The primary objective of a nuclear waste warning marker is to deter future humans from intruding on the site, and to that end, many of the marker proposals, whether physical, symbolic, or cultural, aim to intimidate or unnerve their audience. Physical structures proposed for the Waste Isolation power plant feature purposeful asymmetry, such as the leaning spikes or the thorn field, or are built to purposefully inhibit use of the land, such as patches of rubble or a “black hole” field of land that discourages agriculture or travel over such a sun-absorptive plain. Yet these repulsing structures or images threaten a marker’s secondary objective, that of self-preservation. If a marker is visibly revolting, even a culture still aware of its purpose might seek to tear it down, and if a culture isn’t aware of its purpose, the markers are constructed to appear unsacred and insignificant, offering no incentive to keep them there.
Then, perhaps creating an aesthetically pleasing or visually compelling marker could counteract the possibility of its removal by unwelcoming institutions. Whether nuclear waste warning messages should have artistic intentions is a highly debated topic in the field of nuclear semiotics, and it certainly has its pros and cons. The Human interference task force report was still in the early stages of nuclear semiotics, so the question wasn’t given much detail, though they did argue that having some intrinsic aesthetic or educational purpose to the markers might discredit the marker’s portent of danger. Additionally, using artistic markers on the smaller scale-- pictographs and images artistically depicting nuclear waste rather than large-scale architecture-- might implore humans to excavate the site for curatorial or anthropological purposes, reading the signs as “there is art buried here” rather than “there are harmful materials buried here”. Jon Lomberg, of the members of the WIPP markers panel team B and a professional artist himself, urged against symbolic art for waste markers, firstly because art is ambiguous, and though it can be a powerful tool in nonverbal communication, the artistic intent is not always as clear as the art’s depictions themselves. As an example, he referenced how ancient cave paintings clearly depict animals and people, though offers little clue as to why they might have been created, other than simply to create art, which leads into his next counterpoint: art in itself is a purpose. Creating waste markers to be pieces of art might cause its future viewers to believe their purpose is creative expression, not that the art is simply a means to an end. Furthermore, it could attract tourists eager to see the site, encouraging business and settlement around the site, which could lead to more opportunities for inadvertent intrusion.
Yet there are many in the field of nuclear semiotics who recognize the potential benefits of aesthetic markers. David Givens, a member of the HITF debated that attractiveness could discourage future societies from destroying the markers, and furthermore, artistic representations of importance, “such as regularity of arrangement, amount of material, homogeneity of elements, regularity of shape, congruity, number of independent elements, symmetry, and degree of random-ness in distribution, show "impressive similarities'' among cultures”. Art history is notoriously adept at preserving cultural memory. One of the members of the WIPP markers panel team A, Dieter Ast, stated “Beauty is conserved, ugliness discarded,” and that creating markers that instill awe in their audience might mitigate the possibility of their removal.
In the end, the stance of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant group was that an aesthetically attractive marker might incur unnecessary risk, or cause the warning to be misinterpreted or discredited. Another reasoning (briefly) given for this position was that using artistic platforms to create a marker would make it extremely difficult to establish any sort of international standard, which would be ideal in ensuring that the message is interpreted as intended (although the task of standardizing the designs from this many interdisciplinary groups is difficult on just a national scale, there is still much work to be done in coordinating any international directive).
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
[The Human Interference Task Force, formed in 1981, was the first real effort to create nuclear waste warning messages for the long-term future. Though the majority of their solutions have yet to be implemented, and the Yucca Mountain storage facility project (for which the report was originally intended) has indefinitely stalled, these ideas circa 1984 are the Nuclear Semiotics equivalent of The Old Testament, the original DOE proposals for long-term nuclear waste warning messages.]
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
[If the HITF report of 1984 is the Old Testament of Nuclear Semiotics, the Sandia report is the New Testament. It branches off of the ideas set into motion by the Task force, and presents some of the most circulated solutions in the field, such as hostile architecture and certain pictographs. Additionally, it took an interesting approach to diversifying its ideas by splitting its team into two focus groups; you’ll find the individual reports from each team as well as a general report here.]
