LANDSCAPE PERMANENCE AND NUCLEAR WARNINGS

zyxw zyxwvut zyxwvu LANDSCAPE PERMANENCE AND NUCLEAR WARNINGS MARTIN J PASQUALETTI From the perspective of a human lifetime, the hazards of some nudear wastes are permanent, so the warnings we place at contaminated nudear sites must be permanent too I address questions of how best to provide one hundred centuries of public warning at the first facility for permanent disposal, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico Scenarios of intrusion developedto guide the design ofwarning markers predicted that most of the changes in the area will be social and cultural Because blatant and permanent markers will increase, not reduce, the probability of inadvertent intrusion, the most appropriate warning is a ”landscape of illusion.” Such a landscape needs not permanent surface markers but underground warning devices beneath a soft surface marker No warning can guarantee deterrence for io,ooo years, however Keywords: landscape, nuclear waste, Waste Isolation Pilot Plant ABSTRACT zyxw zy ? v o review of the planet’s environmentalaccount books can overlook the blatant and accelerating loss of natural landscapes.Just as obvious is the widespread desireto slow or halt these losses.what reasoninglies behind people’s concern?Is the purpose of landscapeprotectionto safeguardflora and fauna?Do scientistsbelieve that time is too short to evaluateall the costs of landscapedamage?Or is the whole environmental movementbeing powered by a fanaticalpreservation imperativethat is opposed to all change?Actually,none of these explanationsis paramount in the record of landscape rescue and rehabilitation Another for-ut of sight,primal, and far more powerful-is at work Among the major attractions of natural landscapes is their very immutability,the quality each has, in J B Jackson’swords, to be “a spacewith a degree of permanence”(Jackson19845).The more we sufferthe loss of natural landscapes,the more we realize that efforts to save them amount to bids to save ourselves When, a few centuries ago, the human worldview was limited to small and simple neighborhood environments,landscapes were considered not merely immutable but invulnerable Such innocencewas swept asideby the IndustrialRevolution,a quickening current of environmental change that expanded the periphery of human awareness With increasing frequency,watchful skepticscame to recognize the great extent of landscapes torn and scarred in the name of progress (Sauer 1938; Glacken 1967).By the mid-nineteenth century environmental damage had marred large portions of the earth‘s surface, especially in Europe One of the most observant and thoughdid witnesses to the rapid environmental changes in Europe was George Perkins Marsh, an able scholarand diplomatwho, in his remarkable Man and Nature (1965 [1864]),chronicled the rising power of humans to permanently change, with increasingease, the surface of the earth Though now widely considered a cornerstone of the environmental movement, the book was given little notice during Marsh’s lifetime, its message muffled by the presumed zyxwvuts zyxwvutsr 31, DR.PASQUALETTI is a professor of geography at Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 852874104 The Gcographiual Revim 87 (1): n-1 January 1997 Copyright 1997 by the American Gcognphiul Society of New York 74 zyxwvutsrqp THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW recuperative powers of nature and by the knowledge that frontiers, once crossed, had always exposed bountiful new riches for the private taking In the late twentieth century, environmental degradation has grown so much that only with specific intent and effort can we avoid encountering landscapes stripped, trimmed, planed, drained, and otherwise reshaped by the staggering human command of technology Faith in landscapepermanence,once unassailable, is vulnerable,withered not only by growing cynicism but also by historical events and an assortmentof mechanical tools and forces that we ourselves have developed Curiously, the tool with the greatest ability to reshape is still seldom recognized That tool is nuclear power Nuclear power can reshape landscapes in several ways The most obvious changescome from weapons testing (Misrach 1990; Goin 1991;Loomis 1992),as conducted for several decades in Nevada and other rural realms, and engineeringexcavations, such as those once proposed for Alaska (O’Neiligg4) A second body of changes results from massive translocations of contaminated vegetation and soil,as was necessary after the Chernobyl explosion (Medvedev 1990) A third and littleappreciatedalteration involves landscape adjustments that will accompany the permanent storage of long-lived radioactive wastes at several disposal sites under consideration around the world The strong spatial scent of this growing third alteration has attracted the attention of geographers interested in identifjmg the routes and sites for the transportation and disposal of waste material, in assessing public perceptions of risk, and in identifyingequity issues accompanyingall decisionsabout waste handling (Kasperson 1982;Solomonand Cameron1984; Blowers and Lowry 1987; Solomonand others 1987; Shelleyand others 1988; Jacob1990;van der Plight 1992; Flynn and others 1995) Despite such contributions,geographers have yet to focus on the use of landscapes to deter inadvertent exposure to the long-lived hazards of nuclear waste Attention to this approach by specialists in other fields has also been meager Consideration of the landscapes of waste is beginning to expose an underlying irony Even as many people are trying to preserve some semblance of natural landscapes for all future generationsto enjoy, many others are thinking about how to develop artificial landscapes which, in an odd inversion, we would ask all future generations to avoid The essential challenge is how to effectively alert the prudent without attracting the foolish The many paths toward a solution tend to merge into two broad avenues One leads toward a silent landscape,a landscape that suggests no hazard and attracts no specialattention, quietly masking all buried waste beneath a patina of calculated innocence The second leads toward a blatant and permanent landscape, brimming with threat and foreboding that only the senseless could miss Which route is more likely to achieve our goal? How can we weigh our options? At present,the United States appears intent on developingan obvious and durable warning strategy,one that emerges from the environmental changesanticipated