Future Generations Need to Know Our Nuclear Waste Is Deadly. How Can We Tell Them?

Nuclear waste can be harmful for tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years. How can people today even imagine what society will be like over those types of time periods? And more importantly, how can we make sure that future generations don’t forget nuclear waste’s dangers, and start digging around in the waste sites we are setting aside today?

In “Containment,” a film that airs today on PBS’s Independent Lens, scientists and thinkers show just how hard it is to plan for an unknown future. In this clip, get a look inside the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant outside Carlsbad, New Mexico, a site that just began accepting nuclear waste this month for the first time in three years.

[gergokun]

Imagine finding a triangle shaped ancient monument, closed from every side, on the inside there are multiple layers of closed stone doors and drawings and writings all over the walls about curses and danger, i am sure people wouldnt go in.

[pollastreperdinar]

The harder the dungeon, the better the loot.

[maxwellvindman]

Lets make the coolest looking shit ever, that will stop kids from going there

[frankjones]

"Here lies our sins, do not disturb it for we may be reborn in the consuming fire for we are man and if it is awaken we pass our sins onto you"

[jollyroman]

Jokes aside this video itself is terrifying. The way there is no music, the way the people deliver their lines, talking about potential death and destruction. all very eerie to me

[marcustrevor]

They should build them anyway as an art project. They look insane

[ghostqueen]

that's like asking a modern human to identify the ancient Egyptian Heiroglyphs for death or poison...

[ls]

They're probably gonna think it's a religious site

[TheStroy]

They should rename the site "Death". And refer it only by this name. If people will call it that - as long as name get kept (even translated) - people will know - it's death.

[Kabutoes]

There’s a book that does something like this called “At the Mountains of Madness” where scientists who went there and come back warn others not to go further into Antarctica, where the ruins of ancient aliens lie millions of years ago, for there was a reason they were wiped out in the first place.

[mrbrightsidetf]

The fact that we need something like this in the first place is terrifying on itself.

[MarkoDeLaVoota]

the markers will be an invitation, this is in human nature to dig in unusual places !
Oh Irony....

[sambarrett]

The ancient Egyptians probably never thought that people with smartphones would be taking bodies out of the pyramids. How could we possibly know what will stop people in thousands of years from doing the same with these sites?

[jtn]

kind of makes you wonder what's below our feet right now

[Lokitai_reggae]

And opening up the Kings and Queens tomb in the Pyramids is a great idea.

[peternewson]

"We can't stop there from being a ten thousand years from now" we're working on it. The nuclear warheads that created a lot of that waste almost did.

[Lee_]

I agree with the don't do anything solution. Bury the entrance with Earth (i'm talking an artificial hillock) and let nature and time cover it and the surrounding area with vegetation, leaving the whole area completely unremarkable. Finding it would require advanced technology, and any future people 's possessing such technology, would also be relevantly intelligent enough to be cautious in the highly unlikely event, (if done properly) it was discovered. Any other solution is just an open invitation to basic human curiosity, and ultimately a waste of time.

[michaeljoefish]

Isn’t our nuclear waste some of the most secured shit in the planet? Like, it’s literally safer to stand next to a nuclear waste container than it is to take a cross country flight.

[Backyardmech]

I did some groundwater monitoring and sampling on a superfund site that did tin smelting during the height of WW2. One of the areas of the site was an in ground “vault” that had over 230k pounds of depleted uranium. The area was chained off, had the signage, and in the center a marble obelisk with what I had mentioned. As for long term remediation plans they had eucalyptus trees planted down gradient from the site to soak everything up and look nice. Thankfully from what I was told I was safe from anything as long as I didn’t drink a gallon of the groundwater, or play in it, but the Gatorade blue water just said there was an issue.

[lmlmd]

I've looked at the papers published with the suggestions, and they all invite human curiosity. "forbidding" architecture and warnings don't deter people, they only spur them on to believe the site has something worth protecting, which must mean it's something worth *taking*.

Rather than elaborate structures, the best thing is to make the area as unpromising as possible. Back fill everything with junk concrete, plough salt, and granite and concrete rubble into the soil to make it impossible to farm, and plant it densely with thorny, salt and drought loving vegetation of no value. Demolish and erase all surface level structures but leave the level II message discs scattered in the soil as a warning.

Make them bi-lingual, one language on one side, a second one on the other, out of low value stamped ceramic tile (or tough, non degrading plastic). Something non-cryptic but understandable to a non scientifically knowledgeable culture. One of the languages on each disc should be English or Spanish, as the two most widely spoken languages, with the other being another UN language or Navajo.

"DANGER. POISONED GROUND. SICK. UNHEALTHY. DON'T SETTLE HERE" with the trefoil and biohazard signs, and some clear sign of sickness (not death, which will be seen as a curse, threat or challenge)

Don't tell people not to dig but that will be begging them to do exactly that. Settling/living and warning of *unhealthiness*, malaise, or *sickliness* rather than "energy" or specifying an object of power, conveys a more general fear of malaise and sickness with absolutely no implication of something potentially of value.