Will Art Save Our Descendants from Radioactive Waste?
In the early 1970s, the U.S. Department of Energy recognized an ethical obligation to store nuclear waste in a manner that would protect future humans from its health hazards. But there was a catch—low-level plutonium remains hazardous for 24,000 years; our best containment systems will only last for 10,000 years. Two decades later the government found an unlikely solution: they commissioned two teams of anthropologists, artists, linguists and semioticians to develop “markers” that would warn humans ten millennia into the future—when no known languages and cultural symbols are expected to remain.
Author:
Source:
JSTOR Daily
Published: May 13, 2015
Length: 8 minutes (2,100 words)