The EPA has announced that it is setting new standards for the containment of nuclear waste to be stored at the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada.  Its a modest goal: limit radiation leakages for a million years. 

     This wildly conjectural plan, presented with a straight face, is a good example of the silliness that can emerge from the meeting of law and science.  Law demands precision, science cannot really give it (remember, even a conservative epistemologist like Karl Popper says the best we can do is conjecture) but then puts forth a statement that everyone knows is hypothetical to the point of absurdity.

     Unsurprisingly, it makes me think of Chuang Tzu…

    In the first chapter of his book, Chuang Tzu flirts with "the dispute between large and small."  He creates a myth of a giant bird, Peng, with a wingspan thousands of miles wide.  Everything about it is immense and meant to inspire awe.  Rather like the invocation of a million year plan.

    But, then, in a couple of short asides, Chuang Tzu, contrasts the giant Peng with small and modest creatures, and he finds in the latter a more concrete truth: all we can really know are our own circumstances, and we should be happy enough with that knowledge and not be taken in by supposedly great and powerful others:

The cicada and the dove laugh at it [Peng the giant bird], saying: "if we put our minds to it, we can fly across to the elm or sandalwood.  But sometimes we don’t make it, and we just end up fluttering on the ground  What good’s all this about about ninety thousand miles heading south?"

Although Chuang Tzu’s radical relativism might belittle a good deal of  successful science and engineering, and thus be too extreme for modern life, it is good to keep him in mind as a reminder to maintain some humility in the face of nature and time.  Indeed, the local wisdom of Alpheus Bruton sounds rather like the cicada and the dove:

Alpheus Bruton II, owner of the Beatty Club, a bar, said that even though he
felt comfortable with the shorter standard, he was surprised that the
environmental agency could be so sure about a standard 100 times longer.

"I just can’t imagine how the E.P.A. can guarantee anything for a million
years, including whether the earth will still be here," Mr. Bruton said. "To say
anything is going to be good for a million years is
preposterous."