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This Place is Not a Place of Honor 492

Posted by michael from the no-highly-esteemed-deed-is-commemorated-here dept.
macnigel writes "DOE tries to find a good warning sign for the nuclear waste dump out in Nevada. This is one of those scary yet true things our government actually does; research into finding what exactly can be interpreted as "dangerous" 10,000 years from now." I was sure we had run a story about this before, but I don't see it in the archives. The report on how to mark the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (complete version in pdf 19.5Mb) makes chilling, yet somehow inspiring reading, and IMHO is much less deserving of mockery than the Salon author makes it out to be.
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This Place is Not a Place of Honor More

This Place is Not a Place of Honor

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  • Deep Time (Score:4, Informative)

    by scrod ( 136965 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @03:20AM (#3501281) Homepage
    These effors were written about in more depth and detail by Gegory Benford here:
    http://www.physics.uci.edu/~silverma/benfor d.html

  • My proposal (Score:5, Funny)

    by Skyshadow ( 508 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @03:22AM (#3501288) Homepage
    If you've seen the Red Dwarf episode "Quarantine", recall the 'Most Gross Danger' sign which featured an illustration of a man stick-figure grabbing his throat while his guts exploded from his abdomen.

    I think that'd probably do.
    • My thought was a baby with three cyclops heads and a spawn from "Aliens" bursting out of his chest - I think that horrible mutations and parasitic insectoid monsters both have primal appeal to our sense of horror.

  • Skull and Cross Bones (Score:5, Insightful)

    by akmed ( 33761 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @03:24AM (#3501294) Homepage
    For a pure and simple "You're gonna die" motif, you just can't beat the tried and true skull and cross bones. We may evolve, but we know what our ancestor creatures looked like and it they'd marked anything with something that looked like a skull with bones we'd know to avoid it. That's my two cents.

    • Re:Skull and Cross Bones (Score:5, Funny)

      by beertopia ( 165024 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @04:13AM (#3501400)
      marked anything with something that looked like a skull with bones we'd know to avoid it

      Exactly, plus it'll attract Goths, so it'll be a two-birds-with-one-stone type of thing.
      • It's radioactive material. It's not going to kill them instantly - it'll take a long time. And it'll cause them to have really messed up children, which would most likely just make things worse... mutant goth children, shudder...
    • Have you never been to the movies? everyone knows that no matter how obvious the clues there will always be at least one Archaeologist who will dig this sort of thing up.

    • It's a cultural thing... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by PontifexPrimus ( 576159 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @04:57AM (#3501463)
      Skull and crossbones gets it's fearsome reputation from the fact that it was used as a pirate's flag. No pirates, no fear. I saw a documentation on African farmers once, in which they were given pesticides to use on their fields; they thought they had to stand at the fields and bow with their arms crossed below their chins because of the illustration on the packages, which they couldn't read. They didn't think of the chemicals as dangerous.

    • Re:Skull and Cross Bones (Score:5, Interesting)

      by XNormal ( 8617 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @05:03AM (#3501470) Homepage
      A study was conducted on children for labelling of drugs and other poisonous household stuff. It turns out that children associate the skull and bones with pirates, not with poison. For them it's cool, not a warning. A green face looking sick was suggested as an alternative.

    • Unless... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by espilce ( 105654 )
      You are of spanish/latin descent, as most of central and southern America is. In these cultures the dead are respected, not feared. Death is seen as a natural process that should be celebrated rather than grieved like many others believe (e.g. Dia de Los Muertos in Mexico is a very festive occasion where people dress up as skeletons, parade around, eat dulce, etc.).

      Imagine the horror if thousands of years from now that were the surviving culture, and they stumbled upon this: "OOH look! a celebration of the dead! let's go see!"

      Not likely, but just goes to show that the skull is not necessarily a feared symbol everywhere.
    • I saw something like this on TV a few years ago....Prolly part of the same project.

      They made a point specificly about the skull and bones, and that it would be useless, because even in some cultures today, the skull and bones has a non-negitive meaning.

      They seem to give the conclution that it would be better off making the place unreachable, as opposed to using warning signs. Black sand (too hot to walk on etc) or something was part of on idea (or maybe just an example). But they pointed out that this was also useless, because it would get blowen before 100,000 years.

      I think the basic conclution that the program came to, was that it would be f'n hard to make sure no one accidently stumbles across it for 100,000 years.

      Personaly. I think that we would be better of keeing it here, and waiting untill space travel get a bit more relible and safer, then just send it on a course to the sun.

    • In some cultures, skulls mean LIFE, not death. To a Maya priest, for example, a building emblazoned with skulls and crossbones would look like a holy place, an altar or king's temple or someplace similarly inviting. Imagine our descendants are cannibals: a building covered in skulls would, to them, mean "restaurant."

  • I'm sorry? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Rolo Tomasi ( 538414 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @03:29AM (#3501309) Homepage Journal
    How about the old and proven death's head, maybe with some crossed bones? Seems to be pretty widely accepted if you look back in history ...

