Comments on: This Place is Not a Place of Honor

By: jcochran

jcochran — Wed, 14 Dec 2022 20:21:34 +0000

How about include a small sample of the waste itself with the warning? No need to try to be clever about describing the problem. Just include a relatively small example and indicate that what’s buried is even worse.

By: Logan

Logan — Mon, 29 Aug 2022 20:38:12 +0000

Maybe if an architecturally significant building or a “beautiful” structure was constructed over the site, future peoples would be reluctant to tear it down to explore underneath. Likewise, if a wildlife refuge or national park was designated for the land over the site, perhaps there would be a decreased chance of it getting destroyed for exploration purposes. You could still have all the signage, etc. with either of these ideas. That either of these solutions would realistically keep people away from the nuclear waste is wishful thinking, I know, but I couldn’t resist sharing.

By: JarvisLoop

JarvisLoop — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 02:14:44 +0000

Over a year later, I am returned.

By: JarvisLoop

JarvisLoop — Wed, 11 Sep 2019 00:29:55 +0000

Back again – and without swear words.

By: JarvisLoop

JarvisLoop — Sun, 04 Aug 2019 02:41:30 +0000

I’m here.

By: Greenaum

Greenaum — Mon, 08 Jul 2019 02:31:12 +0000

Looks like somebody’s been practicing their Star Trek speechwriting, “This place has no honour! It is a dishonourable place! Indeed unto five generations!”

I don’t see how, when you can’t even rely on future people speaking a similar language, you think Bermanesque speechifying is going to help anybody. I turn off anything past Next Generation now, and it’s aimed at me.

Similarly putting defences round things just makes people think something really good is behind them. Indiana Jones isn’t one of the best-selling films for no reason.

You could cement in a load of skeletons, though that has only ever encouraged archaeologists. What you might have to do, is plant decreasing amounts of radioactive poison in layers around the site itself. Such that anyone who gets too close, without understanding radiation, dies from it. While they figure out what’s going on, it should keep the others at bay.

The problem is simply that people are smartarses. We’re curious. And we always assume we know more than our ancestors, which so far has been true. So if you want people to be warned of deadliness, actually killing them is the only way to show them you’re not fucking about. Invisibly using radiation. Once they figure it out, they’ll be more capable of digging there if they want to.

By: JarvisLoop

JarvisLoop — Tue, 11 Jun 2019 00:06:08 +0000

Just checking in.

By: JarvisLoop

JarvisLoop — Mon, 20 May 2019 00:54:30 +0000

I like to imagine what might have happened to Mars. Gigantic asteroid? Natural planetary death? Global Martian atomic warfare? Or just plain nuclear pollution?

By: LookieLouE1707

LookieLouE1707 — Fri, 05 Jan 2018 01:26:39 +0000

If post-apocalyptic peasants drill down into the tomb for drinking water and a few of them die mysteriously, that’s sad, but not historically significant. The real threat comes when some future warlord has his peons dig up the cache of poison to genocide the empire he’s feuding with. Then as now, it’s nuclear proliferation that’s the civilizational threat, and so to the extent that such monuments effectively convey knowledge of the material they’re covering, they only increase the danger. We have perfect knowledge of what’s at these sites now: if we left them unguarded today, what would happen? Terrorists would come along and try to steal their contents. The only viable strategy is to leave the site as obscure as possible.

By: Eclipse

Eclipse — Sun, 15 Oct 2017 11:14:47 +0000

Why try and store nuclear ‘waste’ when in fact it is only radioactive for so long because it is unused energy? The actinides in nuclear waste can be burned in breeder reactors, and indeed, some have calculated that America has enough nuclear ‘waste’ to run her for 1000 years without mining any more uranium! Just build out breeder reactors like GE’s S-PRISM reactor. It’s based on the successful EBR2 program that ran for two decades. Nuclear waste is NOT a problem! The final waste product once all the actinides are burned out are the broken atoms called fission products. These can be vitrified (melted down) into ceramic blocks and buried under the reactor park for about 300 years, and then they’re safe. Problem solved. Yucca is a waste of money and burying actinides is a crime! They’re just too useful for preventing climate change! BTW, Dr James Hansen supports the fast deployment of breeder reactors like the PRISM.