Atomic semiotics

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Entrance to Yucca Mountain
Conventional warning signal radioactivity W05: "Warning of radioactive substances or ionizing radiation"
More understandable warning of radioactive radiation according to ISO 21482 since 2007

Human Interference Task Force is a sense of semiotics , ie the "theory of the sign , in the context of using nuclear energy can be harnessed associated problems." In a narrower sense it is the application of semiotics to draft warnings about the dangers of nuclear waste for posterity.

The research direction originated in 1981 when the semiotic and linguist Thomas Sebeok was appointed to a working group on the permanent safety of nuclear waste ("Human Interference Task Force") on behalf of the US government and the Bechtel Group . He wrote a separate chapter for the final report. Atomic semiotics became known in German-speaking countries when Roland Posner from the Department of Semiotics at the Technical University of Berlin asked twelve international scientists from East and West in 1982/83 to contribute to a themed issue of the Zeitschrift für Semiotik , which appeared in 1984. Since then the subject has been taken up again and again, both seriously and as a curiosity.

Since 2011, a joint working group of the Nuclear Energy Agency and the OECD has dealt with the question of “preserving data, knowledge and memories over generations” based on the handling of nuclear waste and is developing new concepts in the process.

Thomas Sebeok

Problem

Through the operation of nuclear power plants and other nuclear facilities, industrial nations produce radioactive substances in such quantities that their health effects can be fatal for thousands of years. Nuclear technology therefore leads to the ethical responsibility to keep radioactive substances away from the biosphere for this long period of time . But there is no institution that is able to continuously maintain the necessary knowledge for thousands of years and to deal responsibly with the long-term consequences, because the time dimensions exceed the previous human standards. Similar tasks also arise with other particularly complex technical systems such as genetic engineering , land mines , toxic waste dumps and space junk , but also with the need to preserve information about special events over a long period of time, such as when commemorating the Holocaust . Interstellar communication is also considered comparable . A relationship between atomic semiotics and attempts at communication such as the Pioneer plaque , the Arecibo message and the Voyager Golden Record is derived from the latter .

Three things should be communicated to posterity:

  • that it is a message at all,
  • that dangerous substances are stored at a certain point,
  • Information on the type of dangerous substances.

The warning must also be credible so that the addressees do not understand the content, but do not see it as a warning about the danger, but believe that it is intended to protect valuable treasures from unauthorized access. Sebeok referred to the legend of the curse of the Pharaoh .

State institutions rarely last more than a few hundred years. Religions can exist for longer periods of time, but they too “are hardly older than a few thousand years and have passed down myths rather than scientific information.” For the USA, the time horizon for markings was set at 10,000 years; In Germany, on the other hand, scientists, nuclear power advocates and nuclear power opponents have determined, as part of analyzes by the working group for the selection process for repository sites (AkEnd), that nuclear waste must be safely sealed off from the biosphere for a period of one million years - that would be around 30,000 (human) generations. On the other hand, the written history of mankind has just lasted 5,000 years until now. Possible warnings in cuneiform are only understood by experts, those in Indus script are not understood by anyone.

history

The problem of securing nuclear waste repositories in the long term was already pointed out in 1972, and concrete proposals were made from 1981 onwards. In the USA, President Jimmy Carter abandoned the concept of the closed plutonium cycle with a fast breeder in 1979 after the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant for safety reasons . The final disposal of nuclear waste and its safety aspects came to the fore. Yucca Mountain in Nevada was chosen as the location . The Nuclear Waste Policy Act was passed on safety issues .

In 1980, the Bechtel Corporation appointed various working groups on behalf of the US government, which dealt on the one hand with the technical design and safety of the nuclear waste storage facility and on the other hand with the long-term protection of nuclear waste storage facilities from human intrusion. As with the 1972 publication, the approach was characterized by the fact that nuclear waste was less dangerous than it was at risk. In 1981, the members of the second Human Interference Task Force found that they would have to think about communication for thousands of years and appointed the semiotic and linguist Thomas Sebeok to the then thirteen-person team.

The German semioticist Roland Posner, who headed the semiotics department at the Technical University of Berlin , responded to Sebeok's report from the working group . He was planning a themed issue of the magazine for semiotics that he edited , for which he asked twelve international scientists from East and West for contributions in 1982. They appeared in 1984. In 1990 the articles and an update by Posner appeared as a book.

