This Place is Not a Place of Honor
This Place is Not a Place of Honor
An exploration into the biggest challenge to the proposed Yucca Nuclear Waste Repository: Warning future beings against treating it as an Indiana Jones film set.
I LOATHE this whole concept, because it's just so stupid in SO many different ways. I'll just pick 3 of them, based on how we manage other hazardous waste, and basic human history.
1 - we've got chemical waste sites that will stay dangerous FOREVER. not for 10.000 years, but until the end of time, which are far more dangerous than nuclear waste. Mercury compounds, pesticides, stuff like per- and trichloroethane, and numerous volatile compounds that's we've disposed of. We put them in managed sites, and the way we make sure they stay safe is to monitor them forever. There are orders of magnitude more chemical waste, that is orders of magnitude more dangerous, and nobody really cares about it because there is a working solution. But for nuclear waste, suddenly we require some kind of magical super-site where we can just drop it and walk away. WHY?
1b. - Let me also point out that much of what we previously considered dangerous waste is now a valuable resource. Cokes are now great ballast and filler materials, fly-ash is used in concrete and the places where we buried it were suddently worth millions, polluted soil makes for great aggregate in concrete, etc. etc. etc. We ALREADY know that spent nuclear fuel is still very useful as new fuel, so preparing to put it away forever is just stupid. We will absolutely be digging it back up in a before this facility has even spent 5% of its designed lifetime.
2 - This site is useful in only a single use case. Sometimes between now and when it's "safe", humanity has an enormous catastrophe before we figure out a way to make it economically and politically viable to re-use the nuclear waste as more fuel, which causes us to forget everything we know this place, science and written language. This would likely means billions would have died. Then, after we recolonize this locations, we supremely care about a few dozen more deaths of some hypothetical future humans, who are far more likely to die from exposure, malnutrition, disease, hungry wolves, etc etc. Unless these specific events happen in this order, it's just a useless art project discussed by people who are wasting huge amount of time, effort and money. If you want to save future humans, there are so, SO many more useful ways to spend your money.
3 - Humans aren't fucking morons (well, individuals are, but as a species there's a reason there's so many of us) We've always understand where it's dangerous to live, what's dangerous to eat, what things are more likely to kill you than other things. Post-apocalyptic, non-technological humans will figure out very quickly that they shouldn't scoot up to the glowy warm metal. Non-post-apocalyptic humans will know what this place is, because they're not fucking idiots.
I'm not an expert on this topic, and the following is my impression from the information I've seen.
1&3: A nuclear repository needs to be sealed to prevent radiation. A chemical landfill does not. People can see the waste inside landfills from afar and realize that it's nothing of value. Meanwhile, nuclear repositories will have their waste far far away from what people can see. Future beings will not see the glowy warm metal quickly, and just breaking the concrete to see it will cause significant disruption.
1b: There are parts of spent fuel that are completely spent and unreusable; in fact, reprocessed uranium costs way more than just dumping the spent fuel and buying new uranium.
2: You are assuming that the future beings will only discover and somehow manage to breach the place before recivilizing. If such an apocalypse occurs, there 78% will be a point in time where they at least reach 19th-century levels of technology. Even if they didn't, having the place breached before the future figures out how to seal radioactive things/use concrete will choke out their development and despair us all for eternity until evolution manages to make a resistant species, which will take a long time.
1&3: A nuclear repository needs to be sealed to prevent radiation. A chemical landfill does not. People can see the waste inside landfills from afar and realize that it's nothing of value.
I work in waste management, and every closed surface impoundment I see reminds me of an ancient burial mound. But my point is more that while our civilization is around, we need to manage those sites, so we will also be able to manage a nuclear site. This post-apocalypse site is useless while our civilization exists.
1b: There are parts of spent fuel that are completely spent and unreusable; in fact, reprocessed uranium costs way more than just dumping the spent fuel and buying new uranium.
True, now. Which is I said we'd need to find an economicslly viable method, but assuming we will never is unlikely.
2: You are assuming that the future beings will only discover and somehow manage to breach the place before recivilizing.
Absolutely not. Even prehistoric humans figured out not to live near the malaria pond, not to eat the wrong berries and which parts of the animal make you drop dead. And if they maintain civilization, all the warnings are useless anyway.
The essence of the message itself is simple: Warning, dangerous materials are buried below.
The warnings will be heeded about as much as the curses in ancient Egyptian tombs were.
Still others advised against erecting any warning monuments at all, worrying that the markers themselves— if not properly interpreted— may rouse the curiosity of their discoverers enough that they might explore further, to disastrous ends.
The best idea, IMO.
The solution is ray cats, I tell ya. If the kitty's glowin' you better be goin'.
The 99% Invisible podcast did an interesting episode on this topic, too.