    They should also put up automated laser turrets (of course nuclear powered so they work for a few eons) to vaporise everyone who approaches so that nobody dies from that deadly radiation.

    • Re:I'm sorry? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by josh crawley ( 537561 )
      Actually, they considered that. After doing research into the meanings of the Skull and Crossbones is that of Adam's body (Adam and Eve/Christanity).

      It originally meant peace. The crossbones were recently turned (1500's) to the X it is now. Before they were the "t" (aka cross).

      However, while watching all this on a college documentary/classroom , they also considered the solution. The signage is that of stick figures. Essentially, people arent going to change (unlesss they get too close...) so figures are acceptable. Now, they show figures going close. Then they fall. They don't show the figures getting back up.

      Another problem is how they marker this. There are about 10 very heavy stones with the stick carvings in them. If you draw the circle around these and find the center, that's where the waste hatch will be at. They fill it with bunches of heavy stuff (concrete, metal, mesh). The whole idea is that if we digress to a stone type culture, they wont be able to penetrate it. If they can, they're probably as smart as us (or use slave labor).
      • Actually, they considered that. After doing research into the meanings of the Skull and Crossbones is that of Adam's body (Adam and Eve/Christanity).
        It originally meant peace. The crossbones were recently turned (1500's) to the X it is now. Before they were the "t" (aka cross).

        Another symbol where the meaning has changed very recently is the swastika.
      • That last part bothered me for the entire article. Why bother giving out warning messages to cultures that aren't advanced enough to bore into the vault. The vault is quite deep in my understanding and shouldn't be able to be penetrated with anything simple (like dynamite) and a reasonable amount of effort. If they are this advanced won't they be better at reading the signs If they don't have geiger counters already?

    • Death's head and crossed bones would only make people think pirates are storing their loot there, and would want them to go in there more.

  • Warning (Score:2, Funny)

    by invisi ( 531162 )
    * NOT Responsible for people becoming critically ill, insane, or insomniaks. See warning label on the next cansiter.

  • Will curiosity kill mankind after all? ;) (Score:4, Insightful)

    by CyberQ ( 304799 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @03:31AM (#3501313)
    Ancient cultures were able to communicate to us that dark and demonic pictorials mean "Do Not Enter!".

    But what does a "Do not enter" sign mean to the average geek? It raises his or her curiosity why exactly whatever is behind closed doors should be left alone. Hence the number of mummys lying in museums instead of pyramids.

    If the knowledge is lost why our generation took so much precaution, not even the best signs or defense systems or whatever will keep the curious out. But maybe the humans of the future will just scan the sites from their orbiting starship while sipping a cup of hot earl grey tea .... ahh, drifting off again ...

    • Had you actually read the article, you would see that the plan is to tell as clearly as possible what is under there. In the actual document they said that the in the first warning structures there would be not only 'keep out' message in seven languages (space left to add new languages) but also some information about the site. It would say that the place is believed to be completely safe as long as you don't dig or drill the ground. And it would say that for more information you'll just have to enter the building inside the area.

      The main information room (actually five identical rooms, one on surface, four buried in different depths) would then contain exact information about what is buried there and where it is, including the floor plan of the WIPP facility. For those who don't know about our current calendar system, there would be star charts that tell when the site was constructed and when its radioactivity is at the level of natural uranium ore. Also there would be a map of other nuclear waste sites where you should find documentation to confirm this one. And if that doesn't tell you what is down there, there would be a chart of the periodic system with samples of the non-precious elements (precious elements would get stolen and give hints that there are other things to steal too) and marks that would tell which ones the waste contains.

      Most of the more advanced information would be only in English and maybe Spanish. The authors believe that isn't much a problem as there probably will be scholars that can read English around for a long time (think about the volume of archived material from these days). Also, there are instructions to rewrite the material if English becomes hard to understand. The star charts and maps should stay readable though the language changes.

      See? No need to dig there. You can get all the information from the surface.

  • why not have a sign that just says 'radiation: keep out!' in a few common current languages?

    It's not like we can't change the sign if a new language comes along. And it's not like civilization will forget that there's a whole bunch of really nasty shit in the Nevada.

    • I don't think you understand what 10,000 years is. The greek's history was mostly lost in a fire, as was numerous others in different ways over the time of a mere 2500 years we have been shedding information as much as we have been gathering it. 10,000 years could see us as a species spread out amongst the stars, perhaps not remembering where exactly we came from.
      • yeah, but the greeks kept their history in one room.

        if i was an alien visiting Nevada in 10,000 years. I'd either make sure I'd said 'hello' to the locals beforehand or I'd be carrying at least one geiger counter. I've flown 500 parsecs to get here, I'm not going to let myself get ill because I've stepped in a puddle of goo some idiot left there 10,000 years ago, now am I?

    • Re:how stupid can you get? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by KFury ( 19522 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @03:48AM (#3501349) Homepage
      why not have a sign that just says 'radiation: keep out!' in a few common current languages?

