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.