Cavern in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant

In 1990 the planned repository in Yucca Mountain was delayed, but the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) project near Carlsbad in New Mexico became clear as an alternative. So, on behalf of the United States Department of Energy , Sandia National Laboratories set up a new working group called the Future Panel . Based on the work of the Human Interference Task Force, she was commissioned to design scenarios of how humanity could develop in the following 10,000 years. From this, the types and probabilities of an unintentional intrusion into the nuclear waste storage facility should be derived. In the report of the working group, ideas of cultural ruptures and technological change were put together, including those that have been described as “fantastic” in the literature. Geopolitical and linguistic changes, population movements, global catastrophes were discussed as well as a “ feminist world” in which “20th century science was devalued as misguided, epistemological arrogance of aggressive men”. Markings and warnings at the repository would be ignored "as an example of inferior, unsuitable and strange male thinking". Another scenario involved a world of radical relativism based on Thomas S. Kuhn and Herbert Marcuse . In this world people would see the warnings as the result of an incommensurable perspective that is meaningless to their society . In its work, the Future Panel referred to the general weaknesses of local markings, the permanent understanding of which could not be assumed.

Later that same year 1990 a marker panel was used. Here again, semioticists were explicitly called upon to design local markings and warnings together with other disciplines. Two groups working in parallel presented their designs in 1991. Both agreed that on the one hand written messages would be important for the near future of 100 to 500 years, but that they could not rely on texts alone. What both had in common was that they wanted to consciously design the surface above the repository in order to express the danger through shapes. But they differed considerably in the choice of design.

In 1994 the US Department of Energy decided that none of the proposals would be implemented. Instead, the ministry just picked the markings from the more conventional of the two designs, added additional texts and rejected the large-scale design of the surface. According to the current legal requirements, this draft is to be implemented after the WIPP repository has been filled and closed and another 100 years of "active monitoring" have passed. That won't be the case until 2133. It is therefore not foreseeable whether the draft will ever be implemented and, if so, in the form that has been agreed.

In Switzerland, a literature study was presented in 2010 that compiled the internationally published models for marking nuclear waste dumps. The Swiss Federal Office of Energy thus complied with a requirement of the Nuclear Energy Act , which stipulates that deep repositories must be permanently marked. The specific development of a Swiss solution is the task of the National Cooperative for the Storage of Radioactive Waste .

In 2012 the Swedish Atomic Energy Agency commissioned archaeologists to develop a system of long-term records. The project at Linnaeus University in Kalmar developed principles that assume that each generation interprets traditional knowledge for itself. Therefore, direct transmission can only be possible in the near future.

A joint program of the Nuclear Energy Agency and the OECD has been running a Radioactive Waste Management Committee since 2011 . In September 2014, the first international conference on Preservation of Records, Knowledge and Memory of Radioactive Waste across Generations took place. Up to 2018, concrete proposals were collected in phase II.

Suggested solutions

In principle, all approaches published since then take up one of two aspects or combine them: signs in the broadest sense, which should exist over the projected period, and the conveyance of their meaning.

The Human Interference Task Force's draft

The original proposal by the Human Interference Task Force consisted of a large-scale facility on the surface of the earth above the repository. The center was to be marked by a monument consisting of a triangular square 300 m long, surrounded by earth walls. In the middle of the square a floor plate in the form of the logo for biohazard , on it three obelisks and three document safes. The obelisks are labeled with warnings in different languages ​​from UN states, and information about the nuclear waste and its dangers is stored in the vaults. Steles with warnings in different languages ​​are to be erected within a radius of 1000 meters around the central monument . In the later debate the suggestion arose that later cultures should expand the circle of steles outwards and that the new warnings should be kept in the respective current languages.

In his report, which was published separately from the rest of the working group, the linguist Thomas Sebeok relied on redundancy as a central principle. As a means he suggested linguistic traditions; people should actively remember the camp. To this end, an “artificially created ritual” should be created for the public, which should “not be tied to specific geographical areas or any language or culture”. This ritual was intended to convey in the form of a legend that certain places are associated with a deadly danger. The actual background of the danger would only be known to an elite made up of technically educated people and who, through co-optation, determined their own successors. Sebeok chose the concept of a "nuclear priesthood" (for this elite atomic priesthood ). With priesthood he used a term that already appeared in the first illustration from 1972. Then and with Sebeok, he referred to the permanence of the commitment mankind had made to produce nuclear waste.

