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Radioactive wastes need 12,000 years warning

Warning the future about nuclear wastes Reactor Fire November 21, 2009

Nuclear waste stays harmful for an incredibly long time; the signs at the United States’ Carlsbad disposal facility warn people not to dig or drill there until at least 12 000 AD. This leads to a considerable problem. What if the inhabitants of the 210th century don’t know how to read or speak English? They probably won’t understand what a radiation warning symbol means, either.

That makes it rather difficult to find ways to ensure that these radioactive tombs are never opened. Even if they could understand the warnings, are you sure they’d pay attention? Modern archaeologists frequently disturb the tombs of Egyptian Pharohs, despite warnings of a plethora of hideous curses…………………….. “deep geological disposal” has replaced shallow trenches as our preferred nuclear-waste-storage technique. But another, more abstract problem—raised by the Hanford message in a bottle—remains unsolved: not how to store waste but how to label it. Not what container to use or where to bury it but how to explain the long-term dangers of what’s inside to a trespasser.

This seemingly simple conundrum (just use a radiation hazard symbol!) is complicated by the fact that such a trespass would prove lethal if it took place not only in 60 years but in 10,000 or 100,000. China, the planet’s oldest continuous civilization, stretches back, at most, 5,000 years………….http://reactorfire.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/warning-the-future-about-nuclear-waste/

November 23, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, wastes | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear wastes, radioactive, wastes