at each waste locale Unambiguouslyidentifying such changes is neither an easy nor zyxw zy NUCLEAR WARNINGS zyxwv 75 zyxwvu zyxwvutsrq zyx zyxwvutsrqpon U.S Nuclear Weapons Complex zyxwvutsrqp Hanford site a R R ,o * * LosAlamos National Laboratory Sandii Natbnai Laboratorler 0- -4‘b Bikini and Eniwetok Atolls 6- Amchkka island R Uranium Mining and Milling A Uranium Refining A Uranium Enrichment A Uranium Foundry Fuel and Target Fabrication zyxwvut zyxwvu El Plutonium Production Reactors H Reprocesing to Separate Plutonium Nuclear Components + Nonnuclear Components * * Weapons Design Q Testing Assembly and Dismantlement Former industrial sites contaminated with radioactivity, some but not all of which contributedto nuclear weapons production Numbers indicate how many sites were located in the state FIG +The nuclear weapons complex Source: Adapted from U.S Department of Energy 1996 (Cartography by Barbara Papido-Lurie, Department of Geography,Arizona State University) a foolproof task for at least one important reason: Although we have been successfully using archaeologyto look millions of years into the distant past and astronomy to penetrate deep space, we have repeatedly demonstrated a severely limited ability to peer into the future Individually and as a species, we humans are glued to the present, mired virtually motionless in the perspectives of our own time Absent improved predictive powers, the approach now being embraced by the U.S Department of Energy (DOE)is the fashioning of warning markers, developed from long-range scenarios of environmental change at each waste site In response to an increasingly urgent and widespread problem (Figure I), I address several fu- 76 zyxwvutsrq THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW zyxw ture environmental scenarios and the corresponding landscape warnings for the first repository for permanent disposal of nuclear by-products, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico (Figure 2) THEDUTYTO WARN WIPP was authorized in 1979 to demonstrate the safe disposal of radioactive wastes produced by the defense industry If it receives a permit to operate,WIPP is to become a permanent housing facility for disposed transuranic The Waste Isolation wastes.' Over the past twenty Pilot Plant years the WIPP project has received extraordinaryattention from the federal government, the state of New Mexico, the nuclear industry,and environmental advocates (Carter 1987; Jacob1990).Given the long and often boisterousdebate,WIPP'S surfaceexpressionis unexpectedly modest (Figure 3) However, 2,150 feet underground lies a network of more than 10 miles of passagewaysexcavated in the bedded salt of the Salado FIG 2-The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant lies east of Formation These corridorsCarlsbad, New Mexico Source: Adapted from Bertram13 feet high by 33 feet wide and Howery and Hunter 1989 (Cartography by Barbara linked to the surface by four "hapido-Lurie, Department of Geography, Arizona State vertical shafts (Figure 4)-are University) capable of holding 400,000 containersof transuranicwaste,a capacitythat may increase if the site is expanded,as some expect it to be (Reicher 1991) The many delays in licensing WIPP have resulted in part from the so-called duty to warn This legal obligation,applied broadly, has resulted in regulations and disclosure procedures like the Hazard Communication Rule of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.Among the developmentsemanating from this general rule, the Clean Air Act Amendments require data sheets on discharges into air and water; Title of the SuperfundAmendments ReauthorizationAct includes the community right to know; and companiesthat sellpotentially hazardousmaterials or devices must develop labels and data sheets to accompany all of their products Specificapplication of the duty to warn at WIPP has taken several forms For example, under legal mandates of the U.S.Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) called the Containment Requirements (40 CFR 191.13),public warnings about the hazards of nuclear waste must remain effective for 10,ooo years (Bertram-Howery zyxwvut zyxwvu zy NUCLEAR WARNINGS zyxwv 77 zyxwvu zyxwvutsr zy FIG.3-The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, a.1989.(Photograph courtesy of Sandia National Labora- tories) / - Support and ( waatbhandllngbulldlng Exhaunt-filter bulldlng The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant zyxwvu wastedlspoul area FIG.+The relative orientation of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and the locationsof its key structural elements Source: Adapted from Nowak, Tillerson, and Torres 1990 (Redrafted by Barbara Trapido-Lurie,Department of Geography, Arizona State University) 78 zyxwvutsrq THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW 1991).Apart from the first one hundred years of this period, such warnings are expected to perform their function passively, without further human attention (Hunter, Cranwell, and Chu 1986) The DOE has delimited the intent, nature, and use of the WIPP warning markers The agency has, for example,rejected all no-marker approaches: The site must have visible warnings The DOE has also prohibited reliance on future technological development to reduce potential risks from the stored waste Likewise, it excluded from consideration the possibility of intentional intrusions The official aim of the DOE is to design a visible, passive, durable, and persistently intelligible warning at wrpp-in other words, a synthetic form of landscape permanence THEFUTURESPANEL Development of a landscape warning system requires the projection of known public-safety needs into unknown future conditions The DOE addressed this problem by using expert-judgment analysis (Bonano and others 1990;Trauth, Hora, and Guzowski1993).Initially,two advisorycommitteeswere assembled Between August and October 1990 the first group, the Futures Panel, developed scenarios of future environmentswithin which the warnings would have to operate successfully The second group, the Markers Panel, met in November 1991 to recommend marker strategies that coincided with the environmental criteria suggested by the Futures Panel The work discussed in this article is that of the Futures Panel The sixteen-memberFutures Panel was divided evenly into four teams, each of which included a social scientist, a decision analyst, a physical scientist (usually a physicist),and a futurist,*with experience in the field of nuclear energy The assignment