Ancient Warnings

Unlike most Taiwanese in my generation, I'm not really a vocal opponent of nuclear power - this is primarily for reasons of pragmatism, as I don't think it's possible to sustain Taiwan's current (and future) energy needs, without drastically changing our lifestyle otherwise.

That said, I readily admit there's no easy answer regarding the perfect way to dispose of nuclear waste. I recall reading about the American design process for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste depository. Standard nuclear waste is dangerously radioactive for thousands of years (conservatively speaking). As such, you need to design warnings around the facility that will be both understood and taken seriously by humans 10,000 years from now.

Honestly, I'm not sure how successful we'll be at that. Egyptian hieroglyphs are only about 5,000 years old, but they're already pretty much unrecognizable when compared to any modern writing system, and pretty much no one alive can read them anymore. And even when we can decipher their writing, we don't really take what they say seriously - just imagine, "Do not dig here! If you do, sickness and death shall follow!"

Sure, you silly, superstitious Egyptians.

So I'm guessing 10,000 years from now, people will be like, "Haha, those silly ancient people. They believed in invisible beings up in the sky and trickle-down economics. Let's dig up that mountain and look for treasure."

基於實際考量，我個人其實沒有特別反核，主要是因為我認為大家也不太可能真的去主動改變生活型態，故能量的需求只會逐漸擴大，不會減少。

不過核廢料的問題倒是真的令人頭大。美國在設計Yucca山核廢物庫的時候遇到了一個有趣的問題：一般核廢料的輻射危險期為上千年，甚至上萬年。因此核廢物庫必須要清楚的標示該地點的危險性，而且還是未來一萬年之後的人類看得懂的標示。

說實在的，未來的人類應該不太會鳥我們的警告標示。埃及的象形文字也只不過是五千年前的文字，但和現代任何寫字系統截然不同，也幾乎沒人看得懂了。就算看懂了，真的有人認知理會所寫的內容嗎？

「千萬別在此處挖掘，不然必定生病、死亡！」

哈哈，古代埃及人真迷信！

所以我猜測未來人類的態度基本上會是：「哈哈，古代人真迷信。他們相信天上有隱形的神明飛來飛去，甚至還相信涓滴經濟學呢！ㄟ，我們去那個大山挖寶吧！」