The following discussion produced suggestions that seem curious. The majority of respondents suggested various methods of how nuclear waste dumps should be indicated by monumental structures or other technical means, often combined with procedures through which warnings should be periodically or if necessary adapted to changes in languages ​​and the coding of the characters used.

A number of the interviewed scientists add concerns about the content of the questionnaire or the requirements as a whole. Stanislaw Lem addresses the two basic possibilities of preserving signs over long periods of time: immutable objects, for example made of precious metals , or biological encodings in genetic material that is preserved through its own reproduction. In this context, he suggested radiation cats, which should use targeted genetic manipulation to indicate the presence of radioactivity through their fur coloring. At the same time, Lem raised concerns about the effectiveness of such methods and addresses the lack of any international messages from the past that are deliberately addressed to the present and expresses his skepticism about the preservation of the meaning of characters, even in context- free coding . In 2017, DARPA announced that it wanted to promote genetic experiments on plants in order to use them as detectors for chemical, biological and radiological hazards.

In the updated edition of the book in 1990, Posner added a thematically expanded concept: He proposed a democratically elected future council which, as a constitutional body, should control long-term decisions. Such a future council should be formed in every state and at the United Nations . He sees this proposal as the answer to the “previously unknown degree of future planning” required by nuclear technology, which can only be compared “with the struggle for control of fire”.

The two groups of the marker panel developed the most concrete proposals so far in 1991 for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.

The first team proposed a four-step message. The first message is extensive earthworks , which could have the shape of the traditional, three-beam radioactivity symbol or the shape of a skull. Alternatively, irregular, outward-facing walls could be used. They convey that it is a message, that the senders think the message is important and that they themselves are powerful. They also aim to mark the place as negative and dangerous. Monoliths would be erected on the earthworks or in their interior , on which messages of further steps are attached. The second stage is a short written warning combined with symbols of two faces with a strongly negative expression: A face that is based on Edvard Munch's picture The Scream , and a symbolic face that Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt designed as an expression of nausea . The next two levels are more detailed and contain extensive texts on the type of danger, combined with highly complex symbols and diagrams, which are intended to convey information about the danger, its location and its duration to a developed civilization even without a common language. It was important to the designers that the center should remain empty in their design: “For people, creating a center (we are here) is the first act of ordering in chaos. A center has always been a highly valued place [...] In this project we want to reverse this symbolic meaning and convey that this center is not a place of privilege, honor or value, but its opposite. ”[This center is]“ uninhabited, despised , a void, a hole, an in-place. "

On the one hand, the second team wanted to rely on social practices that should be established in the vicinity of the repository. Among them was the suggestion of a permanent fellowship , with which a young scientist should visit the deposit every 25 years and reassess the hazard scenarios. On the other hand, the danger should be directly expressed by the shape of the camp. The working group suggested a thicket of huge thorns that protruded far beyond the dimensions of a person. Alternatively, a large, smooth, black surface would have been possible. A structure should be set up in the center in which pictograms , texts, diagrams and scientific illustrations should convey details about the hazard posed by the repository.

In France, the Center de la Manche warehouse for low and medium level radioactive waste was closed in 1994 . The ANDRA supervisory authority continues to maintain the warehouse and operates a program for the permanent preservation of the facility's documentation. The agency has also been running a long-term memory research program since 2006.

US Department of Energy pictogram, 2004

In 2004, the US Department of Energy discarded the previous designs and decided to only use the system of monoliths from the first, the more conventional of the two designs, and to replace its highly artificial symbols with text and conventional pictograms. The document provides for 32 monoliths that form a square, inside which 3 kilometers of earth walls enclose 16 other monoliths. These read in English, Spanish, Russian, French, Chinese, Arabic and a local language for which Navajo is intended: “This is where hazardous radioactive waste lies. Under no circumstances dig or drill. ”In the center, more detailed information is provided along with comic-style illustrations, one above the ground, one in an underground chamber. The warning system is not to be installed until the repository is full and a hundred year cooldown period under the control of the US Department of Energy , after which the repository is to be sealed. This is scheduled for around 2133. It is therefore completely unclear whether this plan will be implemented.