of all four teams, includingthe SouthwestTeam,ofwhich I was a member,’was to develop scenarios of possible futuresin southeastern New Mexico and to identify the likelihood that any of the projections would lead to careless human intrusion into the stored waste within 10,ooo years of the closing of ~ I P P Falling within the borders of each scenario were such factors as institutional memory, predicted changes in language and cultural makeup, forms of written communication,patterns of regional migration, population density, technological advancements, resource use and availability,and developments in the physical environment that could compromisethe effectivenessof markers Each team was asked to apply its collectiveknowledge and experienceto the task of developingthe plausible scenarios of environmental change that would best provide the basis for the warnings LESSONSAND LIMITATIONSOF THE PAST Long-term-nuclear-warningdesign is a fertile intellectual field that has yielded an interesting but smalland aging crop of studies (Givens1982;Kaplan 1982;Weitzberg1982; Sebeok1984Tannenbaum1984;Mann 1986;NEA 1989).Important in creatinga benchmark,these reports assessedthe durabilityof materials,the interpretabilityof messages, the deterioration rates of features such as the Egyptian pyramids and the Nazca lines, zyxwv zy zyxwv NUCLEAR WARNINGS 79 and the identification of several drawings suggested duringearlierconsiderationof this problem (Figure5) Experience also came from an experiment conducted in the 1960s about a dozen miles southwest of WIPP, called Project Gnome The project included an underground nuclear detonation to test nonmilitary engineering uses of nuclear weapons The blast left a concentrated region of intense radioactive contamination at a depth of 1,250 feet Although the subterranean vicinity of the experiment continues to be hazardous,long-term public warningsare notablyabsent The only message that was left at the site quickly became illegible, and it never provided information about the nuclear test or about possible residual public risks Moreover, in only a few decades cattle scratching themselves on the concrete pedestal to which the notice was affixedhave moved it several feet from its original location (Figure6).The quick degradation and movement of the notice underscores the daunting job of developing warning markers for a much longer period at WIPP THEDEVELOPMENT OP SCENARIOS Just as physics has dominated the twentieth century, biology may well rule the next hundred years Rapid, recent progress in biotechnology suggests a twentyfirst century qualitatively different from the present one Moreover, our worldview is itself inevitably ethFIG 5-Three common nocentric and time bound, so historical records and nuclear-warning markers possible analogs have provided little aid in successSource: 'Ifauth, Hora, and Guzowski 1993 (Drawingsby Jon fully envisioning future events Our inability to see Lomberg) into the future also underpinsthe wisdom of a conservative approach when suggestingthe nature and form of landscapes designed to warn the citizens of a near or distant tomorrow Such prudence,especiallyas practiced by regulatoryauthorities,is manifested in many ways Pertinent to conditions at WIPP, for example,the EPA Containment Requirements call for calculation of the cumulative releases of radionuclidesinto the environment by all combinationsof eventsover a period of io,oooyears (EPA 1985); The requirementsalso call for the development of multiple scenarios of inadvertent breaches of containment,includingtheir probabilities The purpose was to limit the number of plausible futures under consideration and to guide the design of landscape warnings and messages (Cranwell and others 1990;Guzowski and Gruebel zyxwv zyx 1991) 80 zyxwvutsrqp zyxwv THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW zyxwvu zyxw FIG &The Gnome Project warning marker as it looked in August 1990 (Photograph by the author) Each team of the Futures Panel presented its scenario to the other teams and to DOE personnel for critique.Next,all membersof the Futures Panel participated in an analytical process designed to identify the probabilities for every element of each scenario from all team members Last, the resulting component probabilities were arranged into groupings to produce cumulative likelihoods for each scenario (Bonano and others 1990) The Southwest Team’s presentation included judgments about future conditions, profiles of the people most likely to encounter the waste landscapes, and advice to keep the number of scenarios small while capturingthe flavor of what might happen The Marker Panel, which convened one year later, was to use these constructions as starting points for its work The steps in developing the scenarios were: establishment of assumptions; identification of changes in the physical environment that would enhance the chances of inadvertent intrusion; identification of key socioeconomic factors that would enhance the chances of inadvertent intrusion; identificationand description of scenarios;and prediction of the probabilitythat key factors would enhance inadvertent intrusion The limiting assumptions illustrated the quixotic challenges of deep-future predictions: The repository is closed after twenty-five years of operation No consideration is given to deliberate, intentional intrusions NUCLEAR WARNINGS 81 Active control of WIPP is maintained for one hundred years after the site is closed Passive measures are the only warnings provided after the first one hundred years Radioactive materials decay at currently accepted half-lives Extraordinary events such as collisions with objects from space, extraterrestrial visits, or negation of gravity not occur The process of identifying 10,oooyears of change around WIPP focused first on the physical environment, specifically on how local availability of water might increase SoutheasternNew Mexico currentlyaverages approximately12inches of precipitation annually, and the nearest perennial stream is the Pecos River, about 15 miles west-southwest of w m Brine is produced by the water-bearing units of the Rustler Formation that overlie the limited groundwater of the Salado Formation (Weart 1991).An increased supply of irrigation and potable water could support a larger population, and this would presumably increase the chances of inadvertent human intrusion One source for such an increasewould be a natural upturn in precipitation.The last significant regional increase in precipitation, a doubling of