At right: A winning design by Brandon Alms from the Desert Space Foundation’s contest to design a universal warning sign for the Yucca Mountain site.

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to issue its first-ever Million-Year-Long regulation regarding nuclear waste. But will humans even be here in a million years (let alone Yucca Mountain???)? Here’s the background…In 2002, after Congress and President Bush approved plans to store power plant nuclear waste material inside Yucca Mountain, Nevada, the EPA was placed in charge of laying out the repository’s building codes, designed to last 10,000 years. But opponents of the Yucca Mountain plan filed a lawsuit which argued that the regulation did not extend far enough into the future. After the courts agreed, the EPA extended the regulation by 100 times, to 1 million years.

As a rebuttal, or as commentary, or as statements, several artists have created posters, sculptures, and mausoleums specifically for this issue and for Yucca Mountain. Visit the PBS article to see the work and to learn more.