A new proposal was published in 2012: A Swiss geologist and social scientist suggested that tens to hundreds of thousands of potsherds with warning symbols should be scattered around the area and buried on the surface to mark nuclear waste repositories. "The material must not be valuable, otherwise it will be stolen." In addition, the inhabitants of the region would have to be included in the tradition. However, he suggested the well-known skulls or radiation symbols as symbols, without going into the previous considerations on atomic semiotics.

reception

Atomic semiotics understands the unsolved problem of nuclear waste as a communication problem. However, the solutions that have been worked out so far are sometimes considered strange and absurd and have not yet been implemented. It is associated with “common science fiction ideas of the eighties”. Years later, Sebeok himself called the naming of his experts as a nuclear priesthood a mistake, since both the scientists involved and the specialist public viewed the term as absurd and took neither his suggestions nor the problem seriously. Umberto Eco found it "curious" that Sebeok's analysis ended up with a narrative type who repeats the millennia-old human history: After the disappearance of the Egyptians, their texts would have been preserved as a myth, they would have kept interest until they were deciphered could become.

As early as 1984, however, the semiotic Marshall Blonsky raised fundamental criticism: the proposed solutions were authoritarian and determined by fears; they would assume a split between elites and an uninformed public. Another argument by Susanne Hauser sees the search for a problem solution through atomic semiotics as secondary as long as there are no technical means to permanently secure nuclear waste against natural hazards.

The specific designs for the WIPP repository are rated negatively:

“The WIPP project contains the admission that it cannot serve its purpose. It is not possible to secure the waste for the specified period. It's just too long. But we have a plan that looks like a solution even though it admits that there can be no solution. "

