures as possible. Not too surprisingly, they were unable to find anything suitable. The safest solution was to employ a 'gate-keeper' of this knowledge. It is the gate-keepers responsibility to pass on the significance of exactly what this 'stuff' buried here is. Or just mark them all on Google Maps. :)
I hope this makes sense, it's getting a bit late here!
hads.
Seriously, if they've failed at evolution hard enough to not be able to use a geiger counter then I think they need a good dose of mutating radiation up the wazoo.
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
Easy - care labels.
I have found them sewn on the inside of nearly all my shirts and pants, and all these years later I can still read them to learn how to take care of them.
Sample:
Warning: toxic nuclear waste. Do not iron. Do not tumble dry. Warm wash with water and soap only. Drip dry in deep bunker 1 mile underground for 10,000 years.
And best of all you get a discount if you buy care labels in batches of more than 1000.
By ensuring that there won't be people in 10,000 years. Certainly there won't be a life-sustaining planet, thanks to the errors of the 20th and 21st centuries...
you had me at #!
For the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, this is the solution that was developed:
Permanent Markers Implementation Plan, United States Department of Energy, Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (PDF)
Some brainstorming that led to the above document--this contains some of the more "exotic" ideas that were considered:
Expert Judgement on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (PDF)
Excerpts in HTML format
Overview of warnings for Yucca Mountain
Basically, the idea is to take a multi-layered approach, starting with simple "Danger" warnings (both symbolic and in current languages, large scale and small), and finishing with detailed scientific information about what we will have buried. There will be instructions to add new structures with translations into whatever languages will have arisen in future societies. Sturdy but low-value materials will be used. There are a lot of other considerations; the "Expert Judgement..." document is an interesting read.
I agree with the other posters saying that reprocessing should make all of this moot, though.
What, won't they have Geiger Muller tubes in the future? Won't the reading be warning enough ?
A new one to add to the nuclear power fearmongering checklist: concerns about a span of future time over twice that of the beginning of recorded human history, coupled (as not to be too revolutionary: if 50-year-old technology is too newfangled for these guys, just think what'll happen when they start bringing out completely original arguments) with ignorance of basic knowledge about radioactivity.
But what if in one hundred trillion thousand quadrillion years, insect aliens from the planet Poopazoid become sentient and discover hazardous left-over CT tracer fluid?!?! WILL THEIR SPACEFARING MINDS BE ABLE TO HANDLE THE DETECTION OF BASIC ELECTROMAGNETIC FORCES?
If human beings are able to stave off self destruction, natural disasters, space whatevers that we don't know about, etc... and survive another 10,000 years, I think it's pretty certain that "nuclear waste" won't be a worry. Technology, if it hasn't ruined us, will probably be able to detect and use any of those waste materials with ease, or at the very least move it to another rock in the solar system (or even OUT of it).
Mind you, the chances of this planet called Earth still being habitable at all is not very high at the rate we are going.
Good.. Bad.. I'm the guy with the gun.
Can't we just post it on Wikipedia and link to pictures on Google Earth. Isn't this now the repository for all human knowledge. Do we also have to write a book and put it in the Gutenberg project archive for them?
If only there were some device based on 10,000 year old technology that would allow them to read these things....
Tell your kids about the multi-tentacled pasta monster that resides on the mountain... tell them about Balook the Courageous who went to the Mountain and came back as Glowing Balook the Slightly Mad. Have them pass the story on to their kids.
Is that 10 years, specified to 3 decimal points?
Why do some people use a period or a comma to group numbers? Yes sure, some will say "it's the european way", others will say "it's the american way".
Okay smart guy, what about 10.000.432? Did I just write 10 000.432 or 10 000 432?
How about these coordinates: 425,432,654,132,654,985? Is it 425, 432, 654, 132 and 654 or 425 432, 654 132, 654 985?
Periods should be used for decimals, commas for coordinates/groups (think arrays, not "groups of thousands").
You simply show cartoon images of the effects of radiation poisoning. The shriveled raisin testicles and melting flesh warnings should get the message across. Simple macroscopic visual images are the most universally understood of all.
Of course, that would only encourage mighty warlords and space looters.
Did it shorten some people's lives? Yes.
Actually even that's disputable...
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
Why don't we just accept that many hypothetical dystopians will die from exploring decrepit old waste storage facilities, but that we must accept that trial and error will be the only sure way that they learn that the warm glowing cylinders cause pain and death-- Surely the true tragedy would be the annihilation of our very own civilisation.
ISTR Rand (not /that/ Rand) thought that establishing a priesthood &c. would be about the best method to warn future generations.
Also, can't Ballard's fusion device burn spent fuel?
We use recycling breeder reactors to not only increase our efficiency of standard nuclear fuel by 1000%, but we also use it to convert waste fuel (that isn't really spent) into useful energy. At the end of the process we have a much smaller amount of material that will decay within a couple centuries.
We can thank Washington politicians (Ronald "Raygun" among them) for squashing this technology in favor of an unsuccessful attempt at nuclear non-proliferation.