      This is stupid. Thousands of years is a long, long time, and catastrophic things can happen. 'We' might not be around to update the signs into new languages, and people most certainly do forget where important things are buried.

      We're still discovering about one new pyramid every two years in Egypt, but I bet you were the guy back then who said we didn't need maps and signs because who would forget where we put a fucking huge pyramid?
      • You know, you'd think if there's that much radiation there, then it'd be reasonably visible by future technology.
        I realize that there's a chance that the technology might not happen, but it's relatively logical to think that people will still be dealing with radiation in the future (it'll probably be even more significant).

        Who knows, maybe civilization will take a dive backwards, and we'll forget our tech,etc. Even then, though, there's a chance that a nuke was involved somewhere (and that would keep the idea of radiation in the civilization?).

        I guess the last thing is, if people at a particular point in time don't have the tech to read the signs we put up, then they probably won't know about radiation, either... Then, if the place were not really interestingly marked, people who randomly decided to settle there would just die relatively quickly, and "the valley of death" would soon be discovered for what it was. If, however, it was something interesting, then people might not notice the connection between the people dying around them while they're exploring/bringing back objects from the place.

        Apologies for the randomness of these thoughts --

        classmate from cs160.

    • Re:how stupid can you get? (Score:4, Funny)

      by KFury ( 19522 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @03:50AM (#3501354) Homepage
      And it's not like civilization will forget that there's a whole bunch of really nasty shit in the Nevada.

      Fuck. I forgot where I put Atlantis. Anyone?
      • Fuck. I forgot where I put Atlantis. Anyone?

        Over here! You can come by and pick it up when you want. I'm having some Aztec friends over tonight for a beer. If you pick it up tonight, you're more than welcome to have a drink with us. I think those crazy, stone-carving guys from Easter Island are comming over to, they're always great people to have over....I just wish they would stop carving rude things out of my concrete wall.

    • It's not like we can't change the sign if a new language comes along.

      Damn those stupid Egyptians for not updating all their heiroglyphic inscriptions to English.

  • You know this will get the message across! (Score:4, Funny)

    by toupsie ( 88295 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @03:36AM (#3501318) Homepage
    Just post a sign with the goatse guy [goatse.cx] on it. That should scare away most any intelligent being.
  • I made one seven years ago for neurological pathogens [fury.com], but I think in this case, the best idea might be a variant of the skull and crossbones, replacing the crossbones with the traditional radiation symbol [fury.com].

  • Why bother? (Score:5, Funny)

    by brooks_talley ( 86840 ) <brooks@noSpam.frnk.com> on Saturday May 11, 2002 @03:38AM (#3501324) Journal
    C'mon, this is a great chance to play a practical joke on future generations.

    How about a sign with amorous stick figures, hearts, and in every modern language, "Procreate here and you will have interesting offspring"?

    I swear, government takes the fun out of everything.

    -b

  • Anyone remember OMNI Magazine? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Raetsel ( 34442 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @03:38AM (#3501325)

    In dark ages past, my aunt would renew my subscription to OMNI as my birthday present. Gawd... that was 15, maybe 20 years ago. As I aged, I kept that subscription -- all the way up to when they quit publishing. (They "embraced a fully electronic format" or something like that... sound familiar?)

    Now, here's the kicker:

    • I remember an article about this same subject!

      (It was complete with artists' renditions of the ideas... fields of giant spikes, etc...)

    And now here we are... the internet has come, grown, the bubble has burst, my favorite Sci-Fi magazine is no more, and we STILL haven't answered one (seemingly) simple question! Nuclear power plants are storing every fuel rod they've ever used on-site, Germans are willing to disable their rail system to prevent nuclear waste transport, and Nevada residents (read: voters) will only allow the Yucca Mountain Facility if the rest of the country rams it down their collective throat!

    The more things change, the more they stay the same, I suppose.

    • The Little Engine That Could... Kill Us All (Score:4, Funny)

      by mosch ( 204 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @04:07AM (#3501388) Homepage
      There's no if left, regarding the rest of the country. Votes in Washington were 3 to 1 that we should fill trains with nuclear waste, and send them to Nevada.
    • I could have sworn I remember an article on that same subject in that old Science '84 ('85? '86?) magazine. But the twist was (and I don't remember if it was a humorous or serious article) that the warning had to be understandable to non-human intelligent creatures of the far future too.

      We're not talking aliens, we're talking the offspring of rats or cockroaches... or whatever else that might evolve sentience on this planet should we ever bite the bullet. ;-P

      I swear I even remember the goofy illustration next to the article showing some tribal cockroaches and rat shamans worshipping the universal nuclear hazard symbol in some cavern/ storage silo.

    • Re:Anyone remember OMNI Magazine? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by cybermage ( 112274 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @04:30AM (#3501427) Homepage Journal
      Nevada residents (read: voters) will only allow the Yucca Mountain Facility if the rest of the country rams it down their collective throat!

