By Kora Freeman-Gerlach

Photograph by Kora Freeman-Gerlach

Communicating with Beings of the Future

By Kora Freeman-Gerlach

A few years back, I stood in the nuclear wasteland of Minamisoma, Japan. With a Geiger counter in hand, tracking the fluctuation of radiation with each step I took, I felt the eerie silence of invisible toxicity that had taken over this coastal town. Years after the meltdown of the Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, caused by the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, Minamisoma was still barren and deserted. There were rusted cars flipped upside down, neighborhood streets filled with trash, and open-air structures that were once enclosed homes. There was no sign of human activity, let alone any kind of life; maybe it was the road signs that flashed warnings of elevated radiation levels that steered people away. This is the image of a tsunami turned nuclear disaster.

I wonder what it looks like there now, 11 years after the initial disaster. I wonder if the cars still stand on their heads, if pacifiers and shattered pill bottles still line the roads. I wonder if nuclear refugees are still living in temporary homes, where they have created a new community with others like them, forced from their original homes by the risk of exposure to toxic radiation. The problem with radiation is that it is persistent; several years is insufficient time to reduce its toxicity or minimize its harm.

The Fukushima-Daiichi disaster was the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986. On March 11, 2011, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake caused a massive tsunami along the eastern coast of Japan in the Tohoku region. Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima-Daiichi plant was hit by the earthquake and tsunami, causing a series of explosions, meltdowns, and an evacuation of almost 200,000 people in the area, according to a report by CNN published at the time. This tragic nuclear disaster displaced hundreds of thousands of residents and caused widespread economic and ecological devastation.

According to a report by CNN’s Wayne Drash, Japan is scarce in traditional resources used to produce energy, such as fossil fuels, thus making it highly reliant on nuclear power. However, following the 2011 nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima, all 54 nuclear plants around the country shut down, and just nine of them have since opened back. As reported by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Henri Paillere and Jeffrey Donovan, there was widespread distrust among the public after the catastrophic event, which made people reluctant to support nuclear power again.

The Controversy over Nuclear Power

The use of nuclear power is hotly debated. On one hand, it produces very few greenhouse gases and is cost-effective. On the other hand, it relies on another finite resource, uranium, thus making it nonrenewable, and comes with a number of safety threats. Although they are rare, nuclear disasters can be catastrophic. Nuclear power plants also produce radioactive waste, which is extremely harmful to humans and the environment and lacks a perfect long-term technology for safe storage.

While nuclear energy has its dangers, the growing consequences of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change are even more pressing, spurring plans to open new nuclear plants around the world. However, the debate around nuclear energy is not limited to present-day costs and benefits; there are ethical concerns that come into play when we think about the impacts of nuclear energy on future generations.

Nuclear waste can last up to 1 million years in the environment. Nuclear engineer Arjun Makhijani says that without a long-term method of storage, it will be left to contaminate waterways and landscapes, kill plants and animals, and destroy ecosystems. Geologic isolation, or burying nuclear waste deep underground, seems like the least harmful solution for nuclear waste storage, but it may not be as easy as it seems. Protecting Future Civilizations from Nuclear Radiation

Creating the technology for the geologic isolation of nuclear waste is no simple task. Scientists, linguists, anthropologists, and engineers must work together to carefully design repository sites while taking into account a few key issues. Firstly, the location is important; even though our current climate might seem relatively stable, over such a long time frame, things like earthquakes and precipitation could corrode the repository. The material in which the waste is stored is also quite important because it needs to resist corrosion for 1 million years. Lastly, repositories must be designed to ensure that future civilizations will not seek to enter them and be unknowingly exposed to radiation.

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), located in New Mexico, is the United States’ only long-term deep geologic radioactive waste repository. Experts around the country have studied the possible methods of intrusion into the WIPP and the best modes of deterrence. The Sandia report, titled “Expert Judgment on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant”, outlines the process of creating markers that indicate the danger and location of nuclear waste repositories to future civilizations. The following drafted designs aim to tell beings of the future that the WIPP is not natural and that there is a significant reason why it is marked.

I spoke with Harlan Morehouse, a geography profes-

(Image description: Landscape of Thorns: this field or forest contains 50-feet high thorns that are randomly placed to seem chaotic. Made of concrete, the shapes are supposed to look threatening and harmful to the body. Concept: Mike Brill, Drawing: Safdar Abidi, Image courtesy of BOSTI.)

(Image description: Forbidding Blocks: this structure involves stone and concrete blocks that are the size of a house. The ‘streets’ which run between them do not lead anywhere; they are narrow, hot, ominous, and prevent the use of space to live in, grow food in, or form any sort of civilization upon. Concept: Mike Brill, Drawing: Safdar Abidi, Image courtesy of BOSTI.)

sor at the University of Vermont, to find out more about the challenge of communicating nuclear danger to humans of the distant future. He mentioned that while markers of physical deterrence may steer civilizations away, many nations in northern Europe have gone a different route. Rather than warning civilizations of danger, thereby drawing attention to the site, their strategy is to make waste repositories as discreet as possible. They believe it is impossible to predict what future beings will think about these protruding structures, so leaving the area unmarked would prevent unwanted attention that would make them want to dig up what lies below. Morehouse believes that this might be the most effective way to prevent civilizations from indulging in their natural curiosity attempting to enter such a mysterious structure.

This line of thinking avoids the challenge of figuring out how to best communicate which future civilizations. Nonetheless, this is a question that is being investigated. The WIPP plans to have an information room onsite that contains 7 current languages (English, Spanish, Russian, French, Chinese, Arabic, and Navajo) to inform beings of the toxic waste that lies in the repository. However, what if the languages of today do not exist in the future? What if, in a million years, these languages are just artifacts of ancient civilizations? How do we explain something in writing to a civilization that speaks a totally different language, or that does not even communicate through language at all?

A Path Forward

In my view, designing nuclear waste repository sites is an unfortunate necessity moving forward. Countries that use nuclear power have created waste that will lie dormant in our environment for hundreds of thousands of years, and they must find a safe method to store it and deter intrusion.

The climate crisis too often requires that humans choose the ‘least bad’ solution to solve issues we have ignorantly created. These solutions frequently look to new technologies and ignore techniques that already exist. It is irresponsible to rely solely on new technology to fix the climate crisis because that lends itself to the need for economic growth and a vicious cycle of consumption that has been the root of the climate crisis. Economic growth needs to be decoupled from environmental impacts; the past 200 years since the Industrial Revolution have shown that increased consumption, new technologies, and economic growth are detrimental to the environment. Relying on a single technology such as nuclear to solve the climate crisis is, overall, a flawed approach.

While our current approach to storing toxic nuclear waste must necessarily rely on carefully designed geologic isolation that looks to the future, the most responsible course of action we can take right now is to shift away from this imperfect solution and decrease energy consumption altogether. Ultimately, if high-income countries curbed overconsumption and began a process of economic degrowth, they would no longer need to rely on dangerous sources to fulfill their hasty energy usage. Only then could we stop searching for the lesser of many evils, and begin focusing instead on methods that truly benefit the environment. We could connect with one another in the present, rather than focusing too much on how to connect with future civilizations. Communities could cultivate a reciprocal relationship with Earth, as many human beings have been doing for generations, and ensure that human impact on the land is one that allows for all life to thrive long into the future. H