Holy shit. Dieter Ast was my landlord in college. This explains so much about my basement.<p>To those who haven't read the article yet, the real title is Judgment on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Prof Ast was the material scientist on one of the multidisciplinary teams tasked to design warning symbols for 10,000 year nuclear waste storage sites. He used to go around collecting old lab computers that were going to be thrown out and resurrect them with Windows 2000 or Puppy Linux installs.
I'm never understood this marker system. Graves have been marked in a threatening manner so that they would not be plundered. It doesn't work.<p>The point is to hide the waste. The system should be designed to progressively unveil warnings if some future man starts digging. Otherwise, you're just asking for them to dig it up.<p>Another thing not mentioned is to design the container so that anyone who plans to excavate will think they have hit rock bottom... like Pharoahs' tombs or a multi-level pirate cache.<p>Or even better, put something horrible and poisonous twenty feet down. It might be better to obviously poison a couple people if they start digging this up. That would be easily understood and eventually avoided.<p>Remember the radioactive sign in the Star Trek episode where Data gets shishkabobed? They made jewelery...
Contrary to many of the comments here, I think they did a good job of considering what it takes to make something foreboding without sounding like "here be treasure." The pseudo-mystical messages sound hokey, but they're effectively a backup system in case the straight-up "This is atomic waste, here's a description of atomic waste" descriptions are incomprehensible to future generations. And the more primitive communications deserve more consideration, because that's the harder part.<p>Additionally, I don't think the "no marker, anonymous patch of ground" plan is sound. 10000 years is a long time, which will hopefully be inhabited by peoples more advanced than us, and they could do a lot of digging in that time.<p>That said, the approach I'd suggest would just be a big plain monument that's physically obnoxious to get around. Although the insides of the pyramids have been robbed, the pyramids themselves will last another 10000 years, and I doubt anyone will try to mine under them during that time. And experience has shown that the best way to preserve a language is to make sure there's a large enough sample for someone to brute-force it, so these pyramids could contain chambers full of detailed explanations with pictures.
<a href="http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/ten-thousand-years/" rel="nofollow">http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/ten-thousand-years/</a><p>99pi did an awesome about this. I thought the most interesting idea was that culture permeated much deeper than anything else. So seed our world with these stories of cats that changed color near radiation or something like that would do best. Since symbols meaning change but oral tradition or old wives tales last much longer.
I had an internship here during the summer of 2010. For the most part it was incredibly boring as there was SO much emphasis on safety (rightfully so).<p>For example, people would have to be cleared from an area in order for janitors to vacuum an area, so that no one would trip on the power cord.<p>I did get to go down into the salt shaft which was incredibly cool (also literally cool, which was a relief because it was the summer in New Mexico).<p>For the most part I upgraded some software systems and helped with some hardware upgrades.<p>The engineers were all characters. Several of them were preppers convinced that I was silly for going into computer science and not stocking up on gold.
Wait, can we all just take a minute to relish the extreme nominative determinism in Ward Goodenough being involved in this project? This man was born for this role.
Any marks would only attract people's attention. I can't come up with a single historical example where some marks would successfully keep people away. Even now we keep digging once forbidden and sacred places like pyramids, graves, temples, plague victims' burial grounds. Furthermore, a "menacing earthworks" example from the article looks like a treasure is buried inside that square. Why not bury it deep enough in an unmarked grave (for example, put it in the tunnels inside a mountain then blow all entrances up) so no primitive civilization could dig it up? If civilization is sophisticated enough to dig deep enough, they must be well aware of radiation as well.
It's really interesting to me to see architecture used for its typical antithesis. It is typically used to bring a sense of bring out positive emotions, to inspire, to bring facility to humanity, to sanctify. Here it is being used to desecrate, to decrease utility, to ward away.<p>As a hacker, I'm used to the thought of "what is the worst possible way I can make this UI", but it's cool to see it applied in an entirely different field.
Honestly, reading this, I kept thinking to myself, "Man, this is just waiting to be turned into science fiction short story." It could go in different directions, future humans discover such a site, humans discover an alien analogue of such a site on $planet, aliens discover such a site crafted by humans on $planet, etc. Either way, there's potential for a good story there.