      Actually, I can tell you, as a Nevada resident, that public opinion here is across the entire spectrum. Opinions are mostly broken down like so:

      • Tiny minority that supports the project for some random reason (jobs, war time nationalism, etc.)
      • Small minority that accepts the project because it's a little late now to back out. (We accepted the money to build it, after all.)
      • Large majority that can't hear the news over the din of slot machines.
      • Small minority that opposes the project because it doesn't pass many environmental tests.
      • Tiny militant factions that oppose the project for more radical reasons. Most of these either are actively interfering/sabotaging or plan to.

      To date, the largest act of "interference", that I've heard of, has been the cutting off of water to the site. Without water, drilling has been basically stopped dead.

  • A little thought experiment (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Frantactical Fruke ( 226841 ) <renekita@dlc . f i> on Saturday May 11, 2002 @03:40AM (#3501328) Homepage
    Imagine for a moment that the ancient Egyptians used nuclear energy four thousand years ago, and that all knowledge of it was lost in the following upheavals. We did after all only relearn to read Egyptian hieroglyphs during the last century.

    Now imagine that the pyramids were nuclear waste disposal sites and that all those dread pictorial warnings of demons and death adorning them to warn off graverobbers that you know from Indiana Jones actually were warnings about nuclear radiation.

    "You will die a slow and horrible death, if you enter here!"

    Yeah right, said graverobbers throughout the millennia. Egyptian jewelry and pottery from those graves have adorned houses and women everywhere. They were fashionable in the 1920's, I believe.
    Mummies were used for fuel in the USA a hundred years ago.

    Hundreds of thousands of people would have been exposed to radiation before we finally gained an inkling into its dangers in the fifties.

    It's rather improbable that our culture will last the 100,000 years that our nuclear waste will remain highly dangerous, so the above scenario is inevitable. People are curious and they do not believe in warnings of unseen, tasteless, odorless dangers. Better think of a way to hide the stuff well enough to stay inaccessible for that time.

    Impossible? Well fancy you saying that! That's exactly why I have a problem with nuclear power generation!

    • Architect, idealist, pragmatist William McDonough (Score:5, Informative)

      by jerryasher ( 151512 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @05:57AM (#3501540)
      Here's a recent speech [connectlive.com] (real player) by Designer William McDonough [mcdonoughpartners.com]. Very interesting how he moved to sustainable architectures and sustainable ecosystems. It wasn't his first inclination, but fear of a negligence lawsuit moved him in that direction.

      Sustainable technology sounds like pie in the sky, but he has really focused on using things that work, and he understands the economic realities.

      He does think that we have the wrong metric of prosperity.

      His speech starts at 3:56, and listen especially to 4:45 into the speech. 5:45 talks right to your point about the lunacy of using technologies that will require 100,000 of cleanup.

      And I challenge anyone to listen to the first 2 1/2 minutes and be able to turn the rest of his speech off.

      Also contains interesting quotes from /.'s favorite president, Thomas Jefferson.

    • DOE tries to find a good warning sign for the nuclear waste dump out in Nevada. This is one of those scary yet true things our government actually does; research into finding what exactly can be interpreted as "dangerous" 10,000 years from now.
      Obvious - there's radiation there, so put a Geiger counter into a corpse's hand, and leave him there. His other hand will cover a gaping hole in his radiation suit.

      /. hAxOrS - this is what good GUI design is all about.

      The only thing that can put people off from buying Hershey bars is a corpse draped across the shelf with a half-eaten Hershey bar in his hand. Any other sign is open to interpretation - even the traditional skull & crossbones sign will be interpreted by pirates as their equivalent of "Stars & Stripes"

    • Mummies were used for fuel in the USA a hundred years ago.

      Wha?
      How?
      Where?
      When?
      Who?
      • do a few google searches.

        The dead of egypt has been used for brown butcher paper (its still colored so it looks the same), as fuel and a source of fibers.

        There at least 50,000 mummies transported to the US for industrial uses. Maybe as many as a 1/4 million.

        Modern Egypt has little connections to it past. for example its name was given to it by the french during the time of Napoleon when they figured the area had to have been the part talked about in the bible with moses and such so they named the area Aegypt which is now Egypt. There is no archaeological of connections between the people involved with the bible and the area now known as Egypt.
      • Ground up mummy resin was used for medicine once upon a time. Later on, ground up actual mummified bodies were sold as the same stuff, and then ground up mummified executed criminals! Yum!

  • Salon - feh (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Coldwar ( 78137 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @03:42AM (#3501332) Homepage
    >and IMHO is much less deserving of mockery than the
    >Salon author makes it out to be.

    I agree...this article contains most of the requisite elements of a Salon author's work: an obvious disdain for science and especially those who practice it, a lot of unfunny non-humor, contrived anti-government cynicism, and the obligatory stab at George W.

    It's fine, though - as long as the scientists keep doing what they do, and the pseudo-intellectual hipsters at Salon confine themselves to their useless pursuits, real progress should remain unimpeded.

