Waste Isolation Pilot Plant

Nuclear waste is a byproduct of nuclear power. This is a significant disadvantage of nuclear power, which otherwise does not pose as much of an environmental threat as burning fossil fuels. High level nuclear waste has the drawback of being radioactive for almost indefinitely. It must be kept carefully for a long time. Other less harmful waste can either be carefully kept until it becomes less dangerous or is actually recycled back into nuclear power plants. After 40 years in storage, a significant amount of nuclear fuel will have radioactivity that is one thousandth of what it was when it was first produced.

Hence, even if managing nuclear waste can really become simple after a number of decades, it still needs to be done somewhere, which is where the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant comes in. The location, which is situated deep below a salt formation in New Mexico, has been granted a permit to store spent nuclear material from the country's nuclear weapons program for 10,000 years.

Nowadays, the facility houses more than 2.7 million cubic feet of nuclear waste. It is scheduled to be shut down sometime between 2025 and 2035. The plan is for the region to flood with salt and water after the walls have crumbled, forming a natural grave for the trash.

The government has collaborated with linguists and other experts to create a warning system to keep future humans away from the site because they are aware that the facility needs to remain secure for 10,000 years. Hopefully a huge wall with warnings in seven different languages inscribed on the pillars will do the trick.