Exponential production of radioactive trash – with no solution in sight
France Culture 15th June 2017 [Machine
Translation] It’s not eternity, but it’s like it. Hundreds of
millions of years. We leave a poisoned gift to a humanity of the future
of which we know nothing. Neither their language, whether they are
hordes in rags armed with cudgels or a peaceful technological
civilization in the apogee, knowing how to recycle this radioactive
waste …
It is hardly if we decipher the intentions of the civilizations Maya or Egyptian women far away from us by a few thousand years ago …
Reprocessing, vitrification, burial, so many ways to admit that we have not found any really satisfactory solution for our radioactive waste bins. Waste is produced exponentially, and we do not know what to do with it. Neither fuel rod waste nor dismantling tanks, accidentally or unintentionally contaminated water, or radioactive drums that have been thrown randomly on land and in the seas.
Not for eternity, no, but for so long a time that it is, even in thought, unimaginable. Engineers then find themselves with the responsibility of having to think about deeply anthropological issues, which clearly go beyond them.