I like the comic where the happy man has successfully plundered the nuclear waste. It contaminates him and he is observably less happy, though still exhibiting signs of above-average satisfaction with life. Then in the final frame, his beloved treasure stolen, he sadly dies of what appears to be thyroid cancer. His dying thought is that the person that robbed him of his ill-gotten plutonium squeezings will soon be suffering the same fate. Justice.<p>If I were watching a movie where the protagonist goes in to get some ancient artifact and this comic showed up on the wall, I would be like "yeah fucking right, some spooooky spirit kills the tomb raider? suspension of disbelief fail!" But of course this is real and is actually what would happen. If the society in 10,000 years is as cynical as me (and has forgotten about radioactivity), this comic will just egg them on!
To prevent people from entering, they should place statues of soldiers in front of the entrance. Thousands of them. Each should be sculpted individually from terra cotta.
Surely written warnings, if some future society discovers them, they might be curious enough to have decrypted at least one of our present day languages/methods of communication.<p>Just have the same concepts relayed in as many languages/ways as possible, and then make the site sufficiently difficult to infiltrate that it would take a sufficiently advanced civilisation to break into it.<p>You could even tier the messages, and use words that would likely be common and thus more likely to have been recognised based on discovering whatever other shit we've left around.<p>DEATH.<p>THE THINGS HERE MAKE DEATH.<p>THIS MATERIAL WILL KILL YOU.<p>And progressively more complex and complete messages, etc translated into Chinese, Spanish, Braille, French, pictograms, what the fuck ever.<p>And if they're too lazy/careless to try and decrypt any of the fucking obvious messages, fuck 'em.
I find the "human comes near box with radioactive sign/sign is on human now/human sick" drawing to be a pretty universal warning sign.
No matter how many years we're aiming for the message to survive, as long as we're warning against humans, wouldn't using the human form somehow in the message be the best way? Isn't drawing narratives with bipedal stick figures something we've had since the dawn of humanity?
I've read the report several times (it keeps coming back every 5-7 years or so) since publication, and I've never felt like a reliable solution had wither been found, or was in the offing. There is good thinking, but the problem itself seems very daunting. I think that is the real lesson.
We should just assume that nuclear waste lasts forever, like a lot of chemical waste does, and then treat it the same as the equivalent class of chemical waste. When someone says "10,000 years", people start thinking about how to wait it out. When someone says "forever", people give up on waiting it out, and start thinking about more realistic safety measures.
> (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.<p>Wow. reminds me of the ford pinto case:
<a href="http://users.wfu.edu/palmitar/Law&Valuation/Papers/1999/Leggett-pinto.html" rel="nofollow">http://users.wfu.edu/palmitar/Law&Valuation/Papers/1999/Legg...</a>
What language(s) did the earth speak 10,000 years ago. The concept is electrifying for will English or any other language written or spoken today even exist?<p>The monument would have to be a "Rosetta Stone(s)" quite obtrusive and large like a pyramid. It would have to be written in multiple present and ancient languages. It would would have to feature math formulas and illustrations etched foot deep into Titanium, carbon fiber, or a material that wouldn't degrade in 10,000 years. Then inside the monument would have to feature even more information. WOW!
I don't want to sound evil... but why? It's not like digging up low-intensity radioactive waste is going to end the world. Just look at how alive Chernobyl zone is... So let's say some people bring it up, they get sick and die, which makes people remember that radioactivity symbol = bad for the next several hundred years or so.<p>On a related note, wouldn't it make more sense to turn the radioactive waste into powder and dump it over a large area of sea or desert (Sahara is HUGE)? Given a large enough area it wouldn't even be detectable.
If their goal was to create a hokey-sounding quasi-spiritual ward that future generations will consider naive and ignore, they've certainly hit the nail on the head.<p>Probably a better approach is to accept the fact that nuclear waste will either be cleaned up or destroy humanity long before ten thousand years comes to pass, and spend the money they spent on this exercise in speculative fiction instead on working toward a real solution.
