Saturday, October 04, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

UCLA exhibit to feature Yucca Mountain warning signs

Plans for nuclear waste dump led to traveling show of artworks

Joshua Abbey of the Desert Space Foundation examines an example of a Yucca Mountain warning sign Thursday in Las Vegas. Abbey is the curator of the exhibit ``Universal Warning Sign: Yucca Mountain,'' which will be on display for a month at the University of California, Los Angeles. AP Photo

Fanning through poster-sized artworks, Joshua Abbey pulled out a black-and-white image of a human skull with a radiation warning symbol carved through the hollow cranium.

Next, a pictograph depicting a human contaminated by radiation as a drill digs up a buried image of the same universal symbol.

"If you drill, you die," Abbey, the director of the nonprofit Desert Space Foundation, said of the second work, by art student Maho Kishi. "That's the legacy we're leaving for future generations to contend with."

Abbey is the curator of "Universal Warning Sign: Yucca Mountain," a design exhibition he will take outside of Nevada for the first time next week. It opens Tuesday at the University of California, Los Angeles, for a free monthlong show.

Setting aside his own anti-nuclear opinions, Abbey decided to host a competition, soliciting designs for would-be warning signs and markers surrounding the Nevada site selected to be the nation's nuclear waste dump. He got 300 responses, and a jury selected 50 finalists. The exhibition was first shown at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in 2002. It has since been displayed in Fallon and Eureka.

The competition was inspired by federal plans to entomb the nation's most deadly radioactive waste in tunnels 1,000 feet beneath Yucca Mountain, an arid volcanic ridge 100 miles northwest of Abbey's hometown, Las Vegas.

The Energy Department is preparing to submit to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission an application to open the repository in 2010 and spend three decades filling it. Project scientists say the repository, once sealed, would remain radioactive for 10,000 years or more.

While politicians debated science and safety, Abbey began thinking about communicating with someone 10,000 years into the future.

"How can we project our consciousness for twice the length of recorded history?" he asked, pulling out another of the images stored at a Las Vegas art gallery.

Abbey noted the Yucca Mountain message will have to endure as long as radioactivity.

He pointed to a four-panel artwork designed for the midlevel nuclear Waste Isolation Pilot Plant outside Carlsbad, N.M. It has a stick figure depicting Edvard Munch's "Scream" keeling over as radiation symbols flutter away from an excavated pit.

"It's using simple imagery that doesn't rely on language," Abbey said, adding that he hoped project officials would consider some of the designs from his exhibit.

As part of its license application to the NRC, the Energy Department will have to include a design for a warning at Yucca Mountain. DOE spokesman Joe Davis said ideas have included putting up blocks, building an earthen barrier around the site or posting signs with a universal language.

"In layman's terms, for future generations we have to explain what is buried at the site, why it's buried at the site and why they need to be aware of it if there's an ice age or if they decide to drill for water there," Davis said.

No design has been selected, although the DOE spokesman said one similar to the markers at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico was being considered.

Abbey said the image the government picks should be simple and powerful.

"People should be inspired to question the consequences of this action and analyze their role," he said, pulling out the work chosen best-of-show, "Blue Yucca Ridge," by Ashok Sukumaran.

It shows the mountain ridge cast in a cobalt blue hue.

"The goal is to educate people about the long-term ramifications of storing waste at Yucca Mountain," Abbey said.