{"id":4735,"date":"2003-11-06T14:01:15","date_gmt":"2003-11-06T22:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/blog\/2003\/11\/06\/4735\/"},"modified":"2003-11-06T14:01:15","modified_gmt":"2003-11-06T22:01:15","slug":"speaking-to-the-future-nuclear-waste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/?p=4735","title":{"rendered":"Speaking to the Future; Nuclear Waste"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.longnow.org\/\">Long Now Foundation<\/a> creates things that will last &#8220;forever&#8221;- clocks, libraries&#8230; the exercise is fascinating.  The purpose statement on their site is great reading by itself; they also have a book, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0465007805\/ghosthouse01-20\/\">The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility: The Ideas Behind the World&#8217;s Slowest Computer<\/a>&#8220;<\/p>\n<p \/>\nTheir <a href=\"http:\/\/www.longnow.org\/10kclock\/clock.htm\">Clock of the Long Now<\/a> is designed to tell accurate time for 25,000 years.  How would that be possible?  The issues involved are staggering.  The clock is designed to withstand corrosion and can be re-set using the sun and no knowledge of written language or tools.  The clock has been designed to withstand the fall of civilization; it can be fixed with bronze-age tools.<\/p>\n<p \/>\nNo less ambitious is the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rosettaproject.org\">Rosetta Project<\/a> (part of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.longnow.org\/10klibrary\/libIdeas.htm\">Library<\/a> project), a series of spherical artifacts intended to make the task of translating all our written languages easer for archaeologists 10,000 years into the future.  Making historical artifacts for the future.<\/p>\n<p \/>\n<p>A real-life application of this same thought exercise:  the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wipp.carlsbad.nm.us\/\">WIPP<\/a>, a giant underground repository for nuclear waste.  It will be radioactive for the next 25,000 years.  How do you warn future generations away from the site?  They won&#8217;t speak English, they will not have computers, they may not even read.  <\/p>\n<p \/>\n<p>Fortunately there was a panel studying just this question, and it may be read in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sandia.gov\/\">Sandia Laboratory<\/a>&#8216;s publication, <u>Expert Judgment on Inadvertant Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant<\/u>, 1993.  I love reading this thing; I should just get a copy somehow.  My favorite part is the designs for a purposely inhospitable architecture that will last 20,000 years, and also the 3 panel &#8220;See Dick Die&#8221; cartoon.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Here&#8217;s an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/AnS\/Anthro\/Anth101\/wipp.html\">excerpt<\/a> from that paper<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/archive.abcnews.go.com\/sections\/us\/yuccasigns723\/\">ABC news article<\/a> about WIPP<\/li>\n<li>An <a href=\"http:\/\/www.physics.uci.edu\/~silverma\/benford.html\">excerpt<\/a> from DEEP TIME<\/a> by Gregory Benford (Harper-Collins, 2000) called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.physics.uci.edu\/~silverma\/benford.html\">Ten Thousand Years of Solitude<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><i>The Clock of the Long Now is designed to tell accurate time for 25,000 years.  The clock has been designed to withstand the fall of civilization; it can be fixed with bronze-age tools.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Long Now Foundation creates things that will last &#8220;forever&#8221;- clocks, libraries&#8230; the exercise is fascinating. The purpose statement on their site is great reading by itself; they also have a book, &#8220;The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility: The Ideas Behind the World&#8217;s Slowest Computer&#8220; Their Clock of the Long Now is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-looky"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4735\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}