Would that be the big expensive, and probably never to be used hole in the Nevada desert, or the dozens of defacto dumps on riverbanks all over the eastern US? Remember, it is the official policy of the US Senate (as stated by Harry Reid) that this waste is too dangerous to put in the desert. It is also the official position of the NRC that current on-site storage is safe. The only remaining question is what to do with all the money in the radioactive waste disposal trust fund. I think we can count on our politicians to find a solution to that little problem.
here's an idea, don't produce the waste in the first place.
It's not like people 10,000 years in the future have to figure out where a caveman buried his poo. We have so much information now they should know.
We could have something that wipes out all our computers and books but if that happens I'm sure a few nuclear waste sites will be the least of their concerns.
why don't we write it on the face of the moon?
even if we go back to the stone age, the 2nd Galileo will find it, and the aliens will understand.. if they got their language right...
http://www.pbfcomics.com/?cid=PBF105-The_Schlorbians_Strike_Again.jpg
Does anyone seriously believe that this nuclear waste will still be around in 10'000 years? Or even 1'000 years? It wouldn't even surprise me if that problem is gone already in 100 years or even less. If you look at the development of science in the past 100 years, I am really very confident that in 100 years, we will have tons of fancy uses for that nuclear waste; and if we don't, we'll have tons of fancy ways to make it harmless or to get rid of it. It's also a mistake to believe that any human can make any useful thoughts about the future civilisation of in 10'000 years. Don't bother trying, you're not that smart, sorry. The future is more than capable of handling this.
A thousand years ago we were living in a totally non-technical world. If, in 10k years, we can't remote sense and easily remove/convert/toss-into-the-sun any nuclear waste lying around, then we deserve to fry. What do these idiots think we are going to be doing over the intervening years?
Stick the nuclear waste in a safe spot ( I'm looking at you, Yukka ), guard it, and solve the problem at our convenience.
Why can't we dump the waste into an active volcano? I doubt we'd need to warn anyone not to mess with a volcano.
The "we'll have waste for 10k years!" is already nonsense.
As previous posters have pointed out, we ALREADY have the technology to turn 10,000-year waste into 100-year waste with some intelligent choices. I'm quite confident that given another 50 to 100 years of technological advancement, even these will be trivialities by then.
No, it's (again) simply the fear mongering by naive environmentalists who, unwilling to compromise on a least-worst choice instead of their impossibly utopian alternatives, have effectively prevented nuclear energy from developing in the US for 30+ years. That's the real Inconvenient Truth. Congratulations, I guess.
-Styopa
You don't know what could happen in 10.000 years.
For all you know, the waste surfaced due to a meteorite impact, vulcanos, ...
Left or right, a lot can happen in 10.000 years :)
Sorry, meant to mod funny, modded overrated instead. I would just reply to cancel the mod, but that would cancel the other upmods I made in this thread. So, I went and modded up your previous comment, which I think was insightful, to offset the karma hit.
--jahudabudy
That is where nuclear waste ought to be buried.
Yup, I know it wouldn't be easy, but it would be "permanent".
Instead, warn people 100 years from now. Be sure to ask them to warn the people 100 years from then, and to continue 'passing the warning down'.
Beyond that, if civilization collpases to the point where all language and generational information-passing goes to crap, quit worrying about it. I mean, are we worrying about warning people 10 billion years (or however long it is) from now about the collapse of the entire solar system? At some point you cant do anymore and have to assume that the future will sort itself out.
You know, I opened this news item specifically to see if someone referenced Deep Time, or to mention it myself.
I must say that I haven't read his book, only his paper which is itself very interesting and thought-provoking (and makes you feel utterly small).
"Good news, everyone!"
It seems kind of silly to worry about warning people in 10,000 years about nuclear waste, considering humanity will probably be extinct in a few generations.
Actually even that's disputable...
Well no, not seriously. The increased risk of thyroid cancer is documented, and while thyroid cancer itself is rarely fatal, treatment for it is usually removal of part or all of the thyroid gland, which causes problems all of its own, but people don't talk about that when they flout that nobody died "from cancer" due to three mile island.
Holy mountains and evil mountains. Tibetans and Hepalese didnt climb Himalayas until Europen toruists came, even though they much more phsyically fit than Europeans to do this.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
wind turbines, and turbine farms kill birds. and solar collecters steal valuable sunlight from places that need it, like northern canada.
Gregory Bendford gave a talk about exactly this at the 1996 WorldCon in Melbourne, Australia. He favourite(?) idea was to cap the disposal sites with -large- areas of flat broken black granite-- making the area inherently inhospitable to everything, not just future humans.
How did Neanderthals warn us about the dangers or buried Uranium?
Seriously, get a grip. While I suppose we could have done without the manufacture of radium-coated clock dials, our lack of forewarning about radiation wasn't especially deadly to our society.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Maybe the low levels of radiation over time will give rise to a race of super powered humans... or ants.
How about sealing in quartz (like the Apollo spacecraft windows) a series of pictures of people touching the entombed object and horribly dying? Embed some radioactive material against some phosphor or other light emitting elements charged up by the nuke waste.
Or we could just keep doing what we're doing, and eventually poison our whole society to death, and just let the legends of the "apocalypse" grow for a few millennia.
