11–20 of 287 posts
It 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...
It 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...
They show up for me. Here's an imgur album. http://imgur.com/a/DGizu
See also Into Eternity, a movie about how the Finns are dealing with this, with a 100,000 year timeframe. http://www.intoeternitythemovie.com/
They wonder if this really worth it, since in the end coming into contact with the waste is a bit of a self-limiting problem, in that people exploring will become sick and die. It will ergo, become a "Place to avoid" anyway. If the cost is bound to be a few explorer's lives every few millennia in any case, and that's what will send the real message, then... well... you see?
Finally though, they just wonder how to construct something massive, durable, and yet not likely to be cannibalized for parts or scrap! They even raise the issue of what 400+ generations of unknowable humanity might do to the marker structure, without disturbing the rest of the site.
I 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.
Actually it has value to our civilization, because much of the low-grade uranium "waste" could be put into breeder reactors and turned into plutonium - and reused as nuclear fuel.
Read about it here: https://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_163.shtml
If 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 towa…
There's a pretty remarkable old English poem that survived from Dark Ages Britain, in which the author marvels at the ruins of Roman Britain, wondering what giants must have once inhabited the land in order to build such things. From the sounds of it, these markers are targeted towards people like that, not our own immediate descendents who will already know it's a nuclear waste site.
Holy 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…
… did you enter?