Ra, Ra, you don't see it, you don't smell it?
“You don't see it, you don't feel it, you don't smell it and two weeks later you start bleeding.” For the observation of radioactive radiation, man has no sense, explains Wendla Paile in the documentary Into Eternity, about the construction of nuclear waste disposal Onkalo. Paile is Head of Medical Service of the Finnish Nuclear Safety Authority. The consequences can be disastrous, she continues. The invisible light emitted by barrels of nuclear waste can break cells and alter your DNA, causing you to die in the worst case.
Where do we put nuclear waste? Nuclear waste must be stored for our safety — and that of life after us — for at least 100 thousand years. But true, for God's sake? And how? Now that new nuclear power plants are back on the political agenda, we need to make decisions. “Either you're going to make a decision about the storage in the next few years, or you're gonna stop producing waste.”
The checkered derrick in the German village of Morsleben is a remnant from a lost country. Not because it is a monument to the memory of the border that ran here for less than half a century, but because the Morsleben subsoil is the only place where East Germany still exists legally. What lies in this abandoned salt mine makes it impossible to grant the company a licence in accordance with German law. Nor is it possible to close and seal the mine. For that, the stuff that is in it is just a little too special.