Though that's probably failed before.
--
make install -not war
Buried radioactive toxic waste is pretty tame compared to the various hazards of space and exploring unknown planets.
Yeah, especially if you are wearing a shirt that is red.
Toxic waste, and that crap we send to landfill. Rocket it up to the sun, all would be vaporized in our galactic incinerator. We could do this currently, prohibitions are only cost of fuel, cost of equipment, not to mention having the hazard of rocket fulls of toxic goo, explode or go off course on take off.
I beg the question though, these costs, are they worth the current cost in damages to our environment?
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
So this might be over simplifying things but I see two possibilities
1) Our decendants are atleast as advanced as us, so they should be able to detect radation, so no biggie
2) We are back in the stone age, someone(s) finds the waste site and is somehow exposed to the radioactive waste and die, the site is cursed and people stay away till they discover what radiation is.
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
Why aren't people lining up to but nuclear waste? Maybe because it's effectively illegal to do anything with it other than store it on the site where it was produced and/or feed it into one of three(?) approved bureaucratic channels for permanent storage / disposal.
Just try announcing that you're going to set up a breeder reactor and write to a few people with nuclear waste asking what their "Buy It Now" price is, and see how that works out for you.
--MarkusQ
How about how all ancient cultures successfully passed information without the need of the digital medium or mass-produced biohazard signs.
Word of mouth, passed from generation to generation. Presumably, some of the details might be lost (I doubt it however, we're getting smarter as a people, not dumber), but the main point will be (points with finger) "Over There, Bad".
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
Gregory Benford discussed the "warning future generations" issue a good number of years ago. Even gave a GoH speech on it at the 1999 Worldcon (Melbourne).
Might look up Deep Time: How Humanity Communicates Across Millennia.
I would suggest a live corpse, as it's much scarier.
No. I really doubt that medical progress will be able to keep Micheal Jackson's plastic surgery for the whole next 10'000 years.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
All we have to do to make that entire problem go away is stop insisting on burying perfectly good nuclear fuel.
If old fuel rods are reprocessed, about 95% of the "waste" becomes new fuel rods ready to use. The rest needs to be stored for about 500 years. If we take the budget for Yucca Mountain and sink it into reprocessing technology instead, we get heaps of useful fuel and no need for Yucca Mountain.
It's as if we were spending billions and wringing our hands over leakage and warning signs trying to figure out how to bury gasoline for permanent disposal.
Put into perspective, high school students regularly manage to at least get the basic meaning of 500 year old english written with no thought to readability centuries later every day.
I think we should booby-trap them so that they spray on anyone who inspects them.
That seems a more fitting communication from the ancient past, according to movies I like to watch.
Simply round up all the radioactive materials deemed a significant threat, build a large rocket, and shoot it off into space.
Don't worry if simulations show it'll come right back in a few centuries, that's someone else's problem!
Oh wait....
The flesh-eating mutants will warn them.
The nuclear waste consists of the following:
1. Uranium 238 - very low radioactivity.
2. Unburned Uranium 235 - low radioactivity.
Uranium can be completely removed from the waste by converting it to gaseous Uranium hexafluoride. This stuff is no more dangerous than the original uranium ore (or the uranium in the concrete in the walls around you and the ground under your feet).
3. Fission products - approximately half the atomic weight of uranium. Intensely radioactive, but that is why they decay relatively rapidly. In 300 years it decays to less than the radioactivity of the ore it came from. We have examples structures that last centuries built with medieval technology. Language does not change fast enough for reliably warning a couple of future generations.
4. Transuranics - isotopes of plutonium, americium neptunium and perhaps a few others. Caused by uranium and other elements capturing neutrons without fissioning. Radioactive enough to be a serious problem. Not radioactive enough to decay quickly. This is the 10000 year stuff.
Oh, did I mention that transuranics are a valuable nuclear fuel that our energy-starved descendants will probably want to extract from the waste far before warning future generations ever becomes a problem? I say let's burn it sooner (in molten salt reactors) rather than constructing big mausoleums for it.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
There is a difference between "radioactive" and "dangerously radioactive". After all, considering that right now YOUR body contains some Carbon-14, YOU are radioactive. Does that mean you need to be locked away for thousands of years until the radiation dissipates? HA! The fact of the matter is that most of the waste from nuclear fission plants will decay to non-dangerous levels after about 600 years. It will still be radioactive, but the level of that radioactivity will be equivalent to the natural background level and can be safely ignored.
As a check, to properly understand what an ignorable level of radiation is, start with U-238, which has a half-life of about 4 billion years, so this means that 4 billion years ago, the Earth had twice as much of it then as it does now. K-40 has a half-life of about 1 billion years, so 1 billion years ago it was twice as common as now, 2 billion years ago it was 4 times a common as now, 3 billion years ago it was 8 times as common as now, and 4 billion years ago it was 16 times as common as now. (About 1% of today's global atmosphere is argon-40, because of the radioactive decay of only 11% of all that K-40 over the past 4 billion years; the other 89% that decayed became calcium-40.) U-235 has a half-life of about 700 million years, so 4 billion years ago it was more than 50 times as common as now. I won't bother to list other radioactive isotopes that can be examined similarly, but the point is, LIFE EVOLVED AMIDST ALL THAT RADIATION, 4 billion years ago. If radiation was as horrible as they want you to believe, such that we need to worry about nuclear wastes for 10,000 years, we simply wouldn't be here (and a large area near to Chernobyl would be barren, which it isn't).
