Long time nuclear waste warning messages
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Long time nuclear waste warning messages
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Re: Long time nuclear waste warning messages
#2The documentary mentioned at the bottom, "Into Eternity" is definitely worth a watch, it's fascinating.
Re: Long time nuclear waste warning messages
#3The documentary mentioned at the bottom, "Into Eternity" is definitely worth a watch, it's fascinating.
There is another documentary called Containment by historian of science Peter Galison: https://vimeo.com/124451868.
Re: Long time nuclear waste warning messages
#4It's interesting how, when communicating with hypothetical future people in written form, we have to choose language we have the best hope of them understanding. A center of emanating energy that is dangerous to the body and kills.
Really makes you empathize with religious writers trying to communicate often second hand divine truths that people thousands of years later will have to figure out without the understanding the original prophet had.
Re: Long time nuclear waste warning messages
#5Many Gen IV nuclear designs can use the 10K year waste fuel and turn it into 300 year waste. If you believe climate change is killing us, this is the answer. If you don't believe that but believe clean, free electricity in abundance is best for a developing world, then this is also the answer.
Re: Long time nuclear waste warning messages
#6The only use-case I can think of that isn't covered by either signage or words is discouraging its utility as a weapon.
e.g. "There's something deadly buried here? Neat, I'll dig it up and throw it at my enemies!"
Perhaps they'd consider it covered by saying "nothing of value is here"...?
Re: Long time nuclear waste warning messages
#7I wonder who the primary audience is intended to be? I would think future societies at the point these sites could be lost (thousands of years per the article's suggested readability) to common knowledge would have tech to scan/detect such sites. Though its always possible for things to regress as a result of some disaster.
Re: Long time nuclear waste warning messages
#8There's an opposite line of logic to the disposal of nuclear waste that projects such as these don't seriously consider:
Bury it in such a way that any hypothetical future primitive neo-civilisation can't detect it and can't dig it up - for better or for worse.
Instead of drawing attention to the dump of strange rocks that make neolithic humans sick, why not make it so unobtrusive that any enterprising future miners don't discover the waste dump in the first place?
We have the technology to survey geological formations for exploitable minerals. Why not instead survey for both the lack of exploitable minerals AND a long-term stable environment, then bury the small volume of high-reactivity waste that we've produced so far in a tiny shaft with a tortuous access route?
It's a lot easier to get humans to ignore something for 10,000 years than to make them pay attention to a warning sign.
Re: Long time nuclear waste warning messages
#9It's interesting how, when communicating with hypothetical future people in written form, we have to choose language we have the best hope of them understanding. A center of emanating energy that is dangerous to the body and kills. Really makes you empathize with religious writers trying to communicate often second hand divine truths that people thousands of years later will have to figure out without the understandi…
It's fun to think of other ways one might interpret the sign in the article's main photo if social convention changed enough it wasn't obvious.
A machine that can reanimate the dead perhaps? Energy that can turn bones into a living person?
Re: Long time nuclear waste warning messages
#10There's an opposite line of logic to the disposal of nuclear waste that projects such as these don't seriously consider: Bury it in such a way that any hypothetical future primitive neo-civilisation can't detect it and can't dig it up - for better or for worse. Instead of drawing attention to the dump of strange rocks that make neolithic humans sick, why not make it so unobtrusive that any enterprising future miners…
"tortuous access route"
There has to be treasure down here look at the ways they are trying to prevent us from finding it. We've got to dig this up. - future me