[All] As hot summer approaches and the news of the heat wave makes us think about environmental destruction...

Another defining characteristic of the Anthropocene is waste. Humans are the only living organisms that produce solid waste, a threat to the natural environment. Solid waste refers to solid waste generated from daily life or industrial activities. Spent nuclear fuel rods, buried deep underground after being used as nuclear fuel in nuclear power plants, are among the most hazardous waste materials created by humans. The half-life (the time it takes for a radioactive substance to decay by half) of plutonium-239 is 24,000 years, that of neptunium-237 is 2 million years, and that of uranium-235 is a staggering 700 million years. By the mid-20th century, the human waste footprint had expanded into outer space.

In 700 million years, Earth will be remembered as trash (hani.co.kr) middle