Nuclear waste that stays radioactive for ten thousand years has an interesting design problem: how do you create a warning that people will understand after that much time has passed? A committee was created to study this problem, and one of the outcomes was formulating what message should be communicated. The above is that message.
The next step is figuring how to communicate that message in a language-agnostic and culture-agonistic medium.
1. We have one group of people looking to how to protect the people of the far distant future from a localized, deadly problem
2. Society, as a whole, seems against even caring if people 50 years from now have a habitable plant.
I believe that future will come long before warnings in today's languages become unintelligible.
If there's some kind of apocalypse where science gets a hard reset, then sealed up nuclear waste is probably very low on the list of realistic and dangerous threats.
Optimistic. My turn: The future will bring technology to make spiders talk to cats. Prove me wrong!
> If there's some kind of apocalypse where science gets a hard reset, then sealed up nuclear waste is probably very low on the list of realistic and dangerous threats.
Nuclear waste might be relatively low in the immediate time frame after a science-resetting apocalypse, but the societies emerging afterwards will probably appreciate having a warning before they build their new settlements and water wells on a nuclear waste site. Especially if that nominally sealed site seeps out radioactive sludge due to critical containment failure only long after the settlement was established.
97% of the energy in nuclear fuel is currently wasted.
It implies danger of another human, who is likely now dead.
Robbers, raiders, and treasure hunters would still go in.