current levels, occurred when mean annual temperatures were no more than 9°F below those of today A return to these conditions was considered unlikely within the next 10,ooo years, as were appreciable changes in geology, seismicity,and soil formation (Swift 1991; Trauth, Hora, and Guzowski 1993) The SouthwestTeam concurred with these findings? Knowing that human intervention can accelerate the pace of natural change,the Southwest Team assumed that such actions could also stimulate and support inadvertent intrusion into WIPP The team identified seven categories of change: Increased availability of water The existing brine reservoir, if adequately desalted, could augment the local supplies of irrigation water Greater volumes could be provided by desaltingseawaterand piping it from the Gulf of Mexico Population growth An enhancedwater supply,especiallyin concertwith bolstered economic circumstances,could stem out-migration and even encourage new residents to come into the area from Mexico as well as other parts of the United States Unstable political control Changes in political control, particularlyat the national level, could complicate record keeping, confuse political will and responsibilities, cloud institutional memory and ownership, and challenge the stability of language Lost knowledge Public and governmental awareness of the hazards of radioactive material buried at WIPP could evolve in several ways: Knowledge persists of the waste but not of its hazards;knowledge remains of the hazards but not the location of the waste; or knowledgepersists of neither the location nor its hazards zyxwv zyxwvu zyxwv zyxwv 82 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW Resource development Over a period of io,ooo years virtually any substance could become an economicallyvaluable resource This is true even of materials we now consider waste When resource values rise, increases in population and extractive activity become more likely Changes in communication We are likely to find that the deep future brings with it methods of communication we cannot now imagine As part of these changes,record keeping and the exchange of information should become easier and more complete It is also plausible,however, that changes will cause reversals, resulting in forgotten civilizations and languages Adjustments in the management of facilities Inadvertent intrusion may follow changes in management strategies and procedures Monitoring and security, for example, could shift from measures that are active (assuming human action) to those that are passive (assuming no human action), perhaps even ceasing entirely as the facility ages and personnel and financial resources are needed elsewhere zyx IDENTIFIED SCENARIOS Acknowledgingthat many permutations of events could compromise the integrity of ~ I P over P a period of io,ooo years, the DOE decided that the best way to deter accidental exposure would be with permanent landscape warnings The only way to increase the likelihood that such landscapeswould servetheir intended purpose would be to first develop a small and accurate group of scenarios of future events.6 The Southwest Team developed five scenarios, three of which focus on technical change and two of which stresspoliticalchange: the U.S.A Forever Scenario;the Mole Miner Scenario; the Doom and Gloom Scenario;the Seesaw Scenario;and the Free State of Chihuahua Scenario (Benford and others iggi).’ In the U.S.A Forever Scenario the nation continues to developwithin its existing political, cultural, and socioeconomicstructure The Southwest Team believed that this scenariowas insufficientlyprobable to warrant lengthy refinement, so no details were developed Under the Mole Miner Scenario, technological capabilities improve amid the emergence and solution of new problems Social structure continues to develop; society advances enough to intrude on WIPP but not to render itself immune from the dangers of radioactive substances One of the many complicatingfactors in this scenario is a technological capability that continues to advance while innumerable other elements move at different speeds and directions For example, a technically advanced society could use artificial intelligence to intrude on WIPP, only to find itself unable to stem subsequent leakage to the surface environment: zyxwvu It is the year 2597, and a self-guiding and independent drilling device called a “smart mole” is tunneling underground in the southeastern comer of an area formerly called New Mexico.It was started on its way weeks earlier by those directingit down a conventional bored hole It has since continued making its own independ- zy zyxwv NUCLEAR WARNINGS 83 ent path using carefullydesigned expert guidance and analysis systems and enough intelligence to assess results on its own Most important, it has the “motivation” to labor ceaselessly in the cause of resource discovery The mole moves laterallythrough rock, fed by internal as well as external energy sources such as trailing cables Speed not being necessary, its tunneling speed is quite slow-only a meter per day It samples strata and moves along a self-correcting path to optimize its chances of finding the desired resource In place of a drill bit, it uses electron beams to chip away at the rock ahead of it, “seeing”at least a short distance with acousticpulses which reflect offnearby masses and tell the mole what lies in its neighborhood CAT-scan-like unraveling of the echoes yields a detailed picture Communication with surface-based operators takes place through seismological sensors to send messages-bursts of acoustic pulses of precise design which tell listeners what the mole has found Burrowing upward through relatively soft salt formations, it encounters and penetrates several metal canisters, releasing radioactive materials into the environment Before those on the surface realize what has happened, underground water becomes polluted and contamination reaches the surface (Benford and others 1991,17-19) zyxwv The details of this scenario are less important than the implications of its actually happening Its primary significance is that it portrays an intrusion into a nuclear repository from other than a downward direction In other words, the Mole Miner Scenario assumes spherical exploratory capabilities: If warning devices are positioned only between the repository and the surface, they may remain silent even when containment security has been compromised Warning devices must reflect the unique directional flexibility of such a plausible