Pomme_
November 22nd, 2004, 09:15 AM
Keep off the grass - forever
How do you bar entry to a toxic-waste dump for tens of thousands of years?
Radioactive materials stored at Yucca Mountain will have half-lives of 10,000 years, and could be toxic as long as 100,000 years. That's far longer than the human race has existed, so since the 1980s, scientists have been studying ways to warn future civilizations to stay away.
Over time, climate change could transform the stark location into a desirable site for a city, but anthropologists say no language spoken today would still exist, so linguists, science-fiction writers, semioticians and engineers were hired to come up with solutions.
In a 1984 report titled Communication Measures to Bridge Ten Millennia, the U.S. Department of Energy suggested creating an "atomic priesthood" and a "ritual-and-legend" system that would use religion to spread word of the underground horrors.
Other ideas considered: using chemicals to make the area so "repulsively malodorous" that no one would go near it; erecting giant panels using comic strips to illustrate the danger, and something vaguely described as "microsurgical intervention with the human molecular blueprint" - in other words, encoding warnings inside the genes of the entire human race.
Another study suggested covering the area in black rocks, so it would be impossibly hot all the time, or sculpting the local geology to make it dizzying, nauseating and forbidding, with no straight lines or view of the sky.
Yucca Mountain officials say they will probably adopt the following, somewhat less radical measures adopted by a New Mexico facility for less radioactive waste. They would come into effect when the site shuts down in 300 years, and are thought to make it secure for 10,000 years.
The great wall: A huge, erosion-proof berm 11 metres high and 33 metres wide would encircle the site and contain hundreds of "specially configured metal objects" and magnets to reflect radar and provide a unique magnetic signature.
Stonehenge II: Granite monuments eight metres high and weighing 20 tons would be placed around the perimeter. They would display messages (engraved in seven languages that best represent humanity) plus infographics and cartoons warning of the hazard below.
Temple of doom: At the centre of the site, a solid granite temple (with an open roof to allow natural lighting) would contain a variety of stay-away messages in words and pictures.
Tunnel vision: Rooms walled in granite and buried well below the surface to guard against erosion and climate change would contain the same information as the temple overhead.
The plan: Intercept any attempt in the distant future to dig into the mountain by someone ignorant of what it contains.
Buried treasures: Thousands of small warning markers would be placed just below the surface at random throughout the area. Each of the nine-inch-diameter disks made of granite, aluminum oxide and fired clay would carry a warning message in one of the seven chosen languages.
Yeah right. Temple of Doom.
The "atomic priesthood" was fun too.
How do you bar entry to a toxic-waste dump for tens of thousands of years?
Radioactive materials stored at Yucca Mountain will have half-lives of 10,000 years, and could be toxic as long as 100,000 years. That's far longer than the human race has existed, so since the 1980s, scientists have been studying ways to warn future civilizations to stay away.
Over time, climate change could transform the stark location into a desirable site for a city, but anthropologists say no language spoken today would still exist, so linguists, science-fiction writers, semioticians and engineers were hired to come up with solutions.
In a 1984 report titled Communication Measures to Bridge Ten Millennia, the U.S. Department of Energy suggested creating an "atomic priesthood" and a "ritual-and-legend" system that would use religion to spread word of the underground horrors.
Other ideas considered: using chemicals to make the area so "repulsively malodorous" that no one would go near it; erecting giant panels using comic strips to illustrate the danger, and something vaguely described as "microsurgical intervention with the human molecular blueprint" - in other words, encoding warnings inside the genes of the entire human race.
Another study suggested covering the area in black rocks, so it would be impossibly hot all the time, or sculpting the local geology to make it dizzying, nauseating and forbidding, with no straight lines or view of the sky.
Yucca Mountain officials say they will probably adopt the following, somewhat less radical measures adopted by a New Mexico facility for less radioactive waste. They would come into effect when the site shuts down in 300 years, and are thought to make it secure for 10,000 years.
The great wall: A huge, erosion-proof berm 11 metres high and 33 metres wide would encircle the site and contain hundreds of "specially configured metal objects" and magnets to reflect radar and provide a unique magnetic signature.
Stonehenge II: Granite monuments eight metres high and weighing 20 tons would be placed around the perimeter. They would display messages (engraved in seven languages that best represent humanity) plus infographics and cartoons warning of the hazard below.
Temple of doom: At the centre of the site, a solid granite temple (with an open roof to allow natural lighting) would contain a variety of stay-away messages in words and pictures.
Tunnel vision: Rooms walled in granite and buried well below the surface to guard against erosion and climate change would contain the same information as the temple overhead.
The plan: Intercept any attempt in the distant future to dig into the mountain by someone ignorant of what it contains.
Buried treasures: Thousands of small warning markers would be placed just below the surface at random throughout the area. Each of the nine-inch-diameter disks made of granite, aluminum oxide and fired clay would carry a warning message in one of the seven chosen languages.
Yeah right. Temple of Doom.
The "atomic priesthood" was fun too.