Danger in any language
Really interesting article on Digg today, about how one can mark nuclear waste storage facilities as dangerous for as long as it will take the waste to decay - we’re talking 10,000 years into the future. Who knows what sort of language, culture or environment will exist? What sort of environmental conditions there will be, whether civilisations will exist as they are now, or even whether humans will even exist in their current form?
A few interesting ideas came out of the panel - I won’t cover everything here as the article is a good read already, but I’ll mention a couple. One was whether you should even mark the site at all - having any sort of monuments or markers might actually encourage future archaeologists to explore the site. Perhaps it would be better to remove all trace that anything was there, so that no-one would think to look at this obscure spot out in the desert. In the end they decided against this, and for my two cents, I definitely agree. Security through obfuscation is always a bad idea (e.g., having a secret way into your house that is never locked, just no-one knows about - it’s fine while it’s hidden, but if someone stumbles upon it, it’s all bad).
Instead, they explored options such as having a jagged landscape of thorny spikes rising up out of the ground, pointing in all different directions. The hope would be that this would inspire a sense of forboding and/or fear in people, and make them at least be cautious about exploring. Another option was large black blocks which would heat up in the desert sun and make travelling the area very uncomfortable. In the end, cost was the deciding factor, and the final design consists of “earthen berms”, basically large jagged dirt/rock formations all around the area, again inspiring a sense of forboding. Then, detailed information will be stored, buried or engraved in all the languages of the United Nations, including astronomical charts and wood for possible carbon dating, so that future societies could determine when the waste was buried.
In many ways, it’s similar to the creation of a plaque to go onto space ships, although with slightly different challenges. Here, at least, there’s some common ground (we expect they’ll still be humans, as opposed to aliens) but here we’re trying to communicate a specific message to a culture that may or may not have any idea about nuclear waste.
I wonder, however, if the simplest thing might not to engrave or in some other way place permanent photos of corpses, people suffering from radiation sickness, etc, around the site. In terms of communicating danger, this is a pretty effective way of doing it, and one which should be pretty obvious to any human. There are probably ethical issues there, though.
The only other thing that I wondered about was whether any of this would do any good. We open Egyptian tombs with no regards for any of the “decorations” that were (presumably) meant to forbid entry. Humans have a habit of being curious, despite any risks, which I honestly thing is a good thing. But perhaps at the end of the day, if people do go down to explore and die from exposure, the culture is going to quickly indentify this as a forbidden place and it will become forbidden once more, at least for their lifetime.
Muttaburrasaurus Says:
Apparently, there is an Australian group of scientists that have come up with a way of encasing / incorporating nuclear waste into molten rock or glass (can’t rememeber which) that renders it virtually inert for the duration of its decay. It’s not cheap and therefore not really viable for small amounts but a real possiblity for larger quantities. Heard this on ABC Science Show not that long ago. Anyone else know anything about this?
I see your point about Egyptian grave robbers. No matter what curses were written in the tomb, and no matter that they ‘killed’ the builders to guard its secrets, tomb raiders still managed to plunder the pyramids long before modern European explorers.
In fact we are also talking in thousands of years. I would have thought the most important thing is that it be encased or embedded in so much cement (reinforced concrete) that it would take a nuclear strike to open it. Then you really would not need to worry about burying it, you could just leave massive concrete blocks lying around the desert. Like miniature (or not so small) pyramids if you like.
However me thinks the real reason is that it is important where these sites are, not so much in 10,000 years, but in a much shorter span.
After all unless Science is Dead (has given up) someone must be able to come up with an idea how to extract the excess CO2 from the atmosphere (that which plants cannot absorb, and that which is not washed away into the Oceans) and of course ways in which to use or re-use Nuclear Waste.
My favourite is to make molten glass (as opposed to cement) sculptures, which ‘glow’ in the dark. Surely there must be a Nobel Prize out there for anyone who can:
(1) find a use for CO2
(2) find a use for Nuclear Waste
.
Yes, that’s an interesting thought as to whether some future society might be able to use or process the nuclear waste in some way. (There’s an example in Isobelle Carmody’s Obernewtyn series of children’s fantasy books that after a nuclear holocaust, small groups journey into the black lands to retrieve radioactive rocks which can then be processed into a useful fuel source. Obviously, it’s just fiction, but there’s it’s an interesting view of how such a scenario might structure society. Or, I could be reading too much into it!)
Again, though, with the cement option, it comes down to human’s darn curiosity. Particularly if they could detect heat coming from the blocks or whatever, it sounds just like a Stargate episode (”I’m getting definite energy readings, sir. There’s a power source of some kind in here.” “Alright, Carter, break out the C4″) Even if they just had to set up a drill or whatnot, it would only take a finite time to break through anything less than a kilometre of cement, if they’re determined enough?