mining technique A third future, the Doom and Gloom Scenario,envisions many events and developments that combine to produce a particularly hazardous situation: Just after the beginning of the third millennium, several events trigger a devastating and long-lasting world recession, one accompanied by uncontrolled biohazards, DNA manipulations, epidemics, and hoarding of fossil fuels These events work in dire combination with global warming, the loss of biodiversity, and ballooning population to produce devastating environmental conditions everywhere Despite a common twentieth-century expectation of a safer and more secure future, calamity prevails Arable lands diminish, coastal cities flood, and billions of people are homeless In the chaotic conditions that develop, records once carefully cataloged and protected, including warnings of buried hazardous waste, are lost Security containment at WIPP is breached by drillers desperately looking for water and other resources Similar exposure takes place at repositories in other locations, and no one can retard or reverse the quick airborne dispersal of the dangerous materials they contain (Benford and others i991,21-22) This is not, of course, the only possible scenarioof doom Other disasters loom in outer space.Asteroidscould strike the earth,axialwobble could disrupt global climate patterns, and fluctuationsin solar insolation could upset ecosystem balances and retard advancementsin knowledge One part of this shift could be a diminished ability to detect underground radioactive waste and to shield ourselves from its dangers 84 zyxwvutsrq zy THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW A fourth vision of the future, the Seesaw Scenario, assumes the gradual disappearance of institutional memory and even the means we employ to maintain it As part of this development, warning markers and what they intend to communicate decay into unintelligible babble: After hundreds of years of decline, society rebuilds itself in those parts of the world suitable for agriculture and sedentary life This includes the area formerly known as southeastern New Mexico, and explorers are newly probing the earth’s crust there for things they need Politicalinstabilitiesin the region during the dimly rememberedcenturiesof the “LateOil Age”prevented someof the original oil from being pumped out, and now a renewed quest is jeopardizingthe integrityof the repository that had been constructed in the same area but forgotten Warning markers that had survived for many years are encountered by resource explorers in the year 2997, and though they come upon the remains of an imposing artifact, they are unclear as to its purpose “Perhapsthey left it here to tell us that there are energy resources down below.” “Maybethere is danger Perhaps we should consult the scholars to see if they know anythingabout this.”“You know these old artifacts-all rusted junk Let’s drill and see what we can find.” (Benford and others iggi,22-24) zyxwvu Creating a persistent marker detectable by a civilization that declines and then advances again would seem feasible A marker on the earth’s surface that is large, long lasting, and not easy to destroy would probably the job The primary problem is likely to be attempts to destroy the marker intentionally, perhaps through vandalism A more perplexing problem is how to transmit the desired message Language is likely to be especially fluid during a period of decline and rebirth Although future scholars may understand ancient languages, they are unlikely to be involved in mineral exploration The SeesawScenario-a staple of science fiction-is a serious challenge to marker designers The last of the five scenarios, the Free State of Chihuahua Scenario, reflects the consequences of a likely continuation of people moving northward from Mexico: The year is 2097 The past century has been one of political upheaval in the former American Southwest.After ceaseless wranglingamong the diverse regional interests and perceived inequities in political representation, the United States is fragmentinginto a cluster of smaller nation-states During this time, a similar process has affected the stabilityof Mexico, a country traditionally plagued by tensions between the relatively affluent North and the centralized political control to the South Its northern provinces have formed the Free State of Chihuahua Politicaluncertainty in the Free State is leading to alarge-scaleexodusofAnglos as well as many long-established Hispanic familiesfrom the lands formerlyknown as the United States They are escorted by forces loyal to one or the other of the new US countries, and they practice a scorched Earth policy, destroying most of the technological infrastructure,especially installations of potential military value on the northern side of the former US.-Mexico border The Free State lacks foreign exchangeand has poor credit Because it is limited in available natural resources,its people evolve into a scavengersociety, recovering, repairing and reusing all availabletechnical artifacts from earliertimes While mak- zyxwvu zyxwv zyxwv zyxwvu NUCLEAR WARNINGS 85 ing excavations at something once called Sandia National Laboratories, Free State resource archaeologistsdiscover references to a place called WIPP, along with photographs of waste barrels filled with abandoned tools, cables, and clothing Fragmentary maps are also found, which allow the location of the site to be established References to hazards are not found In any case, social knowledge of radiation is limited, due to the development of non-nuclear energy sources during the twentyfirst century Encountering only ambiguous warning markers, those charged with locating and characterizingWIPP decide to enter Later, still unaware of the potential hazard, the site is intentionallymined, breaching the storage vessels containing transuranics and exposing the workers and the environment to radioactive contamination (Benford and others iggi,24-28) This scenarioreminds us that no nation has survived for more than a few centuries Large states have tended to fragment into smaller, more culturally coherent ones For example,the Austro-HungarianEmpire is today divided into at least nine smaller countries, and the Soviet Union met a similar hte only seven decadesafter it was created It merits note, however, that union with northern Mexico is not critical to the scenario just described Indeed, one can visualize many ways in which changesin political control might increase the possibility of inadvertent