So, the problem is, how do we warn people to stay away for about 600 years? The answer is: WRONG PARADIGM.
For a number of decades, mostly because of NASA's needs and deeds, ways have existed to obtain useful energy from radioactive decay. It's not a lot of energy, but then, not a lot of radioactive material is used in a typical SNAP (System for Nuclear Auxiliary Power) generator. So imagine all that radioactive material thought of as "waste" instead being used to generate power. A decent amount of power, probably. Power sources are desired, right? Even if civilization collapses, a power source which can last a long time will be desired! That means, after a Collapse, people will go to that site, who KNOW about it. They will also know the dangers. It will qualify as a place for civilization to get started again --and over a long-enough period of time, it will also need to be maintained! The knowledge associated with its existence will survive, simply because people will want that power. Until the radiation levels decay to the point it's neither useful nor dangerous. RIGHT PARADIGM.
Beta Voltaic cells come from radioactive nuclear waste. The waste contains more energy than what we get from a nuclear reactor. To dump it into the ground and ignore it, is a waste of an awesome natural resource. check this out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_battery
A friend of mine said recently, "The real problem with Yucca Mountain is figuring out how to make a sign that will, hundreds of thousands of years in the future, no matter what language or symbols will be in use by the cultures that come after ours, still be able to clearly and unambiguously convey the concept: 'WARNING: In twenty years there's going to be nuclear waste here.'"
Rocket geeks have proposed PRACTICAL nuclear waste destruction, especially for the very worst of it, not typically from civilian power reactors.
The primary objection on the part of the uneducated, is fear it will crash back down after a rocket failure. There are effective designs for safe payload recovery, which are typically not implemented on satellite launches, due to weight and cost concerns, and the fact they can simply make another one with the insurance proceeds.
With a nuclear waste disposal payload, such a precaution would be practical and mandatory, and the ground based recovery system itself could have most of the heavy shielding.
Solar impact is an economical trajectory and the amount of material disposed on a single flight of even an in-stock Delta rocket, much less an evolved Aries-2 in a few years is emmense.
A large percentage of the very worse radioactive and biological waste could SAFELY be disposed of in about 10 flights. 2 years.
Geek Squad, rocket version
Chernyobl is a different deal - that was people being stupid and destructive, so many people died there.
Unfortunately, people are like that.
Get your own free personal location tracker
Frankly, I think that it's a great problem to have. Sort of like "damn, the FDIC only insures up to $100,000 in any single bank for any single account holder. How will I keep all of this cash safe?"
If we have people walking around on this planet in 10,000 years, that would be awesome.
Regarding the warnings...well hell, it's not like we are trying to warn visitors from another planet in 10,000 years. There will be many generations in between now and then and each should carry that knowledge. Granted, we don't know all of the secrets of Stonehenge, but we are also no longer a sparsely populated largely agrarian planet. We have well-developed writing and communication skills that we will pass down. Certainly they will evolve, but one would hope that all will not be lost.
Of course, there is smallpox, genetically engineered smallpox (thanks Russia), and any number of other virulent strains that make nuclear weapons look like children's toys...and one of those biological agents could wipe out half the planet's population in a flash and leave the surviving civilization in quite a state of disarray...so perhaps they do need to solve this problem....but I am encouraged that we believe that we have the problem and that some experts feel that the planet won't just be inhabited by cockroaches at that time...or turned into a Venus-like pressure cooker due to the greenhouse effect. Rock on linguists.
You would think that in 10,000 years, people would be smart enough to recognize it for what it is. Or, maybe people will just stay as stupid as they are now. :)
I say we just roll up all the nuclear waste in a large ball and fire it into space. If it comes back, it'll be the problem of future generations
Guy in an orange hazard suit with a crowbar. Or you could advertise that the release code for Duke Nuke'm Forever is down there. Nobody would believe that and just leave the place be.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Just because it involves fear, doesn't mean it is a net negative move. I think it's great that the world now (finally!) fears the prospect of a major war. There has not been a WWIII even though there were plenty of times in the twentieth century that someone was tempted and had the conventional capability.
If you think the past fifty years of fear of nuclear war has empowered terrorists, I request you reconsider which terrorist acts actual people actually fear. The suicide bomber seems particularly able to hold our attention.
Are you sure that's the doing of a small group? I am starting to look at society as a pattern, with random individuals rising to play roles that are demanded of them. Our pattern is presently still reverberating from 09/11, and probably won't calm down again until we've had a decade of quiet. Israel is in a similar situation. In this environment, a paranoid leader is demanded, and so one will arise no matter what any person or group does or doesn't.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
the potential for exploitation as a bomb is silly because countries, like india, outside the usa are already using breeder reactors. the cats already out of the bag
if we spent 1/1,000th of the money we spend occupying iraq (another type of energy security: securing our oil) we would have rock solid security against any plutonium being siphoned off to bombs
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Just fund this guys work http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey and we can tell them ourselves.
