Landscape permanence and nuclear warnings (3)

American Geographical Society Landscape Permanence and Nuclear Warnings Author(s): Martin J Pasqualetti Source: Geographical Review, Vol 87, No (Jan., 1997), pp 73-91 Published by: American Geographical Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/215659 Accessed: 13/02/2009 17:18 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ags Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org American Geographical Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Geographical Review http://www.jstor.org LANDSCAPE PERMANENCE AND NUCLEAR WARNINGS MARTIN J PASQUALETTI From the perspectiveof a human lifetime, the hazardsof some nuclearwastes are permanent,so the warningswe place at contaminated nuclearsites must be permanent too I addressquestions of how best to provide one hundred centuries of public warning at the first facilityfor permanentdisposal,the WasteIsolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico Scenarios of intrusion developedto guide the design of warningmarkerspredictedthat most of the changes in the areawill be social and cultural.Becauseblatant and permanent markers will increase, not reduce, the probability of inadvertent intrusion, the most appropriate warning is a "landscapeof illusion."Such a landscapeneeds not permanentsurfacemarkers but undergroundwarning devicesbeneath a soft surfacemarker.No warning can guarantee deterrencefor lo,ooo years,however.Keywords:landscape,nuclearwaste,WasteIsolationPilot Plant ABSTRACT 7Vo reviewof theplanet'senvironmental accountbookscanoverlooktheblatant andaccelerating lossof naturallandscapes desireto Justasobviousisthewidespread sloworhalttheselosses.Whatreasoningliesbehindpeople'sconcern?Isthepurpose of landscapeprotectionto safeguard floraandfauna?Do scientistsbelievethattimeis tooshortto evaluateallthecostsoflandscapedamage? Oristhewholeenvironmental movementbeingpoweredbyafanatical thatisopposedtoall preservation imperative none of these is in the recordof landscape change? Actually, explanations paramount rescueandrehabilitation Anotherforce-out of sight,primal,andfarmorepowerful-is atwork.Amongthemajorattractionsof naturallandscapesis theirveryimthequalityeachhas,inJ.B.Jackson's words,tobe "aspacewitha degreeof mutability, The more we suffer thelossof naturallandscapes, the (Jackson 1984,5) permanence" morewe realizethateffortsto savethemamountto bidsto saveourselves When,a fewcenturiesago,thehumanworldviewwaslimitedto smallandsimple neighborhoodenvironments, landscapeswereconsiderednot merelyimmutablebutinvulnerable SuchinnocencewassweptasidebytheIndustrialRevolution,a quickeningcurrentof environmental changethatexpandedthe peripheryof humanawareness Withincreasingfrequency, watchfulskepticscameto recognizethe extent of torn and scarred in the nameof progress(Sauer1938; great landscapes Glacken1967).Bythe mid-nineteenthcenturyenvironmental damagehadmarred largeportionsof the earth'ssurface,especiallyin Europe Oneof themostobservantandthoughtfulwitnessesto therapidenvironmental changesin EuropewasGeorgePerkinsMarsh,anablescholaranddiplomatwho,in his remarkable ManandNature(1965[1864]),chronicledthe risingpowerof humansto permanently change,withincreasingease,thesurfaceof theearth.Though now widelyconsidereda cornerstoneof the environmentalmovement,the book wasgivenlittlenoticeduringMarsh's lifetime,itsmessagemuffledbythepresumed *t DR PASQUALETTI is a professor of geography at Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287-0104 The GeographicalReview87 (1): 73-91, January1997 Copyright ? 1997by the American GeographicalSociety of New York 74 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW recuperativepowers of nature and by the knowledge that frontiers,once crossed, had alwaysexposed bountiful new riches for the privatetaking In the late twentieth century,environmentaldegradationhas grown so much that only with specific intent and effort can we avoid encountering landscapes stripped,trimmed, planed, drained,and otherwisereshapedby the staggeringhuman command of technology.Faithin landscapepermanence,once unassailable,is vulnerable,witherednot only by growingcynicismbut also by historicaleventsand an assortmentof mechanicaltools and forcesthatwe ourselveshavedeveloped.Curiously,the tool with the greatestabilityto reshapeis still seldom recognized.That tool is nuclearpower Nuclear power can reshape landscapes in several ways The most obvious changes come from weapons testing (Misrach 1990; Goin 1991;Loomis 1992), as con- ducted for severaldecadesin Nevadaand other ruralrealms,and engineeringexcavations, such as those once proposed for Alaska (O'Neil 1994).A second body of changesresultsfrom massivetranslocationsof contaminatedvegetationand soil, as was necessaryafter the Chernobylexplosion (Medvedev1990).A