human intrusion zy zyxwvu zyx LANDSCAPES OF RECLAMATION,REPULSION,AND ILLUSION As we striveto develop a permanent warning system for our nuclear-wasterepositories, we must be ever mindful that the odds of an inadvertent intrusion will be influencedby how accuratelywepredict the futureand how successfullyweincorporate these predictions into our warnings The daunting task of designing effective markers is made easierwhen we target the culturallandscapeas the key element in all future environmental change and resource use because it helps us organize myriad design possibilities into three categories: landscapes of reclamation, landscapes of repulsion, and landscapes of illusion The first option, landscapes of reclamation, directly addresses one of the most fundamental uncertainties about effective warning strategies; that is, whether to make them blatant or subtle Would, for example,an obvious marker divert people or attract them? Take the case of King Tut's Tomb, which remained undisturbed for centuries because it was unmarked and buried under debris from earlier excavations It escaped the attention of grave robbers, suggesting that the most prudent warning we could produce for WIPP would be no warning at all A principal question looms over this alternative, however: Would marking the site increasethe chancesof willful intrusion more than not marking the site would increase the chances of inadvertent intrusion? Reclaiming the site, leaving it unmarked, and allowing it to revert anonymously to the appearance of the pre-wIpp landscape could produce a high degree of protection against inadvertent intrusion Given the legal duty to warn, however, this alternative is not presently available.' 86 zyxwvutsrqp zyxwvut zyxwv THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW FIG 7-Large-scale warning markers help create landscapes of repulsion Source: Ifauth, Hora, and Guzowski 1993 (Drawing by Michael Brim) zyxw The second option, landscapes of repulsion, relies on an intentionally odious and foreboding construction,erected both to symbolize danger and to deter intrusion (Figure 7) The intent of such a warning marker is the transmission into the future of a sense of danger, but landscapes of this type might produce an undesired effect of attracting the curious Such attraction would seem likely even if the symbology were something simple,like Carl Sagan’ssuggested pictograph of a skull and crossbones (Trauth,Hora, and Guzowski 1993) The third option, landscapes of illusion, has the advantage of overcoming legal concerns as readily as the likely human responses that might detract from the two warnings just mentioned Under this option a so-called soft surface marker would meet the important condition of blatancy and warn the near-future generations, who would be most likely to know of the facilityin the first place The marker, made of a material intended to weather and erode, would disintegrate, leaving no trace The marker would provide warning over the short term, when memory and curiosity would be naturally high, but would disappear from view afcer a few decades, as would active public memory of the wastes beneath it NUCLEAR WARNINGS 21 zyxwv zy 87 zyxwvu zyxw zyxwvutsrqp Mole miner ‘IC “\ marker: Weakly Radioactive Markers Permanent Warnings In a Landscape of Illusion FIG &A wide sensorium of devices would increase the chances of detecting nudear waste, and spherical deployment of the devices would send warnings in all directions Source: Adapted from Benford and others 1991.(Redrafted by Barbara Trapido-Lurie, Department of Geography,Arizona State University) Despite the disintegration of ~ I P P ’ Sobvious warning, the public would not be without protection First, record of the location would continue to be linked to topics of any prospective activity that might threaten it Second and more important, hidden beneath the dull, surficial illusion of simplicity would be a wide sensorium of warnings, beacons,barriers, and deterrents,all configured into a spherical array? The spherical deployment would be a response to the possibility that a mole miner could approach the buried vaults from any direction (Figure 8) The underground beacons should take at least three forms: Acoustic markers Solid rock markers would be unlikely to shatter or lose shape in the salt beds Large granite disks or sphereswould be easily detected by acoustic probes One array could be two straight lines through the WIPP drifts, intersecting perpendicularly to mark the center zyxw 88 zyxwvut THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW zyx Magnetic markers These could be specially made, high-field, permanent magnets-the simplest a strong, single dipole located at the hazard’s centerthat produce a clearly artificial pattern Radioactivemarkers Left outside the bulk of the waste rooms and drifts, these could be small samples of common WIPP isotopes to warn off impending intrusion Like similarly weak but telltale markers left on or near the surface, such markers have the advantageof conveyingmore preciselythe type of danger ahead The markers would be detectable at various distances from the waste itself Acoustic prospecting in the WIPP neighborhood would pick up the granite arrays Magnetic detectorsas small as a pocket compasswould sense deep iron markers from the surface Ultrasensitive particle detectors would discern either the waste itself or small tags with samplesof the waste buried a safe distancebelowground.Thesewould be in amounts so small as to pose no health risk to the curious, weaker than a radium watch yet of long half-life This wide-sensorium approach would require no technological innovations to be effective Even sensors at today’s level of sophistication would detect this prescribed combination zy zyxw zy CONCLUSIONS Our arroganceabout human cleverness fades to modesty once we review the dismal record of our future predictions Such humility is an important personal trait for anyone who attempts to foretell events over the long, worrisome life of radioactive waste It helps us realize that only sketchy outlines of the future, not completed pictures, are within our grasp The more fully we appreciatethe uncertainty of our understanding about the future, the less likely we are to presume that any single decision we make will have a genuine impact on the safety and security of our descendants remote in time Worry about distant-futurehazards can be truly reduced in only one way: avoidance of hazardous-waste production For most countries, avoidanceis more a theoretical