4 ms·
> But once the plant decides to close its doors, with the nuclear waste still remaining, proper signage will be critical. This, right here, screams the whole p
by effie 3y ago
> But once the plant decides to close its doors, with the nuclear waste still remaining, proper signage will be critical.
This, right here, screams the whole premise is nonsense. You don't label something very dangerous if you want to prevent primitive people from accessing it.
This project is not really about storing radioactive materials, but about the question "how do we spook stranger future people 10000 years from now so they won't dig here". Utter pseudo problem.
A high-level radioactive material ("waste" in the language of the current primitive nuclear technology prism) that you don't want to use anymore does not need "proper signage". Proper signage is needed only if you plan for people to access it.
If you really care that nobody can access it anymore, you dump it in inaccessible way, e.g. at big depth of Earth's crust at a not exactly known location, and then completely collapse the access holes. Most likely nobody will ever find it and get there.
If you do not really care about that (present governments), just dump it in a water pool near the power plant, or store it in a protected, easily accessible underground dry deposit. Much of "nuclear waste" is still a precious unburned nuclear fuel that people will want to use, after all.
- antisthenes 3y ago> Most likely nobody will ever find it and get there. And even if knowledge of the location does get passed on somehow, it'll be too costly to ever dig up. It's not exactly trivial to excavate to these depths. If someone wanted to use spent fuel for nefarious purposes, there are much cheaper ways to do bad things.
- masswerk 3y agoI think, the problem ist far beyond basic semiological implications. It's really about the pragmatics of the interpretation, especially, if the basic message is understood. E.g., compare curses on rune stones or Egyptian tombs. Is our message guaranteed to be read according to its intention and at face value? (While I do not have a citation, I remember the story of a rune stone emphasiszing that this was never to be moved or lifted, because something tremendously evil was trapped by it. Consequently, some years ago, it was lifted to see what might be below.) Even in those cases, where the reading still aligns, it may provide incentives contrary to our intention. E.g., I personally have few doubts that, if we were to encounter such a site and understood the meaning of any markers, we'd eagerly mine this in order to weaponize its deadly payload. If we can't control the pragmatics, as well, or see few chance to do so, it may be better to be not understood (So, yes, radical inaccessibility is probably the better option, hoping that any civilization, which has the technology to access it, will also have a technological understanding of what it may find.) Having said that, conveying such a message across the millennia and the disruptions that may and will come is still an interesting thought experiment.