Finland's nuclear waste bunker built to last 100,000 years

Finland's nuclear waste bunker built to last 100,000 years

www.cnn.com

"How are we going to stop people getting in there at a point at which all knowledge will have been lost?"

What debate there is centers around whether it is better that Onkalo is remembered -- and all is done to ensure the memory of the danger buried there is passed on, right down to constructing hieroglyphic monoliths to speak pictorially to a time when all current languages are long dead.

(visit the link for the full news article)

After reading this story, I started to wonder if that is what some of the hieroglyphics we have found through the centuries have been. Not so much a "history lesson" but a warning. i.e. Do not dig here, for you will unleash the.......
This helps me, albeit a new, and possibly flawed idea, understand "The Great Awakening", and the Industrial Revolution. I am going to do some research on what archaeological finds were going on in and around that time frame.
And another item of thought raised, which I haven't gone looking for the answers, nor had any thought to do so, is....Where is our toxic waste being buried?
Do we have 100,000 year burial chambers for our toxic waste? Could that partially describe all the unexplained "booms"? Are they tunneling for toxic waste disposal, instead of bunkers?

What are your thoughts?




www.cnn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by recycled


A central repository underneath Yucca Mountain in the Nevada about 80 miles from Las Vegas. At least that's where I think it's going. There has been some debate over this in Washington over if it should go there or continue to go there or be brought to another place somewhere else or something like that I don't know. I saw this on a program testing the shipping containers they use to transport all this stuff right under all our noses. Kind of makes me look twice at trucks going down the interstate now.

So now everybody is building nuclear bunkers? It's a good thing that we have all the underground military bases here in the US. Now if only they would let civilians in if needed.

reply to post by coyotepoet


It's not really a bunker. It's a big hole to dump nuclear waste into.

Cool article by the way!

i think that you just might be correct.
But then again i also think that humans came before the dinosaurs and just had a nuclear war a long time ago.
Also we have a deep mining operation by my house and they unearthed a nuclear rod that was not ever recorded being there.

I suppose it is quite a challenge to build something you hope will last 100,000 years. I can't imagine the stress that would put upon a person. If I am not mistaken, we are working with materials of which we have a very limited lifespan knowledge of in the first place.
Wouldn't it be a lot of bury and hope going on?

reply to post by recycled


I read an article in Omni magazine back in the 80s on this topic....

They were theoretically discussing this very topic of how some day in the FUTURE we would have to do this and how would we put in place something that

A. Last for thousands of years without a catastrophic failure of contamination.

AND

B. How to warn future beings of the danger that we chose to bury and not deal with what we had created.

reply to post by SLAYER69


Do you feel this theory of leaving behind hieroglyphics in case of lost language in the future, somehow change the way we look at hieroglyphics from the past?

reply to post by recycled


I'm not sure ancient hieroglyphs can be compared to these as the ancient ones don't seem (to me) to be written with people in the future reading them in mind, they are extremely cryptic and specific to that culture at that particular time.

I guess the Egyptians could have meant them to have meaning in the future but didn't anticipate that their interpretation of those symbols wasn't going to have any meaning by then

reply to post by recycled


I dunno. Let's try moving the Great pyramid. Something could be buried under it. OH wait there are no hieroglyphs in the great pyramid just some insignificant Graffiti indicating Khufu....

reply to post by recycled


I am an architect but definitely no expert in this type of construction but I believe the premise for lasting 100,000 years is that they don't build it to hold up, construction wise, for 100,000 years, but build it for containment for 100,000 years. They only need the 'bunker' to remain intact until it is full then sealed off. The location itself serves as a natural barrier to those in danger if and when the structure fails either by distance underground, granite above around the enclosure, etc.
What bothers me is that the world is dynamic, things move and change all the time. They are now finding structures all over the world in places up to 1/2 a mile under water which couldn't of possibly been built before the last ice age ended 13,000-15,000 years ago. My point is there is no way of knowing what changes may occur later on 5,000 even 10,000 years or more from now that may put this place in jeopardy of contaminating vast areas. Hopefully the architects and engineers insurance will still be in effect at those times.

Originally posted by AnteBellum
reply to post by recycled

 

I am an architect but definitely no expert in this type of construction but I believe the premise for lasting 100,000 years is that they don't build it to hold up, construction wise, for 100,000 years, but build it for containment for 100,000 years. They only need the 'bunker' to remain intact until it is full then sealed off. The location itself serves as a natural barrier to those in danger if and when the structure fails either by distance underground, granite above around the enclosure, etc.
What bothers me is that the world is dynamic, things move and change all the time. They are now finding structures all over the world in places up to 1/2 a mile under water which couldn't of possibly been built before the last ice age ended 13,000-15,000 years ago. My point is there is no way of knowing what changes may occur later on 5,000 even 10,000 years or more from now that may put this place in jeopardy of contaminating vast areas. Hopefully the architects and engineers insurance will still be in effect at those times.

edit on 11/12/2010 by AnteBellum because: (no reason given)

You raise some very valid points AnteBellum.

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I thought I would embed the trailer of the documentary mentioned in the article.

Into Eternity

reply to post by AnteBellum


Finland is a very stable region when you look at teutonic plate activity. What is most likely to happen is that the area will be under ice in the next ice age and that's when the knowledge of it could be in danger. Also the system is supposed to work in such a manner that even if it collapses it won't leak out like someone pointed out earlier.

Warranty Returns

You know, the people at Posiva are going to be awfully embarrassed if this thing leaks 90,000 years from now.

Well it's not like an apartment complex or anything, I mean future generations could be completely eliminated, by which numbers I do not know, if this were to ever leak or be otherwise compromised. Regardless of whether or not a region is/was stable for the last 1000+ years has nothing to do with it's future stability right?
If you were in charge of this "mission" what might you do to warn future generations? Assuming language is lost, how would you convey danger to generations 2,000+ years from now?

Pictorials I guess would be the only way to do that. Even if in the future the area would become unstable this would still be a secure storage. It's 420 meters down and sealed. An earthquake wouldn't make it leak and even if something were to bring it up to surface it would be something so devastating that it would kill everything within thousands of kilometers anyway. Like a direct meteor hit. If it were to dig so deep down it would kill the whole planet anyway.

reply to post by PsykoOps


How in the world can you seriously be saying that the vault is going to be safe? God-damn, open your eyes man!

Check out some new findings about olkiluoto's bedrock, then you can see things differently. It's just stupid to think that the vault could last more than a couple thousand years. Arrogant, may i say.

I guess you don't have any kids. It makes a difference.

and btw, d700 rocks.

I hope they take care of it Although, it seems, Finland is in a seismically inactive region. In general, an earthquake, a priori, makes any nuclear facility in potentially dangerous - as it is buried, not buried

reply to post by marjastaja


Can you link to something about the bedrock? I haven't heard anything to that effect. Also D700 would rock. Unfortunately I'm stuck with the D200