Ten Thousand Years

99% Invisible

SiriusXM Podcasts and Roman Mars

Design, Arts

4.8 • 27.5K Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2014

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1990, the federal government invited a group of geologists, linguists, astrophysicists, architects, artists, and writers to the New Mexico desert, to visit the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. They were there on a mission.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.
0:04.3	I want to start with a letter. And this is reporter Matthew Kielty.
0:08.6	This is a letter that got sent out to a couple hundred people back in 1990s.
0:12.3	So, uh, Roman, if you have the letter and you don't mind it.
0:17.0	Dear so and so, the safe disposal of nuclear waste
0:21.1	is one of the most pressing issues facing the United States today.
0:24.8	It totally is, but if you actually skip down past that, there's, I mean that's just about how there's
0:30.0	these people.
0:31.0	We're planning on burying a bunch of nuclear waste out in the New Mexico
0:34.3	desert at this place called the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
0:38.3	But if you go down like another paragraph...
0:40.3	You have been nominated to participate in a study sponsored by Sandia National Laboratories that will identify what kinds of markers should be placed at the WIPP site.
0:50.0	Yeah, just jump down a little bit further.
0:52.0	To develop a marker system that will remain operational during the performance period of the site,
0:59.0	10,000 years.
1:02.0	There it is. There it is.
1:04.0	There it is.
1:05.0	That is the part that I love.
1:07.0	I had a moment of wondering if it was a joke.
1:10.0	This is John Lomberg.
1:12.0	He received one of these letters, which makes sense given his line of work.
1:16.0	I'm an artist and I work on projects involving unusual communication problems.
	...

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