First, Yucca Mountain is in an area where atmospheric nuclear blasts used to be conducted without bothering anybody. You can still go there and see the craters. The site was chosen partly because it's very remote.
Second, any future clueless explorers digging in that area would have to be well-equipped. They're going to have to bash their way through a considerable amount of steel and concrete, so they'll need some mining technology. Then when they get to the concrete casks enclosing stainless steel tubes of glass enclosing radioactive materials, they have to get those open. Then some of them die within a few days, and it finally dawns on the rest of them that they've found something that was buried because it was dangerous, not valuable.
The problem is not going to spread. If you just had a nuclear fuel rod lying in the open, it wouldn't be dangerous fifty feet away. To get a large scale hazard, you have to grind it into powder and put it in food or water.
We have the Gordon Lightfoot song telling us there was a cook on board -- which would seem plausible anyway -- and that suggests there might have been saltshakers on board. So is there a threat that they will leak, and render the big lake undrinkable?
Even just a few decades out, the radioactivity of nuclear waste has declined so much that it is the same order of magnitude as the saltshaker threat. Beck is lying to protect the petroleum and natural gas tax component of his, and everyone he talks to's, paycheque.
In so doing he is working to protect a real waste threat that will kill one or more real persons, with names and histories, today: carbon monoxide.
--- G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan 'til ~1996
I would think, from an engineering perspective, it should be quite possible to create containers for the waste which contain the radioactivity, and could physically survive even a bad train accident? That does still leave the potential for "The Terrorists" to cause a train crash, and grab a few containers of the stuff before "the cavalry" can arrive. Somehow, though, I suspect it would be fairly difficult to get very far with those containers, or out of the country with them. I would expect they'd be large, heavy, have a unique morphology (that is, physical shape/appearance), well marked, and tagged with tracking devices in such a way that the tracking devices are very difficult to remove or interfere with, so that they'd be very difficult to smuggle. Also, I would expect the military or national guard to *already* be there, escorting the train, so that the window of opportunity is very small.
When did nuclear power become a green solution? If it was then we wouldn't have to warn people about the location of waste sites.
Or brown pants.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
When did nuclear power become a green solution? If it was then we wouldn't have to warn people about the location of waste sites.
There really is no problem here because there will be no one here in 10,000 years. Since we come out of the trees 2 million or so years ago we have learned quickly how to kill and be very efficient at it. Our technology is out pacing our good sense. We will be gone in less than 200 years in my opinion.
Just set the delivery date 10,000 years in the future.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Is either a murder of Hercules, or Herculii
(Maybe I'm thinking crows)
1. They might be 'hard' but France has been operating one for years. I'd argue that we've made more progress with them than we have for economic solar.
2a. The amount of water needed can be varied. In any case, the 'huge' amounts water used is generally put right back into the source, just maybe downstream less than a mile, and the only difference is that it's slightly warmer. A larger flow allows more cooling, increasing efficiency, while putting the water back at even less of a difference. It becomes a matter of - as long as we have the water, might as well use it.
2b. Coal power suffers from the same problem, normally using loads of water as well.
3. No research necessary, the steam techniques for nuclear and coal power are identical - just more expensive than having a convienent river or lake. Even ocean, though the salt presents it's own problems.
4. Newer plant designs, possibly prototyped in India or China are much cheaper, and at least the current administration is working on streamlining/reducing the regulatory costs. As for the plebes - well, most don't actively remember Chernobyl, much less TMI. With the environmental concerns, I see resistance to nuclear power weakening. If they get smart and use the nuclear plant in a cogeneration/trigeneration fashion to support some industry(such as ethanol, depolymerization, oil sand/shale processing or hydrogen), you can get your load balancing and increase the efficiency of the plant by a great deal.
5. I don't see how Wind&Solar can cover our needs economically - and safety wise nuclear power is so safe that I wouldn't be surprised if the extra miles workers end up driving to perform maintenance leads to enough accidents to make it less safe than nuclear.
6. The price point to beat isn't 20 cents/KWh, it's more like 5 cents/KWh.
7. Variable rate billing already exists, I'm having it installed for this winter. Living in the boonies, I'm currently on propane heat. With oil prices - propane is now more expensive than electric, so I'm switching to an off-peak electrical heating system. If I _really_ need heat during a peak period(or the electric just can't keep up), then the propane furnace will kick on.
8. I'd love to see a battery that stores twice the electricity at half the price, but I haven't seen anything that's convinced me that it's not vapor at this point. We do have high efficiency alternative methods that are cheaper at utility levels, and if electric cars ever become major there's a lot of tricks you could play with them, but I'm not holding my breath.
