Uranium disposal cells

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This is a uranium disposal cell in Green River, Utah. It's one of several dozen sites around the United States that are the burial grounds for nuclear waste. BLDBLOG posts about this form of "Perpetual Architecture" and links to a new exhibit at Los Angeles's fantastic Center for Land Use Interpretation. "They are time capsules, of sorts, designed to take their toxic contents, undisturbed, as far into the future as possible."

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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gwailo_joe

In a thousand years they’ll be using it as charcoal…
EH

Did They (universal “they”) ever finish that contest for a hazard marker design?
Boundegar

Well, let’s just hope it works!
Angryjim

Let’s just shoot that stuff at the sun or something. that’ll get rid of it for good. I’m sure there are numerous flaws with my plan.
- Josiah White
  
  You haven’t even seen Superman IV, have you?
- zarray
  
  Do you remember when the Columbia shuttle exploded and the were finding chunks of it all over?
Ashley Yakeley

Couldn’t it be reprocessed in a breeder reactor, some day?
- Charlie B
  
  If you want to make it even more hazardous, and continue to pump cash into an obsolete industry with demonstrated anti-humanist political leanings, then sure!
  - Ashley Yakeley
    
    How does reprocessing nuclear fuel make it more hazardous?
    - zarray
      
      It think because it makes more things that need to be decontaminated.
      - Ashley Yakeley
        
        Does it?
http://twitter.com/erg79 Evan G.

CLUI FTW!
liquidstar

This is the most profound thing ever to come out of ‘Merica. and completely symbolic.
noah django

my biggest problem with nuclear power is, of course, waste disposal. just because our best and brightest designed this facility doesn’t mean much considering the half-life of the nuclear waste is a longer span of time than the whole of human history. and how many civilizations have lasted that long? how many languages have lasted that long? in a millenium, those rocks will still be hot, but our government will be long gone and all our records and signage–assuming they survive, which I don’t–will need the equivalent of a Rosetta stone to be understood. we might as well be burying our heads in that sand along with all the uranium.
http://twitter.com/McGrude Michael Hogsett

What I don’t understand is why we don’t attempt to bury nuclear waste deep in a tectonic plate subduction zone. It seems that it would be absorbed into the mantle faster than the half life of some of the waste. Isn’t a subduction zone the ultimate recycling center?
- Purplecat
  
  It’s an idea, and people have considered this, but the main problem with it is this: How can you be sure that it’s buried deep enough so that it’s in a part of the subducting plate that doesn’t get scraped off to form the accretion prism. The world’s deepest mine workings are only 3 and a bit kilometres down.
Gary61

“Whoa, Clem, look at the size of this fish I caught – damn, it’s talking to me!”
Jake0748

Holy Crap! It’s right next to the interstate. WTF?
- jackbird
  
  There’s a structure just like that somewhere in Utah (could be that one) right next to a gas station. During a stop inthe early nineties, my brother and I poked around the facility that must have handled the receiving (complete with huge tunnel blocked with huge reinforced concrete). I snagged a really neat metal sign about what the different audible alarms meant (“Buzzer – disaster alarm”).
- zarray
  
  Sadly that’s not even one of the deadliest things out here; if you were to just wander around there’s a good chance you would stumble into an abandoned mine.
http://twitter.com/WpgCameraMan Rock Hardwood

3,000 years from now, future Man will think we buried kings or tribal leaders in those things. Quite the surprise when they go digging in there.
Just_Ok

Turn it into a Motel 238: We’ll leave the light on for ya.
- kringlebertfistyebuns
  
  Forever.
Øyvind

There is avery good (if somewhat pretentious) Danish documentary on the hows and whys of long time storage of nuclear waste. I especially found the problems of creating iconography and/or language that would last over millennia fascinating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_Eternity_%28film%29
Jiggs Bryan

http://forgottennavajopeople.org/blog/

and this

http://forgottennavajopeople.org/blog/tag/environmental-justice/