third and littleappreciatedalterationinvolveslandscapeadjustmentsthatwill accompanythe permanent storageof long-lived radioactivewastesat severaldisposalsites under considerationaround the world The strongspatialscent of this growingthird alterationhas attractedthe attention of geographersinterestedin identifyingthe routesand sites for the transportation and disposal of waste material,in assessingpublic perceptionsof risk,and in identifyingequityissuesaccompanyingall decisionsaboutwastehandling (Kasperson 1982;Solomon and Cameron 1984;Blowers and Lowry 1987;Solomon and others 1987;Shelley and others 1988;Jacob 1990;van der Plight 1992;Flynn and others 1995) Despite such contributions,geographershaveyet to focus on the use of landscapes to deter inadvertentexposureto the long-lived hazardsof nuclearwaste.Attention to this approachby specialistsin other fields has also been meager Considerationof the landscapesof waste is beginning to expose an underlying irony.Evenas many people are trying to preservesome semblanceof naturallandscapesfor all futuregenerationsto enjoy,manyothersarethinkingabout how to develop artificial landscapes which, in an odd inversion, we would ask all future generationsto avoid.The essentialchallengeis how to effectivelyalert the prudent without attractingthe foolish The many paths towarda solution tend to merge into two broad avenues.One leads towarda silent landscape,a landscapethat suggestsno hazardand attractsno specialattention,quietlymaskingall buriedwastebeneatha patinaof calculatedinnocence The second leads toward a blatant and permanentlandscape,brimming with threatand forebodingthat only the senselesscould miss Which route is more likelyto achieve our goal?How can we weigh our options? At present,the United Statesappearsintent on developingan obvious and durable warningstrategy,one that emergesfromthe environmentalchangesanticipated at eachwastelocale.Unambiguouslyidentifyingsuch changesis neitheran easynor 75 NUCLEAR WARNINGS U.S NuclearWeapons Complex Hanford' Site ' ' ' o M w ', : o , - - - ,, " " -'" Los'Alam'os"Idaho National : Engineering - - - - Peducah':,-. ;'- Laboratory s - ) - b : Burlington se ada MndW Lawrence OKansas Nevada Livermore National TeatSite - Laboratory RockyFlats Plant CityPlant , WeldonA Spri LosAlaos ?Wr: -* National \L,W Laboratory i\1ran: LavrrCe edj~t IsaSandia Plant Peducah O Plant :.OakRidge u ReNational Laboratories Isolation + Pantex Waste Pilot nIN Plant Plant an ortt la : Reservationa i ? ??-?I :: : .Sv Savannah Ri(,erSite Atolls Amchitka Island W Uranium Mining and Milling + Nonnuclear Components A UraniumRefining * Weapons Design A UraniumEnrichment Q Testing A UraniumFoundry i Assemblyand Dismantlement Z Fuel and TargetFabrication Formerindustrialsites contaminated Fe PlutoniumProductionReactors withradioactivity, some butnot all of whichcontributed to nuclearweapons * Reprocesingto Separate Plutonium production.Numbersindicatehow NuclearComponents many sites were located in the state FIG 1-The nuclear weapons complex Source: Adapted from U.S Department of Energy 1996 (Cartography by Barbara Trapido-Lurie, Department of Geography, Arizona State University) a foolproof task for at least one importantreason:Although we havebeen successfullyusing archaeologyto look millions of yearsinto the distantpastand astronomy to penetratedeep space,we have repeatedlydemonstrateda severelylimited ability to peer into the future Individuallyand as a species, we humans are glued to the present,mired virtuallymotionless in the perspectivesof our own time Absent improvedpredictivepowers, the approachnow being embracedby the U.S Departmentof Energy(DOE)is the fashioningof warningmarkers,developed from long-range scenariosof environmentalchange at each waste site In response to an increasinglyurgent and widespreadproblem (Figurei), I addressseveralfu- 76 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW tureenvironmentalscenariosand the corresponding landscapewarningsfor the firstrepositoryforpermanentdisposalof nuclearby-products, theWasteIsolation PilotPlant(wiPP)in NewMexico(Figure2) THEDUTYTOWARN WIPPwasauthorizedin 1979to demonstrate thesafedisposalof radioactive wastes Ifit receivesa permitto operate,WIPP is to become producedbythedefenseindustry a permanenthousing facility for disposed transuranic The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant ^o o< \^/, Lia Lake \Avalon wastes.' Over the past twenty years the wIPPproject has receivedextraordinaryattention ) -\ 1.~y ~!A~a MS.1-! .the \.( Carlsbad 3S r^^^ WIPP / S 0/S;^Malagat ~ *, , :: , /LovingN ' Sat I (C 0O the federal government, state of New Mexico, the !,from nuclearindustry,andenvironmental advocates (Carter 1987; Jacob 1990).Giventhelongand oftenboisterousdebate,wIPP's surface expression is unexpect- 128)