I don't read AC A human right
Ask the folks in Florida: http://www.540wfla.com/cc-common/mainheadlines3.html?feed=227698&article=3930301
It seems that the 'guvament can't even handle informing people about hazardous materials sites from WW II.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Fun_Ball
The US DOE's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant project wrote a report about this some years ago and it had some interesting ideas on how to warn future peoples away. Sadly, the document name and number aren't handy at the moment. http://www.wipp.energy.gov/
It'd make it more expensive, sure, but that doesn't mean we can't still separate it. If anything, it'll still be easier than starting from raw ore.
Do you have a link that shows why vitrified waste can't still be seperated out?
I don't read AC A human right
There's no obvious reason to assume that whatever government the future holds will just magically forget the nuclear dumps and stop upgrading them.
All this is of course dependent on us not going through some technological singularity or anything like it under 10,000 years. What's even to say that "humans" 10,000 years from now will even have organic bodies that would be damaged by radioactivity?
I'm guessing that someone will have a sufficiently sensitive Geiger counter to find the it.
Aliens lacking tricorders should stay in their own solar system
On the other hand, the warnings could just be written in Spanish and Chinese. That ought to take care of it.
Make love, not reality television.
Ludd would reject your neo-Ludditism as being too newfangled.
the problem would appear to be warning the politicians of its danger NOW and not in 10,000 years or so
Just have Ray Kurzweil stand guard, shotgun in hand. 10,000 years? No problem!
I'm Peggy.
Which we could then encase in leak proof containers and dump them in a subduction zone.
Plenty of those around, so just dump it back in the Earth without having to guard it against earthquakes - in fact we'd like those to happen.
What are these "leak proof" containers you're referring to?
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
If we warn people, they will avoid those areas when they try to escape from the initial Psychlos invasion, Johnnie Goodboy will never be born and the human race will be doomed.
> Both government and corporation are flawed structures ... We need radical new thinking ... and we need it fast.
Although what you say is accurate, unfortunately calling for new thinking as if it could provide a solution is probably pie in the sky as well. The problem is that those in power, who inhabit a fuzzy but integrated political and corporate tier that is self-propagating, will never willingly dismiss themselves from their power and fortune, regardless of any new thinking. Nor is the democratic process able to dismiss them, but only to reshuffle their figureheads a little with nil result.
I doubt that even a civil war or full-scale revolution in the West could dismantle this setup they have running ... we'd just end up with yet another bunch of figureheads, while the world continues to march to the tune of those with the resources. What's more, civil unrest and revolutions don't happen without mass discontent, but 95% of Western populations are programmed with the agendas they receive through the media and thus are perfectly happy with the current situation, so there is no dry social tinder ready to catch fire. Mass unrest is not going to happen, the system's too tightly sewn up and life is too comfortable.
By what means could new thinking change anything then? While it's always interesting to dream up new and better schemes to save the planet and humanity, unless you simultaneously come up with an action vector for removing or transforming or sidelining the old crud (against their will), all you have is empty gesturing.
I think there *IS* a solution, but it's of comfort only to those who take a long-term view: just wait until humanity starts migrating off its birth planet, which in time will dilute to zero the old power and resource structures. Of course, the new power structures that replace them might be even worse, but at least it provides an opportunity for change, and an opportunity for choice in the immensity out there.
I don't wish to dampen your thinking, but don't fall into the Libertarian trap: great ideas + no viable action vector == nil result. (Every proposal that is based on the democratic process has no viable action vector for change, because the political route is totally stage-managed and only delivers an illusion of democracy. The powers aren't stupid enough to provide a real means for their removal.)
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Build a giant statue of Jimmy Carter in front of the "waste" storage entrance, it is his legacy.
Robert J. Sawyer, a "Hard science fiction" novelist may have a few ideas for this one. I believe there was one idea in Calculating god.
Geiger counter
I visited a toxic waste dump (Weldon Springs Conservation Area in St. Charles, MO, ICAC) on my last vacation. It houses stuff that'll remain toxic for thousands, if not tens of thousands of years. But it was only designed to last 1000 years because, well, there were too many problems that couldn't be foreseen.
But part of the project was to open up a visitor center, to get the word out. Even if civilization collapses, there may remain legends that dude, there's some nasty stuff under that pile of rocks, and you seriously don't want to go digging there.
By the time they have the technology to dig it up they'll be able to figure out for themselves what it is...
The SCO lawsuit makes me wish my company were in Utah. We need a new building.
I can see the title now: "Indiana Jones and The Thing With the Signs".
Just slap big posters of US House Speaker Nine Percent Nancy Pelosi on the barrels. After all, there's a reason that a grinning death's head is used on iodine bottles to denote danger.
"Here's the keys to the house, son. BTW, there's a big pit in the basement where I've been shitting for 50 years - you might want to take care of that"
"Why the hell didn't you just use the toilet, Dad?"
"I was trying to be green and not use any water. Aren't you proud of me?"
"Fuck you."
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
This was previously discussed on Slashdot (I seem to have a deep memory of topics previously discussed) here:
This Place is Not a Place of Honor
I liked the idea of the Most Gross Danger iconography, personally.
put them in places not accessible to humans without technology sufficient to understand the threat of nuclear waste.
the nevada salt mine plan fits that exactly.
10,000 years? here is an idea, use some of the modern nuclear techniques, that way it's only about 550 years.
