[topspin]

This has been haunting the news since the early '80s and it will go on for several more decades. Then, after whatever they finally come up with is constructed, there will be a creepy spectacle about which to write more tired news stories.

It has always seemed a waste of effort to me. If some primitive post-dystopian human were to dig hundreds of meters through salt (!) and come into contact with the waste they would be rapidly educated as to the hazard and go find something better to do. Anyone less primitive should have no trouble interpreting some straightforward pictographs preserved on a few strategically placed brass plaques embedded in granite. In the meantime surround the site in stainless barbed wire and perform routine inspections.

I guess it was kinda fun thinking about this `problem.' Once. Long ago. But since then it seems to have just devolved into a boondoggle attracting an ever greater circle of paper writers. Meanwhile, with all of these great minds sweating 10,000 year hypotheticals, the actual handling of waste is down to yahoo contractors mixing high level waste with randomly procured cat litter, producing nitrate fueled nuclear waste explosions...

Priorities. In order. Not.

[LoSboccacc]

Yeah the artifical constraint of understandable by everyone is quite limiting. I can see two set working best: scary faces and statues for primitives, atom structure of thorium or whatever waste is for educated. Optionally leave some stuff out in a ventilated but inaccesdible area so people die/get sick before releasing the whole toxic dump in the wild. Can be in stages like pyramids: first zone warning, then the second zone trapped. Inhuman, but if your priority is to protect the whole word from releasing the waste a couple curious casualty may be a compromise.

[knorby]

The funny thing about the horrible post-dystopian future scenario is how many far greater nuclear threats could exist. Assuming the cause of said horrible future isn't caused by nuclear war already, what would happen to all the more potent nuclear material and weapons scattered about? These places are comparatively quite accessible, and the sites communicate that the objects are highly valued. You're right, focusing on the wrong things.