How colour-changing cats might warn future humans of radioactive waste

As the UK gets ready to build more nuclear plants, scientists are looking for new ways to tell our distant descendants where we've buried our sludgePlans for a new fleet of UK nuclear power plants are under way. Last month, for example, Hitachi and the Japanese government confirmed a plan to construct 5.4 gigawatts of generating capacity at UK sites. But what about the waste? And what happens when, in thousands of years, our descendants - who may not read any current human language - find a store, and put themselves in danger?A panel of scientists and linguists asked this question in 1981 when the US Department of Energy commissioned them to find a method of ensuring that whatever is left of humanity in 10,000 years' time is warned off the sites we've been filling with radioactive sludge. Continue reading...