  • My Sign Idea (Score:3, Funny)

    by DarkHelmet ( 120004 ) <mark&seventhcycle,net> on Saturday May 11, 2002 @03:43AM (#3501335) Homepage
    How do you design a "Keep Out!" sign to last 10,000 years?

    Two words: Neverland Ranch.

  • My (serious) pick: (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Skyshadow ( 508 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @03:44AM (#3501338) Homepage
    I like the "massive stone grid" approach.

    For those of you who didn't read the shorter site: A grid of massive, roughly hewn 25' black cubes with about 5 feet of separtation between them.

    You could get in, but it'd be a distinctly uncomfortable place to be. It'd be unbelievably hot a lot of the year, it'd be tought to do anything useful in the area, etc. It says "stay out" without trying too hard and inciting curiosity.

    Of course, I also think "Most gross danger" in the top hundred most popular languages and Welch would be a good addition. Hell, it might even serve as a rosetta stone some day...

  • Ummm..not a chance (Score:3, Interesting)

    by yoyoyo ( 520441 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @03:44AM (#3501339)
    I will bet any amount of money you like that soon after they build the thing they will have to pass laws to keep souvenir hunters out...and this is while we know what is buried underneath.

    10,000 years from now the place will be a magnet for the sort of people who visit stonehenge now.

    The best possible marker would be none at all.

    --

  • boom! (Score:4, Funny)

    by vinnythenose ( 214595 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @03:45AM (#3501342)
    You could bury it in Nevada then nuke the area. Once people see the desolate waste land that destroys all life and sucks your will to live right out of you...
    Oh wait, it's Nevada. Nevermind.

    Just put a casino nearby, then nobody will care where the nuclear waste is.

  • Well.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by wysoft ( 301924 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @03:55AM (#3501365) Homepage
    There is one thing that keeps echoing through my mind, and I hope to God that the people working on this project are thinking it too: What the hell are we doing?

  • Ok, 4 in the morning, weeeeeee. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Xenopax ( 238094 ) <xenopax.cesmail@net> on Saturday May 11, 2002 @03:58AM (#3501367) Journal
    Alright, so now that I've been up all night, here's my suggestion:

    What we should do rather than a sign we should make the hole facility a death trap, so anyone curious enough to explore it will never get close to the deadly radiation. Kind-of like the Scarab of Ra (really old game I played on a Mac), we can keep mummies, lions, leapords, spike traps, or whatever the hell they had in that game all throughout our nuclear waste pyramid.

    To make it more of a challege we can give them points for every level down they get, up until the last level when they find the nuclear waste and die.

  • wonder (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ciole ( 211179 )
    Question (possibly stupid): Why can't we just heave it into space? Is it due to sheer volume? Do we have plans to produce a whole lot more of it?

    If so, i'll want to find another planet, but i'll probably be barred from entry due to our reputation. We need a legal system which allows people to be sued by their hypothetical descendants.

    • Ok... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Greyfox ( 87712 )
      So you start chucking the stuff into space on, say, the space shuttle.

      100 shuttles from now one blows up. Oops. You just dumped a shitload of nuclear wasted into the atmosphere.

      Then 10,000 years from now the stuff recrosses the earth's orbit and crashes into the planet. Imagine how embarassed we'll feel then...

    • Re:wonder (Score:3, Interesting)

      by cheezehead ( 167366 )
      Question (possibly stupid):

      No such thing as a stupid question, only stupid answers...

      Why can't we just heave it into space?

      Sure we can. Even better: launch it into the sun. Pretty much guaranteed it won't bother anyone there, ever. It's kind of expensive to do this, though. Minor additional problem: space launches are not 100% safe. The stuff might fall down on earth if a launch goes wrong.

      Is it due to sheer volume? Do we have plans to produce a whole lot more of it?

      As long as we plan to operate fission reactors, yes.

      We need a legal system which allows people to be sued by their hypothetical descendants.

      It's called responsibility, morality, ethics. Not that anybody gives a damn...

  • i've always thought burying your troubles and pretend they have gone away is a shitty solution.

    quality, above ground storage would allow maintainence, monitoring, etc.--heck, in fifty years we might have the technology to turn this crud into baby food.

    be a shame to have to go dig it all up again.
  • If our descendants are anything like we are, they'll be digging that stuff up like nobody's business.

    A few things spring to mind-

    The tale of Father Boedullus in A Canticle for Leibowitz. In a post-nukewar world, a Church scholar and his team attempt to reactivate a mysterious ancient site they found. All that's left many years later is a giant crater lake and local legends about evil spirits.

    Artifacts from the "Age of Legends" in Wheel of Time. Madness and destruction generally resulted from meddling, but meddling was done all the same.