See also Into Eternity, a movie about how the Finns are dealing with this, with a 100,000 year timeframe.<p><a href="http://www.intoeternitythemovie.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.intoeternitythemovie.com/</a>
I worry an elaborate structure will attract unwanted attention. Think about it - would you be interested in visiting it? Aren't you already interested? Why would future-people be any different. I know, the average shmoe would hear about this thing in the desert and think "Whatever" and go back to eating cheetohs and screwing. But what about an architect? A philosopher? An engineer? A historian? An artist? Pretty much any intellectual would be fascinated.<p>It could become the 'intellectual' version of a 'predator trap'. Like the LaBrea Tar Pits attracted more apex predators than most any other ancient formation (because of all the grazers trapped and dying, predators were captured in greater numbers than anywhere else in the fossile record).<p>Its almost a mechanism for ensuring that Idiocracy comes to pass - a trap that kills or reproductively damages smart/curious people only, draining the gene pool and leaving an ever-duller population of humans stuck in some post-apocalyptic dark age with no hope of getting themselves out.<p>So yeah I'm against it.
Use the heat of the waste's radioactivity to power infrasonic emitters, and induce horror and panic in anyone who comes close. Or maybe set it up so that the wind creates infrasonic vibrations. You'd stand a very good chance of convincing people that the place is literally haunted.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrasound#Human_reactions" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrasound#Human_reactions</a>
While I appreciate the effort they put into it, trying to plan <i>anything</i> for 10,000 years in the future is sheer folly. We have no idea what humanity will be like in 200 years, much less 10,000.<p>Assuming we are around at all, we'll likely have mastered fusion power (thus no longer creating nuclear waste) or have mastered space flight (thus we can chuck it into the Sun) or have discovered that concentrations of radioactive materials are incredibly useful and not waste at all. A few hundred years ago crude petroleum was a waste product as well.
I would have thought that to an advanced civilization that a nuclear radioactive waste dump may well be of value.<p>I do think worrying about radioactive waste given how much carbon dioxide we have dumped into the atmosphere is a bit like bandaging a stubbed toe on an amputated leg.
What I don't get is why nobody ever thinks about the international relations angle.<p>Say there is a biological weapons attack and humanity is wiped out aside from some remote communities like Alert, Canada. Some tech survives like gears, but obviously computers go away for a while. In 3000 years people are aware that humanity was once great, but then destroyed itself with hubris. They may even have a fairly developed understanding of science based on what they could save (university text books would _certainly_ be hoarded and copied 10 years after the bio-attack).<p>Now the society enters an age that is kinda like a more advanced renaissance. No more easy coal or oil, so they use electricity from wind turbines.<p>What happens when they figure out what is at that site? They weaponize it. It's so obvious to me. If we want to stop people from getting killed by it we should hide it as best as possible. Or make it as hard as obtaining enriched uranium. Humans have always had a "Do whatever it takes" approach to war and there is no way a emanating death object is going to be avoided once they understand what it does.
These parts stood out to me:<p>"We decided against simple "Keep Out" messages with scary faces. Museums and private collections abound with such guardian figures removed from burial sites. These earlier warning messages did not work because the intruder knew that the burial goods were valuable. We did decide to include faces portraying horror and sickness (see Sections 3.3 and 4.5.1). Such faces would relate to the potential intruder wishing to protect himself or herself, rather than to protect a valued resource from thievery."<p>"We must inform potential intruders what lies below and the consequences of disturbing the waste. If they decide that the value of the metal component of the waste far outweighs the risks of recovering the metal, the decision is their responsibility, not ours."<p>Interesting how much stock they put in both the rationality and irrationality of any future individuals. Appeal to their emotional side and appeal to their logical side.
Interesting. I know that the idea of launching radioactive waste into the sun or out of the solar system is highly criticized for the potential for things to go wrong (and rightly so), but do the critics really think that the earth -- with humans on it -- will be more reliable in 10,000 years than space flight even 100 years from now?
