4 ms·

I recently saw a documentary where someone was researching what the best way would be to label nuclear waste facilities such that future (far, far furture) gene

by stinos 4y ago

I recently saw a documentary where someone was researching what the best way would be to label nuclear waste facilities such that future (far, far furture) generations would understand what's in there. You can't just slam an English text on there and hope in tens of thousands of years it will be understood by whatever creature visits it. Even only in light of just that, calling everything solved is a bit far fetched, no?

ElKrist 4y ago
I can understand it's a stimulating problem for the brain. In terms of priorities it doesn't make any sense at all to me though. It's hard to get the global population to care and act about what the GLOBAL state of the planet will be by the end of the century. So I really could not care less if by accident a few people dug a hole in tens of thousand of years at the wrong place and it created an issue. It's not like the whole human population would meet at this same spot and quickly dig a hole deep enough together so that they all get radiated...
- carapace 4y ago
  It's not okay to poison people even if they are far away in space and/or time.
layer8 4y ago
In my mind, continued storage of nuclear waste will always have to remain an active process. Dispose and forget like in a landfill isn’t an option if you care about the long-term risks.
orwin 4y ago
But in ten of thousands of years, all radioactive waste will be low activity, no? I mean, we do have prototype reactors that now use actanids as fuel, so the medium lasting high activity waste issue is now dealt with. Don't we only have to worry about the next 300 years for to radioactivity to go down to granitic cave levels?
c1ccccc1 4y ago
That seems super unlikely to be a problem. For long term storage, I'd expect that we'll dig a deep shaft, or use an existing abandoned mine, and then seal it back up. Any group of humans who are willing and able to make a hole through several meters of concrete in order to get at the stuff will almost certainly also have the technological sophistication to know what radiation is, and that radioactive isotopes are dangerous. Also, if you do decide to leave a message anyway, you'll just have to make it interpretable to a human, not to any possible "creature". 10 000 years is nothing on evolutionary time scales, so it will still just be us humans around, (or nobody at all, if we happen to go extinct first).

by stinos 4y ago

ElKrist 4y ago

I can understand it's a stimulating problem for the brain. In terms of priorities it doesn't make any sense at all to me though. It's hard to get the global population to care and act about what the GLOBAL state of the planet will be by the end of the century. So I really could not care less if by accident a few people dug a hole in tens of thousand of years at the wrong place and it created an issue. It's not like the whole human population would meet at this same spot and quickly dig a hole deep enough together so that they all get radiated...

carapace 4y ago
It's not okay to poison people even if they are far away in space and/or time.

layer8 4y ago

In my mind, continued storage of nuclear waste will always have to remain an active process. Dispose and forget like in a landfill isn’t an option if you care about the long-term risks.

orwin 4y ago

But in ten of thousands of years, all radioactive waste will be low activity, no? I mean, we do have prototype reactors that now use actanids as fuel, so the medium lasting high activity waste issue is now dealt with. Don't we only have to worry about the next 300 years for to radioactivity to go down to granitic cave levels?

c1ccccc1 4y ago

That seems super unlikely to be a problem. For long term storage, I'd expect that we'll dig a deep shaft, or use an existing abandoned mine, and then seal it back up. Any group of humans who are willing and able to make a hole through several meters of concrete in order to get at the stuff will almost certainly also have the technological sophistication to know what radiation is, and that radioactive isotopes are dangerous. Also, if you do decide to leave a message anyway, you'll just have to make it interpretable to a human, not to any possible "creature". 10 000 years is nothing on evolutionary time scales, so it will still just be us humans around, (or nobody at all, if we happen to go extinct first).