10,000 years my ass.
However, to answer the question:
Huge stone pyramids, with a marble coating, and a giant skull and cross bones on two sides, and the radioactive symbol on the other two.
On the interior tunnel put the scientific symbols to indicate nuclear radiation, as well as a star chart of where the stars will be when 10,000 years is up.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"A congressional hearing on alternative long-range energy strategies was conducted jointly by two U.S. Senate committees on December 9, 1976.
[ ... ]
The period of time during which deposits of the man-made element plutonium must be separated from the biosphere is 250,000 years [it's "half-life" - when half of its atoms have decayed - is 24,400 years]- twice as far in the future as the beginnings of Neanderthal man are distant in the past."
The Energy Controversy, Amory Lovins & his critics.
they just manage to come across some incomplete records...
remnents from the amazing output of the GAO printing office, that indicate where there are 5-6 tons of high precision refined metals buried in the desert,
without knowing why.. so they mine them anyway....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
It is stupid to bury nuclear waste when it's STILL FUEL!!!
Process the existing waste and burn it as FUEL in Fast Neutron Reactors.
Scientific American has an excellent article about it that was published in 2005! Learn some HOT science!
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NuclearFastReactorsSA1205.pdf
It would be a real WASTE to bury the existing perfectly good fuel in the ground where it could hurt future generations for up to ~100,000 years.
It makes more sense to BURN it as FUEL in Fast Neutron Reactors for energy production and in the process of fission reduce the life span of the danger from ~100,000 to ~300 to ~500 years.
Makes sense. Read the PDF. LEARN.
Put land mines around it. Whoever is trying to get into it will get the picture after a few tries of getting in.
So far, no one has torn down an entire Egyptian pyramid looking for treasure, so the solution is obvious. Bury the waste UNDER the pyramid, and then make some fake tombs with cheap plastic treasure that will last 10,000 years.
After the grave robbers get their valuable hydrocarbon polymers out, no one would even think of digging under the pyramids for anything else.
Can't we just bury it just before a subduction zone, it will then bury itself deeper and deeper until it melts to magma..
Lifes a game play to win!
Didn't you see Waterworld? Pirates become more powerful.
..........FULL STOP.
It's not like they are gonna be able to sue us!
Imagine future explorers digging up uranium rods, and treating it like we treat crude oil today!
One idea might be to run news stories about the problem of informing the future about nuclear waste. Just keep running them every six months to two years, indefinitely.
That way you don't have to worry about translation problems. The news stories will follow any language evolution. So long as we can avoid the "telephone game" problem. Purple monkey dishwasher.
1) I make an insanely low bid for the job of handling this issue
2) I print out a picture of Tubgirl, and tape it to the door. I even spring for duct tape.
3) Vegas baby...
'a';DROP TABLE users; SELECT * FROM DATA WHERE name LIKE '%'... if you're reading this, it didn't work.
It angers me how people bad mouth nuclear power are the same who sit at home eating chips from non-biodegradable bags and using non rechargeable batteries in their remotes, batteries that use highly toxic chemicals that can leak into the water supply, poisoning it. Nuclear power doesn't destroy hundreds of square kilometers like dams and doesn't cause respiratory diseases like coal or oil.
Not many people know that the trash you throw away every day lasts for 10,000 years or longer. This is due to the fact we bury it in oxygen starved pits.
Nuclear power also the cheapest to produce per kilowatt. If you weigh up the cost/benefits of nuclear power and contrast it to the waste of the average person, you will see it doesn't really create that much waste.
Nuclear power is head and shoulders above all other power generation options, and let me remind you that much of nuclear waste nowadays can be recycled (up to 99% in most cases)
CAPS LOCK
The nuclear attacks by the US had the same (and in some cases fewer) casualties than conventional bombings. There were no such things as smart bombs. Wars were fought back then by killing as many people as you could. The atomic bombs were essentially a psychological weapon: no more destructive than firebombing, but a hell of a lot scarier. If anything, they probably saved lives compared to a full scale invasion of Japan.
I don't understand this attitude of "going back to the stone age."
Sure, war or some other catastrophic event could destroy modern industrialized society as we know it. But it's way too hard to actually destroy ALL of the collected knowledge of humanity.
The farthest we can fall is a drastically reduced population scraping out survival via subsistence farming (hand labor, but we get to keep our metal tools and knowledge of biology and farming techniques). Guns will survive (ammo might be rare), bows won't be forgotten, and neither will swords and other metal weaponry. Even if new ones can't be made at first, there's still going to be plenty of them lying around (and the same can be said for all the other areas of tech as well). Every piece of technology that is immediately relevant to daily survival will be remembered. Sure, there won't be computers or cars or any of that stuff, but we're not going to forget stuff like basic metalworking and crop rotation.
This will quickly (within no more than a generation or two) organize into little feudal kingdoms. Economy of scale will then allow for the necessary "leisure time" for a few enterprising individuals to dig up the vast majority of the rest of the "non-essential" knowledge and surviving equipment of the previous civilization, learn how it all works, and start up production.
