Welcome, reader! According to Antony Hegarty in this second decade of the new century our future is determined. What will it be? Stays all the same and do we sink away in the mud or is something new coming up? In this blog I try to follow new cultural developments.

Welkom, lezer! Volgens Antony Hegarty leven we in bijzondere tijden. In dit tweede decennium van de eenentwintigste eeuw worden de lijnen uitgezet naar de toekomst. Wat wordt het? Blijft alles zoals het is en zakken we langzaam weg in het moeras van zelfgenoegzaamheid of gloort er ergens iets nieuws aan de horizon? In dit blog volg ik de ontwikkelingen op de voet. Als u op de hoogte wilt blijven, kunt u zich ook aanmelden als volger. Schrijven is een avontuur en bloggen is dat zeker. Met vriendelijke groet, Rein Swart.

Laat ik zeggen dat literaire kritiek voor mij geen kritiek is, zolang zij geen kritiek is op het leven zelf. Rudy Cornets de Groot.

Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rage at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Dylan Thomas.

Het is juist de roman die laat zien dat het leven geen roman is. Bas Heijne.

In het begin was het Woord, het Woord was bij God en het Woord was God. Johannes.



dinsdag 26 juli 2011

Into eternity (2010), documentary by Michael Madsen


What to do with our nuclear waste?

Into eternity is not a documentary that makes one happy. It starts with pictures of a desolated area and a low, dreary voice saying you better not come here, you better go away, you are save when you stay away from here.

We are in Finland, in Onkalo, which sounds like oncology but which means: hiding place. In layers of very hard stone deep down under the surface of the earth they make a final storage for nuclear barrels. On the projection it looks like a underground city with a lot of big and smaller roads and ramifications. The project still lasts till the next century.

At the moment there are already 250.000 tons of nuclear waste in this world, that is still active for hundred thousand years. Nuclear waste is the responsibility of us all, because our way of life depends on energy and we also use radiation for medical reasons. Storage in the deep sea is no alternative, neither shooting it to the sun with a rocket. We keep the barrels in waterpools now, but that is only a temporarily solution. One cannot create a stable situation in water for hundreds of years, they say. Storage in stone layers is the best solution.

The idea is to close down the entrance with lots of concrete when this project is finished, so we don’t need to protect it and we can forget about the whole thing. Other people say we need to make markers, so next generation will know about the danger.

The’re are a lot of things we do not know. Darknesss thickens our minds. The human innovativeness cannot forsee everything. Maybe next cultures are less technologically than ours.

Madsen sometimes wants to know our opinion. For him it seems to be a philosophical theme. He speculates about next generation who might be interested in the secret, als we are in the Egyptian pyramides. They may think it is something religious, a burial place or a treasure. It will not be easy to forget about it. Moreover there is a law in Finland that says that we have to pass on information to next generations, because we can make mistakes about our presumptions.  

Two others laws are mentioned. We should not burden next generations and protect them. ‘Do you trust future generations?’ Madsen asks a man who is involved in the project.
It is a difficult question for him to answer. There is always the risk of human intrusion.

It may be interesting to speculate about problems in the far future, but I think we better turn our heads into another direction. Up instead of down. A woman said Onkalo is not enough. We need many more Onkalo’s to store all our nuclear waste, that will only increase when we (and the Chinese and Indian people) go on the way we do.

The documentary Here comes the sun about solar energy is much more hopeful. If it were up to the sun, it says, we would have no energy problem. Every half hour on the earth’s surface, there is more than enough light to provide energy needs for the whole world in a year. See: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/here-comes-the-sun//

The trailer of Into eternity: http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1560713753/

aangepast 27th of July 2011, 11:02 a.m.  

1 opmerking:

  1. Hoog tijd dat Verhagen de boodschappen van beide films eens tot zich laat doordringen.

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