    And finally, every single ancient site we've ever defiled- who knows what kind of things those places were designed to keep *in* rather than *out*...
  • We are already pretty close to having the ability to launch nuclear waste into the sun and get rid of it permanently. Within the next century, doing it cheaply and safely will be a no-brainer, and this stupid monument to short-sightedness will probably have bathrooms AND a gift shop.
    • And just how long should it be stored unsafely until it's ready to be tossed into the sun? I imagine your prediction of "within the next centry" is going to be off, just like most predictions out there. If human behavior remains the same, people would rather store it indefinitely in "temporary" facilities rather than go to the trouble of sending it to the sun. I, for one, would much rather have a permanent storage facility for the waste to sit until it's ready to be disposed of via some other method, if ever.

      Plus, just because it's going to be easier to toss it into the sun than it is now, that doesn't mean it's going to be easier than burying it, nor does it mean it will be tossed into the sun.
  • Put that on a huge sign and you will keep the linux geeks out of the way (except the terrorist ones ^_^ But that will take of itself ^_^).
  • Here is my report for the DOE.

    If you don't want anyone to go near something, you need to find out why people don't go to certain places. So, where on the world don't we generally go today?

    a) Deep under the ocean.
    b) To the center of the earth.
    c) Tops of sheer faced mountains.
    d) North/South poles.
    e) Space.

    So, this means that those places are the best place to put dangerous stuff. The End.
    • Let see...

      a) Deep under the ocean

      Yeah, that's great...until one of the canisters starts leaking. Then you've just irradiated the entire ocean. Let's not do that one.

      b) To the centre of the earth

      see a), only with the water table and the mantle. Also, how the heck are you supposed to get it to the centre of the earth? We can barely dig a couple kilometers down with present tech.

      c) tops of sheer faced mountains

      Ummm...planes/helicoptors? If they're anywhere near our technology level in the future, this won't do.

      d) North/South poles

      The North Pole is basically water...see a). The South Pole is better, but still faces the ocean problem (the ice does flow off the south pole & into the ocean eventually).

      e) Space

      See other comments about safely getting it up there without the occasional "problem" dumping irradiated waste into the atmosphere.

      Keep trying...
  • Hey, isn't security through obscurity a bad thing?

    Why are we trying to design something to prevent someone from discovering what we are hiding? That is not only counter-intuitive but doomed to failure.

    I too remember reading about this long long ago. My first thought was to construct a giant thorn patch from metal and concrete. Giant spikes, each with protruding spikes, each with protruding spikes...layer them all over the area. First of all, I don't care what century you come from, thorns are thorns and things that poke give you pause. Even after hundreds of centuries they should last well enough to make it clear that this was not a place that people travelled through easily or often.

    But now I'm thinking that even that might be construed as some kind of complex art project. Which brings me to my question...

    Why don't we lace the site with the toxic chemicals themselves? Wouldn't that make it painfully obvious to future explorers?

    Here we are at ground level. A big concrete/metal box with sharp pointed spikes sticking out of it. Inside the box...a tiny tiny microgram of the bad stuff.

    Go down several feet. A bigger box with the same unfriendly exterior. Inside...a miligram of the bad stuff.

    Go down several more feet...again bigger, again more bad stuff.

    There should be a pattern here. If the future explorers know anything about chemistry or science in general...then they will want to know what this substance is that has been protected in this manner. Through trial and error and maybe some people getting burns on their hands, they'll llearn it's not good. When the dig down further, and find ever increasing quantities of the stuff...they'll figure out it's not going to get better and them might want to stop digging, unless they figure out a way to diffuse the material in which case...please please please do dig it up.

    This doesn't take modern knowledge. Remember the Star Trek episode where Data lands on this planet searching for radioactive material but gets wonked and the material ends up being made into jewelry by the local Indians or whatever?

    Well, sooner or later they figures out the stuff was bad. Of course, there was so much of it around that it caused a lot of harm. So that's why I saw give them a little bit so they can learn the lesson before digging up the main repository and rifling through it.

    - JoeShmoe

    .
  • To accelerate the entire universe very nearly to lightspeed for about 10 seconds, with the exception of the site containing the waste. We'd age it oh, I dunno, 10 million years or so, and it would be harmless.

    Yes, I've patented this process. Check IBM's archive, if you don't believe me.

  • Interresting (Score:2, Insightful)

    by aepervius ( 535155 )
    Quote "5.3 Personal thoughts (WS) Working on this panel, always fascinating and usually enlightening too, has led to the following personal thoughts: (a) We have all become very marker-prone, but shouldn't we nevertheless admit that, in the end, despite all we try to do, the most effective "marker" for any intruders will be a relatively limited amount of sickness and death caused by the radioactive waste? In other words, it is largely a self-correcting process if anyone intrudes without appropriate precautions, and it seems unlikely that intrusion on such buried waste would lead to large-scale disasters. An analysis of the likely number of deaths over 10,000 years due to inadvertent intrusion should be conducted. This cost should be weighted against that of the marker system.

    (b) The design and testing of markers and messages must involve a broad spectrum of societies and people within those societies. So-called "experts" can of course make important contributions, but they must listen carefully to all other people who represent those who might encounter the markers. In the course of working on this project, I received excellent ideas from a wide range of undergraduates, colleagues, friends, and relatives.

