Slashdot Mirror
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...
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?
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/06/0143244/
MMO Vampire Role Playing
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
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?
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.
That's optimistic; can you evolve one of those in only 10,000 years?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
What would you think if you stumbled across a warning from humans that existed 10,000 years ago? Think about it, 10,000 years ...
...
Wow, my ancestors are trying to warn me of danger, I must be careful.
Or more likely
Those silly ancestors, thinking that I wouldn't know anything that they don't.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
Notice the use of a period in 10.000? Look at his homepage, he's not American.
Fixed that for you.
The dollar changes, the Joule is forever. Regardless of whether or not the power from a nuclear plant can cover the costs of its construction and decommissioning at the present time is irrelevant. We aren't designing plants to come online in a year, we are designing them to come online in 10-15 years. Thermodynamically, nuclear is worthwhile. When oil starts to really bite that is all that will matter, whether or not we have an energy source that can sustain us. Market forces are subservient to physical forces.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
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
Uh No.
It's "Don't waste The People's tax money on something that private industry will find a profitable use for". Like using the nuclear waste for nuclear power generation in more modern reactors, thus turning what was once hazardous and incredibly long lasting nuclear waste into less hazardous and very short-lived nuclear fuel AND large amounts of clean energy to power our economy and green the planet.
Or we could waste BILLIONS of tax-payer money on some hair-brained far-leftist scheme that won't work and will actually make the problem worse. I mean, why do the SMART thing and let The People fix the problem through ingenuity and enlightened self-interest? Let's let the Ivory-tower intellectuals have a go at it first so that the proper solution ends up even MORE expensive that it otherwise would be. Look how well that's worked out for our Energy Policy!
*rolleyes*
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
U R nt spkng a lnguage I undrstnd. My BFF Jill dsn't eithr. LOL!!!! C U L8R KTHXBYE
Its actually the right thing to do in this case.
Any monument that they could build that would stand the test of time would only attract attention to the site. People are inquisitive and have no respect for the past. Its not like we believed any of the curses when we raided the tombs of Egypt. Why would it be any different for our future citizens? The scarier that the site is made to look the more people will be interested in it.
The site itself is hundreds of feet underground and in the middle of nowhere. The chances it being found if left unmarked are very very very small.
Personally I believe that we are going to be digging up our trash and other waste in the next few hundred years as a fuel source. In that case it would be nice to know where at that radioactive waste went.
IMAGE VERIFICATION IS EVIL!
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.
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.
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
Hmm, if we are anything to judge by it will be:
Hey, the ancients wanted to keep people away from here. There must be buried treasure!
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
the solution was to have the area covered with black marble and have lots of sharp points triangles sticking up out of the ground.
Terrible idea. Such an environment would just attract the goth kids from 12008. They would loiter around reciting bad poetry and drinking absynthe until the radioactivity conferred unto them superhuman powers, which they would then use to conquer the world and enslave us all.
Fuck people, try to think about the long term consequences of your actions!
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.
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
Radioactive decay is exponential so in ten thousand years, the radiation given off by our "nuclear waste" will be about the same as the ore would have been if we hadn't done anything with it!
Thats ... typically american. "Don't do anything, it'll fix itself" ... *sigh*
I suppose that means you've tested your tap water for radioactive and toxic heavy minerals and your home for radon gas.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
This didn't work very well with the dinosaurs. Having discovered the dangers of global warming, they hid their precious oil and coal reserves deep below the surface of the earth. We managed to dig them up long before discovering their dangers!
I kid, I kid.
Those silly ancestors, thinking that I wouldn't know anything that they don't.
For much of human history in Europe (roughly the thousand years from 500CE to 1500CE) it was accepted as fact that the ancients (i.e the Romans) knew far more than was known at the present time. There was a grain of truth to this.
You assume that a dismissive attitude to the knowledge of the ancients is a given. It isn't. Superstitious awe of a fallen civilisation can last a long time.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
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.
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?
Funny, but I would think the threat of death to those poisoning others with nuclear waste would be a pretty simple mechanism.
Gov't doesn't have to tell use what to do with nuclear waste. Gov't just has to tell us what gov't is supposed to tell us: Don't fuck up someone else's rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Law should severely punish those who do - but right now we've allowed corporations to buy their way out of all kinds of trouble... and THAT is your "massive externality".
I would suggest a live corpse, as it's much scarier.
By what name do you wish to be mourned?
wind turbines, and turbine farms kill birds. and solar collecters steal valuable sunlight from places that need it, like northern canada.
The article that sparked this Slashdot post is by some know-nothing Ivory tower far leftist. Full of 10 dollar words, long on speculation and short on facts.
Thank you! We have, of course, uranium and other naturally radioactive minerals in the earth right now. And yet we've mostly avoided exposure (except by early scientists who worked with them.) This author could have just summed his article into one sentence: I hate nuclear power.
If we end up back in the stone age it will be BECAUSE of people like Ulrich Beck who jump up and down about climate change, but then complain that no solution is good enough. THOSE are the people who would have us living back in time with no electric, no cars and eating berries and twigs because cows pass too much methane!
Mr. Beck might be interested to know there is ALREADY a universal warning sign denoting radioactivity.
Perhaps if we add a "Mr. Yuck" symbol....
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
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
After all, if you found a stone tablet in some ancient ruins, wouldn't it seem like a reasonable assumption that the writing on it was all the same language?
It is a reasonable assumption, but one that can be quickly validated or negated by examination of the tablet. Take the Rosetta Stone, for example. Even for non-linguists, it is easy to see that there are three different character sets being used. Even when the same (or a very similar) character set is being used, a message of sufficient length will often show indicators that a different language is being used. The fact that different languages are being used can also be indicated by layout.
As regards the question about warning labels, it makes sense to use an engraving or an inlay of some sort. This will allow the message to last for thousands of years, as well as indicate to future viewers that this message was intended for posterity. On said label, present several large symbols to indicate danger or death -- say, skull-and-crossbones (or a full skeleton image,) the Mr. Yuk icon, and Clippy. Then, in each language, write a brief "DANGER" message in a large font, followed by a more detailed warning in a smaller font. Follow the languages up with the same warning icons, to help reinforce the message. Something like:
Skeleton Icon . . . . . Mr. Yuk . . . . . Clippy
WARNING! this is a dangerous area. Do not dig here. Do not eat or drink from this area.
ACHTUNG! Dies ist eine gefährliche Gegend. Nicht graben hier. Arbeit nicht essen und trinken aus diesem Bereich.
ATTENTION! il s'agit d'une zone dangereuse. Ne pas creuser ici. Ne pas manger ou boire dans ce domaine.
(I would insert more languages here, but Slashdot's Unicode support is weak)
Skeleton Icon . . . . . Mr. Yuk . . . . . Clippy
Make the detailed warning about medium-sized paragraph or so, and use very simple sentence-structures. The corpus of the text would not likely be enough to allow a full translation, but with a dozen or so languages, there is a good chance that larger texts exist elsewhere in one or more of the languages that will provide the key words used in the warning message.
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.'"
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.
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