than a practical approach to problems of disposal Its underlying philosophy, however, is already slowing civilian nuclear development Meanwhile,as both military and civilian wastes continue to accumulate, the problems of providing adequate public protection throughout the process of disposal-of both present and future materials-remain unresolved Even with the recent attempts to develop persistent-warning strategies, little concrete progress is evident, largely because of policy decisions For example, the Marker Panel was programmatically blocked from discussing the no-marker and soft-marker strategies that are essential to the landscape of illusion advocated here In addition, the Marker Panel’s suggestions incorporated few of the recommendations made by the Futures Panel, despite the fact that their linkages were the stated reason for convening the Futures Panel in the first place NUCLEAR WARNINGS zyxwv zy 89 Any attempt to develop warning landscapes, especially given the legal requirement that efforts to so be made, rests on accepting responsibility for the hazards of nuclear waste As the preceding discussion illustrates, the manner of fulfillingthis noble duty remains unclear We still not know, for example, how to guarantee public safety.Which would be better, minimizing the risk of willful intrusion or that of inadvertent intrusion? Landscapes of illusion would permit us to both Consideration of the questions I have raised in this article reminds us of a more general truth: The most difficult thing to accept about the future is that it will be qualitativelydifferent from both the present and the past An irreducible unknown exists in all predictions that arise from our restricted view of the world As we come to realize that nuclear wastes-like landscapesthemselves-exist with some degree of permanence, we begin to understand that we can little more than guess about how best to protect our descendants, or even ourselves Indeed, attempts to develop permanent landscape warnings for long-livedhazardous waste only underscore the futility of the exercise Strict adherence to environmental ethics within this context becomes an unreachable ideal What we have learned is that the circumstances which influence the development of landscapesare impermanent; for this reason, so too will be any landscape warningwe devise That is the deal we made in haste when first we split the atom zy zyxwvut zy NOTES Radionuclides having a number greater than 92 A futurist, as I use the word in this article,is someonewho specializes in the prediction and anticipation of future events, as determined by a wide variety of techniques, including conjecture, extrapolation, and projection The other membersof the SouthwestTeam were Gregory Benford of the Universityof California, Irvine; Craig Kirkwood of Arizona State University; and Harry Otway of Los Alamos National Laboratory Radionuclides are a speciesof atom having an unstable nucleus, which is subject to spontaneous decay For a summary of environmental conditions at and near the WIPP site, see Guzowski and Gruebeli99i For purposes of aiding subsequent research on this topic, it is important to recognize the shortcomings of the DOE method One of the most obvious deficiencieswas in the socioethnic mix of the participants: The Futures Panel did not include any African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, women, or people outside the Judeo-Christian tradition In addition, all of the members felt constrained by the original DOE charge, which stipulated that the period be only 10,ooo years, even though some radioactive hazards persist longer, and that a no-marker strategy was unacceptable All of the scenarios, in their original form, can be found in Benford and others 1991 The scenarios quoted in this article are slightlyedited renditions from that document The scenariosare also discussed in Hora, von Winterfeldt, and ltauth 1991 I developed the Doom and Gloom Scenario; Gregory Benford,the Mole Miner Scenario;Craig Kirkwood, the Seesaw Scenario; and Harry Otway, the Free State of Chihuahua Scenario This was one of many questions raised during open discussions by the full panel Detailed examination of the other questions is beyond the scope of this article, but they should be mentioned Some of them were: Is it feasible(or even sensible)to suggest scenariosfor an almost arbitrary 10,oooyear time frame? Should we rely on technical advancementsto protect future generations of the radioactive waste problem? Is it reasonable and morally acceptable to assume that the security and 90 zyxwvuts zyxwvut zyxwv zyxwv zyxwv THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW safety of nuclear-waste sites will be revisited and revised periodically? Although each team raised these and other questions of a similar tone, none of the issues was actively considered because they were not part of the enabling legislation or of the DOE’S interpretation of the legislation The SouthwestTeam assumedthat intrusion would always come from the land surface.An independent, wormlike machine, for example, could search (and intrude) from any direction REFERENCES Benford, G., C W Kirkwood, H Otway, and M J Pasqualetti 1991 Ten Thousand Years of Solitude? LA-UO~~M uc-940 S, Los Alamos, N.Mex.: Los Alamos National Laboratory Bertram-Howery, S G 1991 Application of 40 CPR Part 191, Subpart B to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant In Background Information Presented to the Expert Panel on Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, edited by G.V Guzowski and M M Gruebel, 111-1-111-31 s a ~ ~ g l - o g 2uc-721 Albuquerque, N.Mex.: Sandia National Laboratories Bertram-Howery, S G., and R L Hunter, eds 1989 Preliminary Plan for Dqosal-System Characterizationand Long-TermPetjbrmanceEvaluationof the WastelsolationPilotPlant SAND8g-0178 Albuquerque, N.Mex.: Sandia National Laboratories Blowers, A., and D Lowry 1987 Out of Sight, Out of Mind The Politics of Nuclear Waste in the United Kingdom In Nuclear Power in Crisis, edited by A Blowers and D Pepper, 129-163 London: Croom Helm Bonano, E J., S C Hora, R L Keeney, and D von Winterfeldt 1990 Elicitation and Use of Expert Judgment in Petjbrmance Assessment for High-Level Radioactive Waste Repositories NUREG/ ~ ~ - 1s1a~~89-1821 WL Albuquerque, N.Mar.: Sandia National Laboratories Carter, L J 1987 NuclearlmperativesandPublic Trust:Dealing with Radioactive Waste.Washington, D.C.: Resources for the Future Cranwell, R M., R V Guzowski,J E Campbell, and N R Ortiz 1990 Risk