This team should collaborate with the makers of the Clock of the Long Now (<a href="http://longnow.org/clock/" rel="nofollow">http://longnow.org/clock/</a>), another device intended to last thousands of years. There is a discussion of their research into various methods pursued by different cultures over the centuries to pursue similar goals, see video here:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nphxoUxSvgY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nphxoUxSvgY</a>
Recent documentary by Peter Galison and Rob Moss:<p><a href="http://containmentmovie.com/" rel="nofollow">http://containmentmovie.com/</a>
It appears that most of the images are missing (there are figures that are refereed to but do not exist). Is there a complete copy somewhere?<p>edit: found a mirror <a href="http://prod.sandia.gov/techlib/access-control.cgi/1992/921382.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://prod.sandia.gov/techlib/access-control.cgi/1992/92138...</a>
It seems like one of the problem is that the place <i>"is not a place of honor"</i>.<p>In modern civilization memorials and/or historically significant places are continuously safeguarded and most importantly remembered.<p>Yes they can be targets of attacks but they get rebuilt. That is their significance is <i>remembered</i> and <i>protected</i>. It seems like a bad idea to make a dangerous place forgettable.<p>So instead of hiding I propose a solution might be an extremely conspicuous stone like edifice built on top of the land with information about what is underneath etched in stone (I am assuming the land above is tolerable). Maybe even make it look nice so you know it gets protected. It could even become a cultural landmark.
Funny stuff. A product of the narrative of the day, and in less that 30 years its already changed. Of course there will be no nuclear waste in the future, that stuff is way to valuable as fuel in modern reactors.
Full report at [0] (PDF, 351 pages). According to the WIPP Wikipedia page [1] the final report is expected around 2028.<p>[0] <a href="http://prod.sandia.gov/techlib/access-control.cgi/1992/921382.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://prod.sandia.gov/techlib/access-control.cgi/1992/92138...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant</a>
I feel that all warning are doomed. If we discovered some ancient site (let alone ancient alien site), each marking would prompt us to dig further and explore more.<p>No warning works (even if an explicit one), when met with a curious being. See: Eve and the Tree of Knowledge (from Genesis) or Pandora and her box.<p>And when the beings are not curious, it is unlikely that they would develop technology, or be tempted to new, alien places.
One clear problem with using A.D. (anno Domini) as measure for time elapsed, is that in 10,000 years Domini will no doubt be taken to mean either Bender Rodriguez or Donald Trump.
Seems like overkill. What's a few poisoned people in 12,000 years? I imagine that people dying around the site will be the most effective ward to keep others away.
Is there any kind of science fiction or fantasy that includes such a place marked with repulsive myths and symbolism to repel explorers from nuklear waste?
People 5000 years from now could very well see WIPP and Yucca Mountain as valuable sources of Plutonium, Uranium as well as other fuels and nuclear explosives.<p>What if 5000 years from now the Mormons and the Scientologists are fighting over the Yucca Mountain site in search of materials to build nuclear weapons?
The only way in which something like this will be useful is if, for some reason, civilisation collapses but humans survive. (If humans don't survive then 10,000 years is far too soon to worry about another intelligent species arising.)<p>If that happens, some major catastrophe has undoubtedly already occurred which makes the possible death of a bunch of future-cavemen who happen to start digging in the wrong patch of desert pale in comparison.<p>If we're <i>really</i> worried about this scenario we should worry less about marking specific sites, and more about trying to come up with a way to store all our existing scientific and cultural knowledge in a non-perishable manner, in many places, that can be dug up and hopefully eventually decoded by people of the future. Purely from an avoid-human-suffering point of view, telling people "don't dig here" isn't nearly as valuable as telling them about infectious diseases, and vaccination, and...
> Put into words, it would communicate something like the following<p>That initial text was not intended to be written, but communicated through the design of the message system. Interesting.<p>I expected more skulls and crossbones.
It's a fascinating problem, a way to communicate the concept that this is not a treasure trove, not a historical site, but something dangerous that was meant to be sealed away for many thousands of years due to its hazardous nature. The parting thoughts seem most telling to me thought.<p>They wonder if this really worth it, since in the end coming into contact with the waste is a bit of a self-limiting problem, in that people exploring will become sick and die. It will ergo, become a "Place to avoid" anyway. If the cost is bound to be a few explorer's lives every few millennia in any case, and that's what will send the real message, then... well... you see?<p>Finally though, they just wonder how to construct something massive, durable, and yet not likely to be cannibalized for parts or scrap! They even raise the issue of what 400+ generations of unknowable humanity might do to the marker structure, without disturbing the rest of the site.
It is very optimistic of them to presume that there will be any kind of civilization here in ten thousand years. By then. either humanity moves to the stars, or moves back to fighting with sticks and stones.
Sad that even in 1993 the government was still producing documents on a typewriter with shitty, photocopied black-and-white line art. Photoshop had already been available for three years at this point.