"Beneath this concrete dome on Runit Island (part of Enewetak Atoll), built between 1977 and 1980 at a cost of about $239 million, lie 111,000 cubic yards (84,927 cubic meters) of radioactive soil and debris from Bikini and Rongelap atolls. The dome covers the 30-foot (9 meter) deep, 350-foot (107 meter) wide crater created by the May 5, 1958, Cactus test. Note the people atop the dome." The Brookings Institution. via pruned
After the nuclear testing is over the dilemma arises on how to clean up any highly toxic radioactive leftovers. In a large scale equivalent of brushing things under the carpet, contaminated soil has been filled into a crater conventiently created by another nuclear test, before slapping a giant concrete lid on top.
The US Department of Energy aims to successfully clean all sites presently contaminated by "millions of gallons of radioactive waste", "thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel and material" and "huge quantities of contaminated soil and water" by 2025. The United States has at least 108 sites designated as areas that are contaminated and unusable.
On the problematics of radioactive waste, logistic and otherwise.
image: Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the Department of Energy´s underground nuclear storage facility.
source: United States Department of Energy, screenshot.
"Ten thousand years from now, the last remaining momument of the U.S. military-industrial complex could well be the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant." article in WIRED magazine
image: SPIKE FIELD, a forest of menancing concrete spikes.
Proposal for sculpture on contaminated site.
Concept by Michael Brill, art by Safdar Abidi.
source: screenshot WIREDarticle
The longterm toxicity of radioactively contaminated material raises the strange moral issue on how to communicate the danger of contaminated sites to future generations that may have developed a different understanding of how to interpret a warning visual.
The planners of today have to imagine tactics to create a deterring genius loci for these modern cult sites of invisible danger and dread to keep the location and its physical contents taboo for the next thousands of years, resulting in the conceptualisation of markers and perimeter monuments and the development of an elaborate warning system by a conclave of scientists, linguists, anthropologists and sci-fi thinkers assembled by the US Department of Energy.
article in WIREDmagazine.
Approximate locations of information centers or large monuments (4 large circles) and perimeter monuments (small black circles) around the surface boundaries of the repository area. The smaller round circles with radiation symbols indicate the general locations of additional ground markers.
See also "The Monumental Task of Warning Future Generations"
See also article by Ulrich Beck in The Guardian " All aboard the nuclear power superjet. Just don't ask about the landing strip"- quote: "Climate change and the oil crisis are being used to project atomic energy as a green panacea. In fact it is a reckless gamble".