MethodologyforGeologic Disposal of Radioactive waste:Scenario Selection Procedure NUREG/C01667, SAND~O-~.Q~ Albuquerque, N.Mex.: Sandia National Laboratories EPA [EnvironmentalProtection Agency] 1985 Environmental Standards for the Management and Disposal ofSpent Nuclear Fuel, High-Level and TransuranicRadioactiveWaste; Final Rule Federal Resister 50: 3806638089 Flynn, J., J Chalmers, D Easterling, R Kasperson, H Kunreuther, D K Mertz, A Mushkatel, K D Pijawka, and P Slovic 1995 One Hundred Centuries of Solitude: RedirectingAmerica’s HighLevel Nuclear WastePolicy, Boulder, (310.: Westview Press Givens, D B 1982 From Here to Eternity: Communication with the Distant Future Etcetera 39 (Summer): 15g-179 Glacken,C J 1967 Traces on the Rhodian Shore Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press Goin, P 1991 Nuclear Landscapes Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press Guzomki, G.V., and M M Gruebel, eds 1991 BackgroundlnformationPresented to theExpertPane1 Albuon Inadvertent Human Inirusion into the WasteIsohtion Pilot Plant s a ~ ~ g i - o g 2uc-721 querque, N.Ma: Sandia National Laboratories Hora, S C., D von Winterfeldt, and K M Trauth 1991 Expertludgmenton Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the WasteIso&ationPilot Plant SANDg0-3063 uc-721 Albuquerque, N.Muc.: Sandia National Laboratories Hunter, R L., R M Cranwell, and M S Y Chu 1986 Assessing Compliancewith the EPA High-Level waste Standard h eve??" NURBG/CR-4510 SAND860121.Albuquerque, N.Ma.: Sandia National Laboratories Jackson, J B 1984 The Word Itself In Discovering the VernacularLandscape, by J B Jackson, 3-8 New Haven, COM.: Yale University Press Jacob,G 1990 Site Unseen:The Politics of Sitinga Nuclear WasteRepository.Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press Kaplan, M F 1982 Archaeological Data as a Basisfor Repository Marker Design ONWI-354.Columbus, Ohio: Office of Nudear Waste Isolation, Battelle Memorial Institute - 1986 Mankind’s Future: Using the Past to Protect the Future: Archaeologyand the Disposal of Highly RadioactiveWastes Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 11 (32): 257-267 zyxwvutsr zyxwvuts zy zyxwv zy zyxwvutsr zyxwvuts zyxwvuts zyxwvu zyxwv NUCLEAR WARNINGS 91 Kaplan, M F., and M Adams 1986 Using the Past to Protect the Future: Marking Nuclear Waste Disposal Sites Archaeology 39 (September-October):51-54 Kasperson, R., ed 1982 Equity Issues in Radioactive Waste Management Cambridge, Mass.: Oelgeschlager, Gunn & Hain Loomis, D 1993 Combat Zoning: Military Land- Use Planning in Nevada Reno: University of Nevada Press Mann, W B 1986 Identification of Nuclear-Waste Sites over Ten Millennia Nuclear and Chemical WasteManagement (1): 95-100 Marsh, G P 1965 [1864] Man and Nature Edited by D Lowenthal Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press Medvedw Z A 1990 The Legacy of Chernobyl.New York W.W Norton Misrach, R., with M W Misrach 1990 Bravozo: The Bombing of theAmerican West.Baltimore,Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press NEA [U.S Nuclear Energy Agency] 1989 Risks Associated with Human Intrusion at Radioactive WasteDisposal Sites Proceedings of an NEA Workshop, Paris, 5-7 June Nowak, E J.,J R Tillerson, and T M Torres 1990 Initial Reference Seal System Design: WasteIsolation Pilot Plant (WPP) ~ ~ ~ ~ - 0Albuquerque, 355 N.Mex.: Sandia National Laboratories ONeil, D 1994 The Firecracker Boys New York St Martin's Griffin Reicher, D 1990 Personal communication Albuquerque, N.Mex., 13August Sauer,C 1938 Destructive Exploitation in Modern Colonial Expansion.ComptesRendus du Congr& International de Gkographie (Amsterdam),vol 2, sec 3c: 494-499 Sebeok, T A 1984 Communication Measures to Bridge Ten Millennia Columbus, Ohio: Office of Nuclear Waste Isolation, Battelle Memorial Institute Shelley, F., B Solomon, M J Pasqualetti, and G T Murauskas 1988 Locational Conflict and the Siting of Nudear Waste Disposal Repositories: An International Appraisal Environment and Planning C:Government (3): 323-333 Solomon, B D., and D M Cameron 1984 The Impact of Nuclear Power Plant Dismantlement on RadioactiveWaste Disposal Man, Environment, Space and Time (1): 39-60 Solomon, B D., F Shelley, M J Pasqualetti, and G T Murauskas 1987 RadioactiveWaste Management Policies in Seven Industrialized Democracies Geoforum 18 (4): 411j-431 Swift,P N 1991 Agriculture and C l i t i c Change at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant Background Information Presented to the Expert Panel on Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the WasteIsolation Pilot Plant, edited by G V Guzowski and M M Gruebel, v111-1-v111-6 s a ~ ~ g i - o g 2uc-721 Albuquerque, N.Mex.: Sandia National Laboratories Tannenbaum, P H 1984 Communication across 300 Generations: Deterring Human Interference with WasteDeposit Sites ONWI-535.Columbus, Ohio: Office of Nuclear Waste Isolation, Battelle Memorial Institute Trauth, K., S C Hora, and R V Guzowski 1993 ExpertJudgment on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Humanlntrusion into the WasteIsokatbnPibtPlant.SAND~Z-1382 uc-72i.Albuquerque, N.Mex.: Sandia National Laboratories U.S Department of Energy 1996 Cbsing the Circle on the splitting of the Atom DOE/EM-O266 Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office Van der Plight, J 1992 Nuclear Energy and the Public Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Weart, W D 1991 History and Overview of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant In Background Information Presented to the Expert Panel on Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the WasteIsolation Pilot Plant, edited by G V.Guzowski and M M Gruebel, 11-1-11-29 samgi-092.8 uc-721 Albuquerque, N.Mex.: Sandia National Laboratories Weitzberg,A 1982 Building on Existing Institutions to Perpetuate Knowledge of Waste Repositories ONWI-379 Columbus, Ohio: Office of Nuclear Waste Isolation, Battelle Memorial Institute  ... specific intent and effort can we avoid encountering landscapes stripped, trimmed, planed, drained, and otherwise reshaped by the staggering human command of technology Faith in landscapepermanence,once... environmental change and resource use because it helps us organize myriad design possibilities into three categories: landscapes of reclamation, landscapes of repulsion, and landscapes of illusion... number of plausible futures under consideration and to guide the design of landscape warnings and messages (Cranwell and others 1990;Guzowski and Gruebel zyxwv zyx 1991) 80 zyxwvutsrqp zyxwv