    (c) The very exercise of designing, building, and viewing the markers creates a powerful testimony addressed to today's society about the full environmental, social, and economic costs of using nuclear materials. We can never know if we indeed have successfully communicated with our descendants 400 generations removed, but we can, in any case, perhaps convey an important message to ourselves."

    I particulary like point a. It boils down to : "If it burns , then do not touch it". Althougth it may looks cynical, it is maybe the most cost effective solution.
  • How about if we fill the place with albums from 'N Sync and The Backstreet Boys? Even far future cultures will know they should stay way from those.

  • What should REALLY be mocked... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by IBitOBear ( 410965 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @05:50AM (#3501534) Homepage Journal
    What we should be crying over an mocking is our current "no nuclear power plants" policy. Almost on the very day that Carter blocked the licencing of any new power stations a woman at Fermi-Lab (spelling?) was finishing up work on what I have heard referred to as "the french process".

    Basically a breeder reactor process that would make it cost and energy effective to reprocess our existing nuclear waste as fuel.

    The process/design/whatever (I'm not an expert, but I have spoken to them) produces at least an order of magnitude less waste per unit of fuel. So where 100lbs were produced in the old format less than 10lbs would be produced. Reprocessing the existing waste as fuel would, once it was spent reduce the amount of existing waste by that same 10-to-1 ratio.

    Since we never used flammables (graphite) to cool our reactors we were never at risk for a Chernoybl (sp?)...

    Since nothing really happened at Three Mile Island (the first safety system in a chain of dozens did exactly what it was supposed to do and released some heat with ZERO RADIATION but it was good "media copy"... /sigh)

    Since fossil feul is messy and obnoxious...

    We canceled the best power technology we possess(ed) before it had a chance to mature. And now the people who would know how to revive it are ageing out of the workforce and/or dying off. Prety soon there won't be anybody with experience to get this vital technology back into production.

    THAT is what we should mock and resent.

    • Re:What should REALLY be mocked... (Score:4, Informative)

      by c_ollier ( 35683 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @06:42AM (#3501598) Journal
      You will find some details here [cogemalahague.fr] (link to frameset, check the link "How is waste managed" at the bottom of the main frame) about the "french process". This is the web site of the Cogema, a French company (partially state controlled, I believe). They seem to work also in the USA (http://www.cogema-inc.com/ [cogema-inc.com]).

      From the French web site :

      reprocessing of spent fuel as practiced at La Hague:

      • reclaims reusable uranium and plutonium,
      • provides safe, internationally accepted conditioning suitable to the technical and radiological properties of each type of final waste,
      • reduces the amount of final waste requiring disposal by at least a factor of 5, as compared with approaches in which the spent fuel itself is waste,
      • removes almost all (99.8%) of the plutonium, a leading contributor to nuclear waste toxicity, from the final waste.



      Not everybody's happy with having a nuclear waste processing plant near cities, though... Check here [greenpeace.org] for instance.
  • You're all assuming that a sign will last 10,000 years in the open and still be readable? And it'll probably take only a few weeks before someone spray-paints their tag on it anyway...
  • Aren't we always told that some plastics take bazillions of years to naturally break down, why not build this site out of plastic? It can't even be re-used to build anything else.
  • Well, the way I figure it, hopefully we'll inspire our progeny to wave geiger counters and other quantum particle detectors around the site before they start digging. It's not like the stuff will be so close to the surface that you cant dig for a few few feet first. In fact they are putting underground rooms to stop further digging if it should start.

    I am surprised by the omission of latin as a language on the markers. It's a nice, static language, and I bet religious scholars will retain knowledge of it for a long time.

    Also, lets consider the kind of ground penetrating, satellite based, detection information they are prolly gonna have. Just a quick glance at a false color topographic map and they will see what it is. "Gee, that's a lot of neutron emissions for a mountain, and all in one spot."

    All we need to do is to get future generations to LOOK at the damn thing. The one good thing about a big pile of nuclear waste is that it tends to be a pretty damn good beacon. Sure, maybe a few individuals will die while re-discoveing what it is, but more or less we will avoid the creation of a reservoir there, or a city, or a housing development.
  • Instead of pondering whether people will be able to read signs or remember or whether civilization will disintegrate, for a second let's think about how previous civilizations have left "messages" for us:


    The pyramids were huge objects adorned with a clear message: this guy is god, mess with his place and you'll die a horrible death.


    Did the Egyptians believe that if you raided the tomb, you'd die? Most likely. Is belief enough to kill you or keep you safe? Sometimes (voodoo curses, faith healing). Does exploring the pyramids today actually pose any risk? No.


    Ok, I better clarify where I'm going with this one. In ancient times, people _knew_ you could die from messing with evil spirits. Hang out in a cemetary, the evil spirits make you die like them (disease). This goes on in many forms.


    While today we think we know that toxic waste is toxic, to future generations of humans, it might be considered safe. Hell, it might even be desirable! Who needs to worry about radiation or poisonous chemicals when your cells use it for food?


