But in all seriousness, the idea is to make the place of the final nuclear waste disposal unattractive to curious humans of the future 10’000 years.
So why not somewhere that is naturally unattractive and stays so for a few million years? Like, a never changing extreme desert? Antarctica? A deep sea trench?
It also needs to be somewhere geologically stable. You really don’t want erosion cracking open the storage. That limits the options.
It’s also worth noting that habitability can change remarkably rapidly. E.g. the Sahara went through a green period. It ended about 5000 years ago. The reverse can also happen.
The mindset being used is also layered defense. We need to make it simultaneously understandable, boring and off-putting. Putting it somewhere inaccessible also helps.
But in all seriousness, the idea is to make the place of the final nuclear waste disposal unattractive to curious humans of the future 10’000 years.
So why not somewhere that is naturally unattractive and stays so for a few million years? Like, a never changing extreme desert? Antarctica? A deep sea trench?
Actually…
There is no saying that a desert will remain a desert in 10k years.
It also needs to be somewhere geologically stable. You really don’t want erosion cracking open the storage. That limits the options.
It’s also worth noting that habitability can change remarkably rapidly. E.g. the Sahara went through a green period. It ended about 5000 years ago. The reverse can also happen.
The mindset being used is also layered defense. We need to make it simultaneously understandable, boring and off-putting. Putting it somewhere inaccessible also helps.
It appears to already be happening again, early because of climate change.