Can We Afford It?

Faced with the spectre of the Global Climate Crisis, the world's nuclear power lobby if feeling empowered. The push is on to promote nuclear energy generation as an environmentally friendly / 'non-polluting' alternative to bad global Karma from athmospheric carbon emissions.

In its September 9th, 2006 Issue (p 44), the New Scientist cites linguistic difficulties with nuclear power. 400 generations ago artists painted the walls of a cave with handprints. We still don't know why. We estimate that the pyramids of Egypt were built some 4 thousand years ago. Our curiousity drives us to dig into them, under them, through them, and in Napoleon's case, ah, blast it; blast through them. And had we not found the Roseta stone, we might still be looking at them sideways, trying to decyper those hyeroglypics. Or take the Bible - a more recent scripture? Well - interpretations as to its meaning...well, vary.

So imagine trying to be understood 250 thousand years fom now - 50 times as long from today as the dawn of civilization was ago...ten thousand generations from today - and try to come up with a material and a message that conveys the idea: DANGER - DON'T DIG HERE. Think multi cultural. Think big. Think forever.

So, let's suspend belief for a moment and imagine a world where underground water can not, (counterintuitively) flow upstream (yes, strange but true), and where radioactive waste containers do not leak, and where salt mines do not drip, nor salty water corrode, and if vitrification were forever, and if tectonic shift were a just a far flung hypothesis and if earthquakes did not exist: and if we were to survive all the horror and insanity we fetter ourselves with, and if we came out of this dark age healthy, wealthy and wise, and our children's children many more than seven generations from now are still blessed with intellect and curiousity: can you imagine how we could guarantee that our descendants wouldn't get curious one day, and DIG?

250,000 years is how long nuclear reactor waste is calculated to remain 'hot' before it's cool enough to be 'safe'. It's a long time to keep it safely hidden from Diggers.