Transition Culture

28 Jun 2006

A Fool’s Legacy.

As part of preparing for last night’s talk I gave for Totnes Greenpeace, I was reading about nuclear waste storage, and something struck me very forcibly. We are looking at a waste heap of highly radioactive waste in the world at this point, generated by the world’s 440 reactors, of around 150,000 tons. That’s 150,000 tons of waste that needs constant monitoring and cooling and a lot of hi tech supervision.

If we had to use nuclear power to replace all power generation done by fossil fuels, we would require 12,000 reactors, which would generate 4,500,000 tons of waste. This won’t happen, for a number of reasons, but what struck me more was the time frame required in terms of storage. In order to become relatively safe, it needs to be stored for 100,000 years. I have looked at that figure many times and thought “hmmm, yes, 100,000 years, without really taking it on. How long is 100,000 years? What was happening here 100,000 years ago?

100,000 years is a very, very long time. Longer probably than we can even conceive. As Paul Mobbs writes, “the problem is that human society’s oldest monuments are only a few thousand years old, and these are just heaps of stone�. Stonehenge, one of the oldest man made structures in the UK was only made around 4,000 years ago! The great pyramids were made 4,500 years ago (depending on who you believe!). 100,000 years ago human beings were still evolving from apes in Africa.

How astonishingly stupid it is to imagine that our ancestors in 100,000 years time will have the wherewithal to maintain this highly demanding legacy. As I have written before, we cannot imagine that nuclear waste could be kept safe with wattle and daub or cob bricks. If it is underground it’s not much better, as we are less able to maintain it.

Imagine people 50,000 years in the future (hard isn’t it… we can’t even predict the impacts peak oil will have in the next 10 years!). They are only able to survive on this planet if they dedicate a large part of their time and resources to servicing something left behind in their ancient history of which they had no knowledge or understanding. They of course, experienced none of the wonderful benefits of the giddy heights that we, their selfish ancient ancestors, have scaled, they are just condemned, for thousands of generations, to toil to contain this poison. How unspeakably selfish we are.

The Industrial Revolution is only 5 or 6 generations ago. Peak oil looks certain to mean that within the next 10 years, the high energy intensive materials that make this maintenance possible will begin to become unfeasible to produce. Certainly in 100 years, it is hard to see how it will be possible. Beyond that doesn’t even bear thinking about. At best a decision to add any more to this pile of poison is short sighted and stupid, at worst it is a callous and brutal dismissal of future generations and of their ability to live straightforward, uncontaminated lives. 100,000 years, think about it.