The waste isolation pilot plant the intermediate level repository dug into the salt beds of new mexico is intended to receive 800 000 55 gallon soft steel drums of military origin trans uranium waste holding among other substances the radioactive shavings from u s. Department of energy has been grappling with that problem recently as they designed the warning markers to use at yucca mountain and at the waste isolation pilot plant wipp nuclear waste storage facilities. The academics dismiss out of hand a keep out sign a woefully lacking solution since nuclear waste will remain dangerous much much longer than such a message would remain intelligible.
In the roughly 70 years since humans first split the atom we have accumulated between 250 000 and 300 000 tonnes of high level nuclear waste that will remain radioactive for at least 100 000 years. By tim maly 3457 words. A message to the future.
It also would save 1 million tons of carbon emissions over a diesel generator and can turn nuclear waste into clean energy. This sleek building is actually a nuclear reactor. A 1993 report from sandia national laboratories recommended that any such message should.
Nuclear semiotics is an interdisciplinary field of research first done by the human interference task force in 1981. Long time nuclear waste warning messages are intended to deter human intrusion at nuclear waste repositories in the far future within or above the order of magnitude of 10 000 years.