    We have absolutely _no_ idea what will happen in 10,000 years. If human civilization is still around (which it will almost undoubtably be), life will be so different on this planet as to be unrecognizable. Today, we possess through technology the comparable power of the gods for ancient Egyptians. A couple of smart bombs could level the pyramids in a few minutes. Trying to perceive the future in terms of today's rules is a fairly unsuccessful method of prediction.

  • Chrononauts? (Score:2, Funny)

    by gorehog ( 534288 )
    A second idea.... Maybe this is acctually a good reason to accelerate a few chrononauts to relativistic speeds and drop them out every thousand years? It would take ten volunteers, and they would have a very simple job, that of popping out of the capsule, saying "Oh, excuse me, we took a big shit in Nevada," and then going on to live as time travel celebrities.
  • ...each monument will be inscribed with "messages in seven languages: the six official United Nations languages (English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, and Arabic) and Navajo."
    My understanding is that the reason Navajo was used to transmit "encrypted" radio messages during the second world war is that the language is completely unrelated to ANY other language on the planet. As the article points out, there are only 250,000 Navajo speakers left on the planet. What possible benefit could it be to include this language in the inscriptions? Surely they should be concentrating on languages that are related to many other langauges, as those will be the most likely to survive long in to the future.

  • Nuclear Waste (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Veteran ( 203989 ) on Saturday May 11, 2002 @08:44AM (#3501755)
    There is a real lack of critical thinking involved in the nuclear waste issue.

    1. We are not importing the Uranium from Mars; it all comes from the Earth.

    2. Every single atom of Uranium in the Earth is going to decay - producing all the same radioactive wastes whether mankind is involved or not. The natural decay products spread the same amount of radioactive energy over time - but the total radioactive energy from the fission and decay processes is about the same. The only issues involving mankind are the rate of production, the location and the local concentration of the radioactive wastes - not its creation. If we had never discovered fission the radioactivity from Uranium decay would still exist.

    3. There was a naturally occurring nuclear reactor in Africa where a deposit of Uranium moderated by spring water fissioned all of the U235 out of the ore. As far as anyone can tell the long term results of this reactor on the local biology were zilch.

    4. The total quantity of pollutants produced by fission for a given power production is much less than that produced by combustion - no green house gasses at all. Until fusion is practical on a large scale fission is the best short term alternative available.

    "Greens" are massive hypocrites: I have yet to see a Green walk to a protest rally on bare feet while wearing nothing else but crude fabrics woven by hand from natural sources. Greens don't really want to give up the advantages of modern society; they just want to be the ones in charge of their use. Sorry, no sale; it is all just another boring power game played at my expense - how utterly banal.

    • Re:Nuclear Waste (Score:3, Informative)

      by XNormal ( 8617 )
      Every single atom of Uranium in the Earth is going to decay - producing all the same radioactive wastes whether mankind is involved or not.

      Most nuclear fuel is artificially produced Plutonium, not naturally occurring Uranium.

      Uranium 238 has a half life of over 4 billion years. When converted in a breeder reactor to plutonium and subsequently used as fuel it produces a variety of isotopes with half lives that are too long to decay rapidly and yet too short to spread their emission over billions of years at safe, low levels. It these pesky midrange half-life isotopes that the site is designed to handle

      Technically, the total amount of radioactive waste is the same whether you include human nuclear activity or not - but only if you calculate the total over billions of years. In the range of a few thousand years the results are more disturbing.

    • Re:Nuclear Waste (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Evil Pete ( 73279 )

      We are not importing the Uranium from Mars; it all comes from the Earth.

      But the nuclear waste is our product and as another poster has said will release its energy in a short period of time.

      There was a naturally occurring nuclear reactor in Africa

      Yep. But there was no local biology. It started, finished, was 'decommissioned' before life walked on the land. And nature had plenty of time to seal the nuclear waste in the rocks. We can't wait for millions of years.

      The total quantity of pollutants produced by fission for a given power production is much less than that produced by combustion

      This is a crazy proposition. I am sure that you would rather a smogy day in LA than to have been downwind of Chernobyl. A whiff of nitrous oxides and hydrocarbons is far better than a dose of radionuceides that might kill by themselves or damage my dna, causing cancers etc.

  • ...also head researchers work on this same subject.

    IIRC, they came up with a solution that envolved
    creating a "cult" around these sites.
    Sounds strange, but once you figure out that religions live longer than any other socio-economic community, it makes sense.
    Well, kind of.

  • For all we know, we:

    (a) May figure out a way to properly recycle/reuse nuclear waste way sooner than 100,000 years (hopefully within even a few hundred)...

    (b) Might not even live on Earth in a couple hundred years, either by wiping ourselves out in a stupid war or calamity, or by rendering the Earth uninhabitable by that time...

    (c) That we'd be the dominant species on this planet within 100,000 years...

    (d) That some wiz kid in marketing would produce "New Cobalt-14 Coke!", then we'd have morning news hosts and the public lining up around the block to get one...

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