Hora, Stephen, et al. United States, Department of Energy, Sandia National Laboratories. Expert Judgment on Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Albuquerque, New Mexico, Government Printing Office, 1991. https://www.wipp.energy.gov/library/cca/CCA_1996_References/Chapter%207/CREL3329.PDF [This is the final report of the Futures Panel for the WIPP project. It summarizes the teams' findings, methodology and conclusions, and in its appendix you'll find all four individual team reports.]
Codée, Hans D. K. “Give the Public Something, Something More Interesting than Radioactive Waste.” WM’03 Conference, Tucson, Arizona, February 23-27, 2003. https://xcdsystem.com/wmsym/archives//2003/pdfs/37.pdf
[A conference paper by a representative of COVRA, the facility holding radioactive waste in The Netherlands, detailing the first ten years of their site and the effects of artistically interesting facilities on their public appreciation.]
Choi, Harry. “Nuclear Semiotics.” Medium, Oct 24, 2019. https://medium.com/@mhscho0096/nuclear-semiotics-c10c434a0407 Accessed Nov 14, 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.]
“Preserve and Transmit Memory.” ANDRA, 2018. https://www.andra.fr/nos-expertises/conserver-et-transmettre-la-memoire Accessed Nov 14, 2020.
Anderson, Kelli. Designing for Deep Time: How Art History is Used to Mark Nuclear Waste. Pratt Institute, Master’s Thesis, 2005. http://www.kellianderson.com/MSthesis.pdf
Joyce, Rosemary A. The Future of Nuclear Waste: What Art and Archaeology Can Tell Us About Securing the World’s Most Hazardous Material. New York, NY, Oxford University Press, 2020. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=R8XLDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=art+in+nuclear+waste+warning+messages&ots=Xj5VaDwT9W&sig=yZVml2hgfFBG-rBRLCNV1nLggqE#v=onepage&q=art%20in%20nuclear%20waste%20warning%20messages&f=false
Carpenter, Ele. “The Nuclear Anthropocene.” Fluid Encounters Between Art and Science Conference, Umea, Sweden, October 2-3, 2014. https://www.academia.edu/10113931/Ele_Carpenter_The_Nuclear_Anthropocene
I love the fact that the "mysticism" scenario went into such absurd detail – obviously the Sci-Fi writer on the team geeking out. In my mind's eye I can see both the rest of the team going "Hey, you're the writer. You want to write up what we've decided while the rest of s go back to the hotel?" and then the general at the Pentagon a week later rolling his eyes and pulling out his hair as he reads it....
ReplyDeleteLike Galusha says, the other one by that team also tells you at least as much about the people on the team as anything.....
Some version of the Seesaw theory seems like the most likely to me by far, based on past long-term history (and the most dangerous – yay!).
The fact that the team that seems least sci-fi oriented (Washington B) was also the only one to whom it didn't occur that the economic/political model would ever change, in the face of all the contrary historical evidence, might be an indication of why it was wise to include science fiction authors, who are used to thinking on a much more long-term scale, and thinking through much deeper societal differences, than policy-makers deal with in their training and jobs; policy makers are only thinking a few decades, or at most a few centuries ahead.
That Benford novel looks interesting, I'm putting it on my "to try to read eventually someday" amazon list...
Huh, I see that somehow my comment to an earlier post ended up on here(...?)... anyway...
ReplyDeleteI kept thinking as I was reading this about how in the early 19th Century people started tearing down medieval buildings all over Europe because ideas of beauty had changed, and Notre-Dame cathedral was slated to be demolished as an eyesore; it took a huge campaign by artists and poets to change Europeans' standards of beauty back to where they could appreciate those buildings and to start a preservation campaign (Hugo's 'Hunchback of Notre-Dame' was written specifically for that purpose). And that was only about 500 years' difference, not 10,000!
I couldn't help looking up Nickey Nuke, who according to the internet looks like this: https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/795747818216574977/vV6Sx6Rw_400x400.jpg
Wow! There's a lot here. This is a great article, very unbiased. I have to say that I like the Dutch approach best. Still, I do think that people are getting too caught up in whether or not art is an approprate marker. In my opinion global uniformity is most important.
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