Science Fiction or a Plan for Descendants: Nuclear Semiotics and Responsibility to Future Generations

1 thousand, 10 thousand, 100 thousand, 1 million years from now – these periods are usually associated with the plots of science fiction books or movies. However, they are not limited to fiction. We are accustomed to thinking about the future in terms of years, decades and occasionally centuries. However, there are facilities that make us thinking in terms of tens and even hundreds of thousands of years. These are radioactive waste disposal facilities.

Therefore, a number of questions arise: how to warn our descendants about danger if they may not understand our languages, symbols and even the very concept of radiation? What signs or images should be used in our messages? Why must we already think about safety hundreds of thousands of years into the future?

History of Nuclear Semiotics

Recognition of the fact that radioactive waste requires not only technical protection but also communication about the danger in future emerged among researchers at the end of the last century.

In 1981, the U.S. Department of Energy and Bechtel Corporation initiated the creation of the Human Interference Task Force (HITF). HITF purpose was to reduce the likelihood of future human intrusions into radioactive waste repositories, in particular Yucca Mountain in Nevada. HITF included not only engineers and nuclear physicists, but also anthropologists, linguists, psychologists and semioticians.

HITF recognized that regular languages and signs could change their meaning or become incomprehensible over thousands of years, so it developed the main rules and assumptions to address the issue of human intrusion (and, in the opinion of Uatom.org editors, they remain relevant today):

1. Present society’s responsibility is to dispose of radioactive waste in a manner that is safe, is environmentally acceptable and does not require long-term maintenance or surveillance.
2. Future societies with knowledge of the existence and location of the repository, its contents and the risks of interference, bear the full responsibility for any of their actions that can reasonably be expected to adversely affect the performance of the repository.
3. Present society should make all reasonable efforts to transmit to future societies information about the repository, its contents and the risks of interference.
4. The method used to communicate information to future societies must be effective for both direct and indirect interference activities.
5. The emphasis for transmitting information will focus on the first 10,000 years after repository closure.
6. Present languages are likely to change over the time frame of interest.
7. A basic knowledge of atomic physics is likely to be possessed by future societies.

In addition, HITF identified three main approaches that have the potential for preventing human intrusion: reduce incentives for interference (for example, siting a repository away from areas that contain valuable natural resources), design of a repository so that access to it could be gained with difficulty and, of course, informing of future generations about existence of a repository. In particular, HITF offers four levels of messages:

Creative Solutions by Thomas Sebeok, Paolo Fabbri and Stanislaw Lem

HITF invited Thomas Sebeok, semiotician from the Indiana University and expert on signs and symbols, to join the research on nuclear semiotics. The professor presented his ideas in the Report “Communication Measures to Bridge Ten Millennia” where he sought to broaden readers’ understanding of what a “message” might look like.

For example, the professor considered an option for a message to be in the form of an intense unpleasant smell to deter people from approaching the waste repository. At the same time, he was the one to question this idea noting that future generations might want to investigate the facility using robots or unmanned vehicles that would not be able to detect such a smell.  

Referring to Pandora’s box and the power of myths to convey warnings, the professor offered to create a religious mythology meaning the concept of “atomic priesthood”,  that is a commission of an elite group of experts – physicists, experts in radiation sickness, anthropologists, linguists, psychologist, semioticians, who would transfer knowledge about the danger through a system of myths, rituals and taboos. Annual rituals would help establish superstitions warning people not to approach waste repositories. Such a “priesthood” would form the basis of a “relay system” periodically renewing information about the facility every few generations.

However, the Italian writer, philosopher and semiotician Umberto Eco analyzed the concept of the “atomic priesthood” proposed by Thomas Sebeok in his effort “The Search for the Perfect Language” (1993) and specified that even if the “priests” themselves eventually lost a precise understanding of why the facility was dangerous, they would likely continue to maintain religious fear and prohibitive rituals. At the same time, he stated that such a system could create social inequality and closed casts, which might begin to use their knowledge to gain political power.

Even more strange proposals appeared later. For example, Francoise Bastide and Paolo Fabbri proposed to breed animals whose skin will change color when exposed. Such animals should dwell within the ecological niche of humans, and their role as a detector of radiation should be anchored in cultural tradition by introducing a suitable name (e.g., “ray cat”) and suitable proverbs and myths.

Polish science-fiction writer Stanislaw Lem suggested breeding “information plants” that grow only next to the final repository and that warn people of danger. The DNA of the so-called atomic flowers would include all the necessary data about the location and its content. The problem of this idea is that people will unlikely know the meaning of the atomic flowers in 10,000 years and will not be able to decipher their DNA in search of information.

What About Architectural and Landscape Solutions?

In 1993, Sandia National Laboratories performed its own research of nuclear semiotics to prevent intruders from reaching the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, the United States.  

Unlike HITF, the experts were divided into two teams in this research.

Team A consisted of an anthropologist, an astronomer, an archaeologist, an environmental designer, a linguist and a material scientist. The expert group offered to create a comprehensive marking system, which would appeal not only to the mind, but also to basic body senses. The main concept was the “hostile architecture” intended to evoke feelings of discomfort, anxiety and aversion. In particular, experts proposed the following architectural and landscape solutions:

• Landscape of Thorns  

The landscape in the form of stone spikes, concrete thorns and zig-zag earthworks suggesting danger to the body. These are wounding forms, like thorns and spikes, even lightning.

• Menacing Earthworks  

These are immense lightning-shaped earthworks radiating out with the large expanse of open center, only two elements in it: the WIPP’s existing hot cell left to ruin and a walk-on world map showing locations of all the repositories of radioactive waste on earth and wide map of New Mexico with the WIPP site in the geometric center.

