This Place is Not a Place of Honor-- Nuclear Semiotics Reading Plan

Nuclear Semiotics Reading Plan

Asterisks indicates currently inaccessible sources

Short-term goals (To read more thoroughly):

Sebeok, Thomas A. “Pandora’s Box: Why and How to Communicate 10,000 Years Into the Future.” Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture, 6 November 1981. https://www.generalsemantics.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/gsb-49-sebeok.pdf

Jensen, Michael, Nordic Nuclear Safety Research. Conservation and Retrieval

of Information- Elements of a Strategy to Inform Future Societies about Nuclear Waste Repositories. Roskilde, Denmark, 1993. 

Givens, David B. “From Here To Eternity: Communicating with the Distant Future.” A Review of General Semantics, vol. 39, no. 2, 1982, pp. 159–179. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42575926

Munsch, Sebastian. “The Atomic Priesthood and Nuclear Waste Management - Religion, Sci-fi, Literature, and the End of our Civilization.” Zygon Journal of Religion and Science, vol. 51, no. 3, 2016, pp. 626-639. https://www.academia.edu/27875581/The_Atomic_Priesthood_and_Nuclear_Waste_Management_Religion_Sci_fi_Literature_and_the_End_of_our_Civilization_in_Zygon_Journal_of_Religion_and_Science_Volume_51_Issue_3_2016_p_626_639

Sebeok, Thomas A. United States, US Department of Energy, Research Center for Language and Semiotic Studies. Communication Measures to Bridge Ten Millennia. Columbus, Ohio, Government Printing Office, 1984.

https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/16/010/16010244.pdf

Risk assessment of Sweden’s repository

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/252675003_Nuclear_Waste_Risks_and_Sustainable_Development

Trauth, Kathleen, et al. United States, Department of Energy, Sandia National Laboratories. Expert Judgment on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Albuquerque, New Mexico, Government Printing Office, 1993. https://prod-ng.sandia.gov/techlib-noauth/access-control.cgi/1992/921382.pdf

United States, Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Waste Isolation. Reducing the Likelihood of Future Human Activities That Could Affect Geologic High-level Waste Repositories. Columbus, Ohio, Government Printing Office, 1984.https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/6799619

5-page WIPP report on passive institutional control requirements

https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1242770

Pierce, Sebeok, and the Semiotic Reformation on Contemporary Communications

http://www.gilsonsociety.com/files/011-031-Magsino.pdf

Paper on Biolinguistics and Biosemiotics, goes into Sebeoks work

https://biolinguistics.eu/index.php/biolinguistics/article/view/255

Gregory Benford and a few others’ WIPP official doc contributions. This would be very helpful for sections on predicting what the future holds. Includes 3 scenarios of technological advancement/regression

https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/22/064/22064107.pdf

Thomas Sebeok’s review of his own submitted report to HITF, a part of the Topics in Contemporary Semiotics Book series, perhaps I could find other sources there

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4899-3490-1_13 *

Mid-term goals (To read in the next two years):

Ghertner, D. Asher, et al. “Security Aesthetics of and Beyond the Biopolitical.” Futureproof:

Security Aesthetics and the Management of Life. Durham, NC, Duke university Press, 2020. https://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/2698/chapter/1965540/Security-Aesthetics-of-and-Beyond-the-Biopolitical

Gregory Benford (sci fi author on WIPP panel)’s first hand account of working to come up with these solutions, which he calls Deep Time. Gives good insight into their thought process, as well as what it was like to work on this team

https://www.physics.uci.edu/~silverma/benford.html *

Environmental Impact Statement for Yucca Mtn depository

https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0326/ML032691306.pdf

EPA on institutional controls

https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/documents/final_pime_guidance_december_2012.pdf

2004 Waste Isolation Pilot Plant Implementation Plan

https://www.wipp.energy.gov/library/PermanentMarkersImplementationPlan.pdf

Handbook of semiotics, less specific more general usage in modern society

https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=rHA4KQcPeNgC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=topics+in+contemporary+semiotics&ots=dgi1vTjO6f&sig=RPtT7MfPxhhYks4-Xy9ExMgyJJc#v=onepage&q&f=false

Into Eternity (2010) documentary

Long-term goals (To read in the next five years):

Circles in architecture as the perfect form

https://archive.bridgesmathart.org/1999/bridges1999-173.pdf

Semiotics for Beginners David Chandler pdf

https://postarchive.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/semiotics-for-beginners.pdf

Using the Past to Protect the Future, by Maureen F. Kaplan and Mel Adams, Archeology, Sept. 1986, pp. 51-54. *

A complete, 218 page history of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant project, this gives history to the creation of the plant and the problem at hand. Not focused on scientific nitty gritties or solutions, more on the context for these ideas

https://www.sandia.gov/about/history/_assets/documents/MoraWIPP991482.pdf

Directory Sources (Sources with useful bibliographies and links):

Dunn, Charles. Multigenerational Warning Signs. March 17, 2011. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2011/ph241/dunn2/ (General, Trefoil)

Forum site with good sources and overview, but it’s really sketchy 

http://www.nuclear-heritage.net/index.php/Marking_Nuclear_Waste_Disposal_Facilities(General, Nuclear energy today)

Tannanbaum, Percy H. United States, Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Waste Isolation. Communication Across 300 Generations: Deterring Human Interference with Waste Disposal Sites. Columbus, Ohio, Government Printing Office. 1984. https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/16/010/16010245.pdf?r=1

[Percy Tannenbaum was a social psychologist on the Human Interference Task Force, his report favors the usage of the trefoil for millennia, though it’s mostly just assessing what an information system needs to illicit a certain psychological response, not offering any one solution.] (Psychology, pictographs)

Pandora’s box secondary review 

https://www.mat.ucsb.edu/~g.legrady/academic/courses/01sp200a/students/enricaLovaglio/pandora/Pandora.html (linguistic and myth evolution)

Technical University of Berlin, Institute of Language and Communication. “And in all eternity: Communication over 10,000 years: How do we tell our children's children where the nuclear waste is?” Journal of Semiotics, vol. 6, no 3, 1984. https://www.semiotik.tu-berlin.de/menue/zeitschrift_fuer_semiotik/zs-hefte/bd_6_hft_3/ (fringe ideas, ray cats, satellite moon)

Choi, Harry. “Nuclear Semiotics.” Medium, Oct 24, 2019. https://medium.com/@mhscho0096/nuclear-semiotics-c10c434a0407 Accessed Oct 23, 2020.

[A more mainstream news source overview of Nuclear Semiotics, though I’d highly recommend this one over other similar sources, as it tends to cover a wide variety of solutions concisely yet thoughtfully, explaining why a certain method may not work in a comprehensive, almost narrative fashion.] (General, archeology, linguistics)

Paper on Biolinguistics and Biosemiotics, goes into Sebeoks work (Linguistics, Psychology, Semiotics)

https://biolinguistics.eu/index.php/biolinguistics/article/view/255

Nuclear Energy Agency Reference Bibliography for nuclear waste memory and messages, I’m HYPED about this source (General, about everything but fringe ideas)

https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/10003972/nea-rwm201113-rev1-oecd-nuclear-energy-agency

Topics requiring additional sources:

Art in Nuclear waste markers

Hospitable markers

Swedish Repository

Linguistic Predictions

Historical warning structures/ archeology

Satellite Moon

Biosemiotics