I predict it wouldn't be more than 100 years from the cataclysm that you'd see a fast-motion repeat of the industrial revolution (we'd burn a lot of wood and even grow a little bit of gasoline from grass & sugar), followed by a rapid ramp-up toward nuclear and solar power, and we'd be pretty much right back where we are now (in terms of tech level) in no time.
Now, please don't confuse me for an optimist. I actually think that the human race surviving and continuing on its present course is probably bad news for the rest of the galaxy. I just don't see how we can actually be stopped at this point by anything short of total extinction.
Knowledge != Intelligence
under ground next to naturaly radioactive deposits ?
There are areas on the planet that a naturaly highyly radioactive. Even on the surface and we are OK with that.
We don't create radioactivity. You end up with less than you started, so thin it out and shove it under ground
G
In a couple of hundred years, space launches will be safe enough to launch what can't be recycled into the Sun.
In the long run, there are only 3 groups of people we need to consider.
High tech civilisations won't need warning; their geologists will detect the radioactivity and mine the dump for fuel.
Low tech civilisations won't be able to dig past the concrete covering.
The only people who might need warning is an in-between tech, like the Victorian age. Advance enough to mine through the concrete, curious enough to do so, and not yet discovered radioactivity. So, a few of them will die. Any possible warning signs will just spur them on.
Something that will be made illegal after I do it. Making me rich in the process would be a bonus, but is not necessary.
So far I've been drawing a blank though, it's not a simple problem.
You may have put me onto a new thread...
Personally I see a big part of the problem with corporations as being government.
They (big corporations) are generally big old bloated dinosaurs with 'nervous systems' that take months to unreliably propagate information.
Without the government to prop them up many would quickly collapse as their own former employees pick them apart like a school of piranhas.
A big part of it is the corrupt and bureaucratic government purchasing process. Many small business simply can't afford the overhead and hassle. This assures a steady government teat for the likes of EDS to suck (and man do they SUCK!)
In any case answering your question correctly would be a new crime.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
How about this modest proposal?
How about we don't let our civilization collapse? A collapse that's most likely to be caused by us running out of energy because we wouldn't build nuclear power plants.
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If you make it permanently smell like a skunk, people will avoid it.
TFA references that study (which was performed years ago), but is really more about broader issues related to nuclear power.
futuristic civilizations to be smarter than us? "If only we had warned ourselves that fire can burn! Cursed ancestors!"
Modding me -1 troll doesn't make me wrong.
First we need to warn THIS generation about fluoride which is a toxic waste byproduct of the aluminum processing and fertilizer industries. Because this generation drinks and brushes their teeth with it. It makes them dull, tired and stupid. Try a search...it's sad but true.
Well, there is actually one proven method of communicating with human beings that come along 10,000 years later.
Cave paintings.
(Who'd have thought that graffiti artists would come in handy one day?)
I am anarch of all I survey.
You mean, the Terrible Secret of Space??
There is no sig.
As I understand it the lower gravity one is experiencing, the slower time is moving and the higher the gravity, the faster time is moving (relatively speaking).
Since radioactive decay is a function of time (warning: I'm a layman), would placing nuclear waste in a high gravity region for shorter periods of time make it safe "faster?"
And if so how much gravity would be needed? That is, if we were able to have direct access to the center of the earth (where gravity is highest on earth from my understanding) and placed our waste there, how long would it take to become "safe?" What about other, more accessible regions?
(I'm assuming that if we could put stuff in the center of the earth then we wouldn't have to worry about how long it would take to decay, and only using that because of it being of highest gravity on earth).
-HobophobE
Nothing laughs forever.
"A big part of it is the corrupt and bureaucratic government purchasing process"
The awful thing is that the bureaucracy was created to remove the corruption. Now it actually causes its own new kind of corruption. See the fabulous book called "The Death of Common Sense."
Syntax error: loose != lose, affect != effect, then!=than
Did you have to make me start pulling out the various chemical disasters around the world?
Chernobyl - 56 direct deaths, unknown number due to later cancer and other side effects from radiation, and perhaps an extra 5k cases of cancer(whether fatal or not not mentioned, estimate only).
Bhopal - ~8,000 in the first two weeks, estimates range from 15k-20k total.
Ammonium nitrate is dangerous stuff - an explosion in Texas killed 581.
What about Coal power?
Benxihu Colliery explosion killed 1,549.
TMI is actually pretty much our worst case scenario - the only multi million industrial accident where nobody died. Don't forget that we pre-entomb our reactors, which would stop a Chernobyl situation even IF we were stupid enough to run RBMK reactors.
I don't read AC A human right
OK, that was a good read, and it made me rather optimistic that the American DOE ultimately agrees with France that full fast breeder reactors are the future of nuclear power. But they're also scary, and there needs to be a lot of research before we start building them on a large scale, so I am a strong advocate for starting now.
You have to approach the solution this problem like anything else in this life. Everything is a constant evolution. And the answer to current waste dumps is not as much the answer as how we can convert over to better sources of energy before we "pollute"/create too much of an unwanted substance(s). Just like the slow ~100 year process of using crude oil until we must face the consequences and are done soaking up every last penny of profit before we have to invest in an alternative option.