This is not a place of honor
wipp.energy.gov
This is not a place of honor
1–10 of 287 posts
Re: This is not a place of honor
#2Holy shit. Dieter Ast was my landlord in college. This explains so much about my basement.
To those who haven't read the article yet, the real title is Judgment on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Prof Ast was the material scientist on one of the multidisciplinary teams tasked to design warning symbols for 10,000 year nuclear waste storage sites. He used to go around collecting old lab computers that were going to be thrown out and resurrect them with Windows 2000 or Puppy Linux installs.
Re: This is not a place of honor
#3If their goal was to create a hokey-sounding quasi-spiritual ward that future generations will consider naive and ignore, they've certainly hit the nail on the head.
Probably a better approach is to accept the fact that nuclear waste will either be cleaned up or destroy humanity long before ten thousand years comes to pass, and spend the money they spent on this exercise in speculative fiction instead on working toward a real solution.
Re: This is not a place of honor
#4> Put into words, it would communicate something like the following
That initial text was not intended to be written, but communicated through the design of the message system. Interesting.
I expected more skulls and crossbones.
Re: This is not a place of honor
#5I would have thought that to an advanced civilization that a nuclear radioactive waste dump may well be of value.
I do think worrying about radioactive waste given how much carbon dioxide we have dumped into the atmosphere is a bit like bandaging a stubbed toe on an amputated leg.
Re: This is not a place of honor
#6It appears that most of the images are missing (there are figures that are refereed to but do not exist). Is there a complete copy somewhere?
edit: found a mirror http://prod.sandia.gov/techlib/access-control.cgi/1992/92138...
Re: This is not a place of honor
#7I would have thought that to an advanced civilization that a nuclear radioactive waste dump may well be of value. I do think worrying about radioactive waste given how much carbon dioxide we have dumped into the atmosphere is a bit like bandaging a stubbed toe on an amputated leg.
They're worried about people in the future who may not know about radioactive waste. This location will be dangerous for a very long time in a way that's invisible.
Carbon dioxide is certainly a concern, but most of its problems will never produce a place that people shouldn't stumble or explore because of unseeable danger.
I often think of the story of the Goiânia accident to be applicable. Four people ended up dead because two people stole something they thought might have value but was radioactive.[1]
It is prudent to assume that dangerous waste should be disposed of in a way that assumes there won't always be guards.
Re: This is not a place of honor
#8See also Into Eternity, a movie about how the Finns are dealing with this, with a 100,000 year timeframe.
Re: This is not a place of honor
#999 Percent Invisible episode on this:
http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/ten-thousand-years/
Re: This is not a place of honor
#10> Put into words, it would communicate something like the following That initial text was not intended to be written, but communicated through the design of the message system. Interesting. I expected more skulls and crossbones.
> I expected more skulls and crossbones.
"Sweet, it's like some secret pirate tomb! Maybe they buried some treasure here!"