• Black Hole  

A masonry slab, either of black basalt rock or black-dyed concrete that is an image of enormous black hole, a void, land removed from use with nothing left behind. It looks uninhabitable and unfarmable, and it is, for it is exceedingly hot part of the year. It is a massive effort to make a place that is fearful, ugly and uncomfortable.

• Rubble Landscape

A square outer rim of the caliche layer of stone is dynamited and bulldozed into a crude square pile over the entire repository site. This all makes for an enormous landscape of large-stone rubble, one that is very inhospitable, being hard to walk on and difficult to bring machinery onto. It is a place that feels destroyed, rather than one that has been made.

• Forbidding Blocks  

Stone from the outer rim is dynamited and then cast into large concrete/stone blocks, dyed black, and each about 7 meters high. The cubic blocks are set in a grid, defining a square, with 1.5 meters wide “streets”. You can get “in” it, but these streets lead nowhere. They are too narrow to live in, farm in or even meet in. At certain seasons it is very hot inside.

In addition, Team A suggests combining the text with graphical elements, in particular using facial expressions and emotions expressing horror, disgust, fear, pain and anguish. In their view, emotions would appeal to a potential intruder’s instinct for self-preservation.

At the same time, Team B considered that the marking of the repository should apply the combination of symbols, diagrams, text messages, scientific and astronomic data. Any symbols used should be defined pictographically so they could be understood by people who have no previous knowledge of the symbols. For example, the human being drawn as a stylized stick figure should be easily recognized by any other human. A series of drawings showing stick figures engaged in various activities can show the history of the repository as well as consequences of intrusion.

Modern Projects on Nuclear Semiotics

The project “Preservation of Records, Knowledge and Memory (RK&M) across Generations” launched by the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) Radioactive Waste Management Committee (RWMC) had been implemented  from 2011 to 2018. The project involved 21 organizations from 14 countries.

The project participants concluded that there is no single marker or archive that, by itself, is likely to be reliable in the long-term perspective. A “systemic strategy” combining various methods and timescales was proposed instead.

The RK&M strategy suggests the need for “double transmission”: indirect (trough institutions and archiving agencies plus education) and direct (through markers at repository site). Such an approach creates redundancy of information increasing the chances of survival in the event of social upheavals.

The RK&M toolbox consists of a set of 35 mechanisms that can be grouped into 9 approaches:

• dedicated record sets and summary files;
• memory institutions (archives, libraries, museums);
• markers (both above and below the surface);
• time capsules (both with and without opening strategies);
• culture, education and art;
• knowledge management;
• oversight provisions (monitoring; clear and planned responsibilities; land use controls);
• international mechanisms (international regulations and agreements; international inventories and catalogues);
• regulatory framework (national regulatory framework, safeguards).

This toolbox includes two new concepts:

1. Key Information File (KIF) – a single document, produced in a multidisciplinary and participatory manner. Its purpose is to inform the society on the existence and the nature of the repository. 
2. Set of Essential Records (SER) – a set of technical documents required for in-depth understanding of the repository system and decision making by future experts.

Such a Key Information File has already been developed by the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company (SKB) together with the Linköping University. The document was developed for three years, when the researchers were collecting data from plenty of sources: from representatives of the younger and older generations, experts and the public.

According to the Linköping University, the researchers tried to develop a document to encourage the reader to reread it and share it with another person. The researchers named it the SHIRE method (share, imagine, renew). This is an invitation for the reader to share content and imagine new ways to keep the document relevant for it not to be forgotten with time.

Professional illustrators were involved to make the document aesthetically pleasing. While the text is easy to understand, there are mysterious characters on the cover. It is a coded message for the reader to try to solve.

According to the Linköping University, it has already been decided that the document will be part of the major archiving project Memory of Mankind. It is an archive founded in Austria in 2012 which aims to preserve humanity’s collective knowledge for posterity on material that will last for thousands of years. Therefore, the Key Information File will be printed on ceramic tablets and places in an old salt mine in a mountain in Austria.

For long-term preservation, Patrick Charton and his team from the memory-preservation program of the French National Radioactive Waste Management Agency (ANDRA) developed a sapphire disk which can contain 40,000 pages of text and images during 1 million years. The sapphire disk consists of two thin plates with a diameter of 20 cm, on which the information is engraved using platinum. The contents can be read using a microscope.

For the ONKALO deep geological repository, Finland has chosen a radically different strategy – the “strategy of invisibility” of “silence”. Finnish experts assume that any sign on the surface will eventually be distorted or misinterpreted. Therefore, the best means of protection is the complete sealing of the entrance and the restoration of the landscape to its natural state, so that the repository would literally “disappear” from memory. The discussion of long-term underground storage of radioactive waste is documented in detail in the documentary “Into Eternity” (2010), which focuses on the dilemma of whether the repository should be marked at all.                                                    

Therefore, nuclear repositories are not only the places for disposal of waste but also a long-term challenge for the mankind. They require from us to be responsible to those who will live hundreds of generations from now. That is why nuclear semiotics seeks to create universal warning symbols and signs capable of preserving their meaning regardless of changes in languages and cultures. Our responsibility today is to pass on a clear message about the danger to the future in order to protect life on the planet tomorrow.

References:

1. Technical Report of the Human Interference Task Force “Reducing the Likelihood of Future Human Activities that Could Affect Geologic High-Level Waste Repositories”
2. Thomas Sebeok “Communication Measures to Bridge Ten Millenia”
3. Technical Report by Sandia National Laboratories of the United States Department of Energy “Expert Judgement on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant”

Editorial Board of Uatom.org website