nyerm

I’d heard about the efforts of experts to develop markings that would keep people out of radioactive waste disposal sites for the 10,000 years that they will remain dangerous, but until now, I hadn’t read any of the experts’ findings. Excerpts from ‘Expert Judgement on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant’ is fascinating reading, showing the thinking of some very bright people, from a variety of disciplines, on how to prevent future generations from digging up lethal materials at the WIPP in New Mexico, as well as similar facilities worldwide.

One of the expert panelist’s remarks about the scale of the proposed marker system are particularly eye-opening.

This panel member therefore recommends that the markers and the structures associated with them be conceived along truly gargantuan lines. To put their size into perspective, a simple berm, say 35-m wide and 15-m high, surrounding the proposed land-withdrawal boundary, would involve excavation, transport, and placement of around 12 million cubic meters of earth. What is proposed, of course, is on a much greater scale than that. By contrast, in the construction of the Panama Canal, 72.6 million cubic meters were excavated, and the Great Pyramid occupies 2.4 million cubic meters. In short, to ensure the probability of success, the WIPP marker undertaking will have to be one of the greatest public works ventures in history.

It’s no small task to create something that will continue to convey meaning to people whose culture and language will be radically different from ours. However, I can easily picture that 10,000 years from now, bioengineered, cybernetically-enhanced descendents of humanity will deliberately and safely dismantle a nuclear waste materials site for spare parts, pausing only briefly to giggle at the dire iconic warnings their ancestors plastered over the site.