Future Generations Need to Know Our Nuclear Waste Is Deadly. How Can We Tell Them?

Future Generations Need to Know Our Nuclear Waste Is Deadly. How Can We Tell Them?

Future Generations Need to Know Our Nuclear Waste Is Deadly. How Can We Tell Them?

When designing nuclear-waste storage facilities, how do we make them so uninviting that our descendants won’t get curious?

Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky
Pocket
Email

Nuclear waste can be harmful for tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years. How can people today even imagine what society will be like over those types of time periods? And more importantly, how can we make sure that future generations don’t forget nuclear waste’s dangers, and start digging around in the waste sites we are setting aside today?

In Containment, a film that airs today on PBS’s Independent Lens, scientists and thinkers show just how hard it is to plan for an unknown future. In this clip, get a look inside the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant outside Carlsbad, New Mexico, a site that just began accepting nuclear waste this month for the first time in three years.

For more, visit Independent Lens.

Support independent journalism that does not fall in line

Even before February 28, the reasons for Donald Trump’s imploding approval rating were abundantly clear: untrammeled corruption and personal enrichment to the tune of billions of dollars during an affordability crisis, a foreign policy guided only by his own derelict sense of morality, and the deployment of a murderous campaign of occupation, detention, and deportation on American streets. 

Now an undeclared, unauthorized, unpopular, and unconstitutional war of aggression against Iran has spread like wildfire through the region and into Europe. A new “forever war”—with an ever-increasing likelihood of American troops on the ground—may very well be upon us.  

As we’ve seen over and over, this administration uses lies, misdirection, and attempts to flood the zone to justify its abuses of power at home and abroad. Just as Trump, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth offer erratic and contradictory rationales for the attacks on Iran, the administration is also spreading the lie that the upcoming midterm elections are under threat from noncitizens on voter rolls. When these lies go unchecked, they become the basis for further authoritarian encroachment and war. 

In these dark times, independent journalism is uniquely able to uncover the falsehoods that threaten our republic—and civilians around the world—and shine a bright light on the truth. 

The Nation’s experienced team of writers, editors, and fact-checkers understands the scale of what we’re up against and the urgency with which we have to act. That’s why we’re publishing critical reporting and analysis of the war on Iran, ICE violence at home, new forms of voter suppression emerging in the courts, and much more. 

But this journalism is possible only with your support.

This March, The Nation needs to raise $50,000 to ensure that we have the resources for reporting and analysis that sets the record straight and empowers people of conscience to organize. Will you donate today?

Ad Policy
x