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Christian Trautsch: Atomic semiotics - semiotic problems of nuclear waste and signs as warnings to the distant future . (PDF; 1.5 MB) Lecture at the Vienna Nuclear Symposium, September 2011.
  2. ↑ Thomas A. Sebeok: Communication Measures to Bridge Ten Millennia . Office of Nuclear Waste Isolation, April 1984
  3. ↑ a b Journal for Semiotics , Volume 6, 1984, Issue 3 - Table of Contents Arbeitsstelle für Semiotik
  4. ↑ a b Claas Gieselmann: From atomic priests and radiation cats - The curious world of atomic semiotics . ( Memento from March 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Welt der Wunder Magazin, November 2010.
  5. ↑ Preservation of Records, Knowledge and Memory (RK&M) across Generations . oecd-nea.org
  6. ↑ a b c Stefan Berndes: Knowledge for the future - ethical norms for the selection and transfer of scientific and technical knowledge . Philosophy of Technology, Volume 7. Lit Verlag, 2001, also dissertation at the Brandenburg Technical University , Cottbus, 2001, ISBN 3-8258-5400-0 , pp. 103-131.
  7. ↑ a b Thomas A. Sebeok: Pandora's box and its security: A relay system in the care of an atomic priesthood (abstract) . In: Journal of Semiotics. 1984, 3.
  8. ↑ Sebeok 1984, page 24
  9. ^ Roland Posner: Nuclear waste as a communication problem . In: Roland Posner (ed.): Warnings to the distant future - nuclear waste as a communication problem . Raben Verlag, 1990, pp. 7-15.
  10. ↑ Sebeok 1984, page 2
  11. ↑ Federal Office for Radiation Protection: Selection process for repository sites: Recommendations of the AkEnd - Working group for the selection process for repository sites , December 2002, p. 30.
  12. ^ A b Alvin M. Weinberg: Social Institutions and Nuclear Energy . In: Science, Vol. 177, Issue 1 (July 7, 1972), pp. 27-34 [32-34]
  13. ↑ Florian Sprenger: Threats to the Future . In: Lorenz Engell, Bernhard Siegert, Joseph Vogl (eds.): Danger sense . (Archive for Media History, 9). Fink, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-7705-4918-4 , pp. 79-91, 83
  14. ↑ Thomas A. Sebeok: Pandora's box and its security - A relay system in the care of an atomic priesthood . In: Roland Posner (ed.): Warnings to the distant future - nuclear waste as a communication problem . Raben Verlag, 1990, pp. 141-168.
  15. ↑ a b Roland Posner (ed.): Warnings to the distant future - nuclear waste as a communication problem . 1990.
  16. ↑ van Wyck 2005, pp. 50-52.
  17. ↑ The examples are based on: Stephen J. Hora, Detlof von Winterfelde, Kathleen M. Trauth: Expert Judgment on Inadvertant Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant . Sandia National Laboratories, 1991, quoted in van Wyck 2005, p. 51.
  18. ↑ van Wyck 2005, p. 51.
  19. ↑ a b van Wyck 2005, p. 52.
  20. ↑ van Wyck 2005, pp. 52-76.
  21. ↑ van Wyck 2005, p. 71.
  22. ↑ Reto U. Schneider : Warning sign for eternity. In: NZZ Folio . 7/2009.
  23. ↑ Marcos Buser: Literature study on the status of the marking of deep geological repositories . Federal Office of Energy, Radioactive Waste Research Program, May 2010
  24. ↑ Angelika Franz: How do we hide our rubbish from the descendants? Spiegel-Online, July 11, 2012.
  25. ↑ Cornelius Holtorf, Anders Högberg: Archeology and the long - term future (PDF) September 2014
  26. ↑ How do you protect future generations? Deutschlandfunk , September 18, 2014
  27. ^ NEA: Radioactive Waste Management and Constructing Memory for Future Generations . Proceedings of the International Conference and Debate 15-17 September 2014, Verdun, France, 2015
  28. ^ NEA: Preservation of Records, Knowledge and Memory (RK&M) across Generations
  29. ↑ Reducing the Likelihood of Future Human Activities That Could Affect Geologic High-level Waste Repositories . Department of Energy, Final Report, May 1984
  30. ↑ a b Vilmos Voigt, Philipp Sonntag, Percy H. Tannenbaum (Arbeitsstelle für Semiotik): Zeitschrift für Semiotik, Volume 6, 1984, Issue 3 - table of contents and abstracts
  31. ↑ Sebeok 1984, p. 25
  32. ↑ Michael Büker: The communication problem of the dangers of human intrusion into a repository for radioactive waste. University of Hamburg, seminar paper May 2011.
  33. ^ Françoise Bastide, Paolo Fabbri: Living detectors and complementary signs: cats, eyes and sirens. (Abstract) Zeitschrift für Semiotik, 1984, 3
  34. ↑ Stanislaw Lem: Mathematical coding on living carrier material. In: Journal of Semiotics. 1984, 3.
  35. ↑ Advanced Plant Technologies Proposers Day. Retrieved November 22, 2017 (American English).
  36. ↑ Thomas H. Wendel: Eternal Fire . In: Spiegel special . No. 7 , 1995, p. 60–63 ( spiegel.de ).
  37. ↑ Sandia National Laboratories: Expert Judgment on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant , November 1993
  38. ↑ van Wyck 2005, pp. 53-61.
  39. ↑ Exhibition - Message to 12,000 AD . Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, April 2006
  40. ↑ Stephen J. Hora, Detlof von Winterfelde, Kathleen M. Trauth: Expert Judgment on Inadvertant Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant . Sandia National Laboratories, 1991, quoted in van Wyck 2005, p. 66.
  41. ↑ van Wyck 2005, pp. 61-69.
  42. ↑ Remembering the past . ( Memento of March 17, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) ANDRA, as of July 17, 2012 (English)
  43. ^ The Long-Term Memory-Preservation Project Of The French National Radioactive Waste Management Agency . ( Memento from May 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive ; PDF) ANDRA, as of July 17, 2012 (English)
  44. ↑ van Wyck 2005, pp. 68-76, 72.
  45. ↑ United States Department of Energy - Waste Isolation Pilot Plant: Permanent Markers Implementation Plan , August 19, 2004
  46. ↑ Unless otherwise stated, the section on the plans from 2004 is based on: Reto U. Schneider: Warnschild für die Ewigkeit . In: NZZ Folio , 7/2009.
  47. ↑ a b How do you warn future generations about nuclear waste? In: NZZ , February 8, 2012.
  48. ↑ a b Alexandra Lau, Roland Schulz: How do we tell our descendants? In: Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin . 9/2012.
  49. ↑ Rainer B. Jogschies: Atom priests under Art Moon. Garbage news to the 120th century . In: German General Sunday Gazette . 1994 ( online copy on the author's website ).
  50. ↑ Umberto Eco: The search for the perfect language . dtv 1997, ISBN 3-423-30629-7 , p. 187.
  51. ↑ Marshall Blonsky: Whose brainchild is atomic semiotics? In: Journal of Semiotics. 1984, 3.
  52. ↑ Susanne Hauser: It is not just the answers that are problematic, but the prerequisites . In: Journal of Semiotics. 1984, 3
  53. ↑ van Wyck 2005, p. 92 f.