Silent evidence. On nuclear mounds, craters and caves

Abstract

This essay focuses on three sites – the Niagara Falls Storage Site, NY, the Nevada Test Site north of Las Vegas, NV, and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, near Carlsbad, NM – where the ground still shows the scars of atomic testing and where nuclear waste is stored, shielded by artificial mounds or in deep underground caves. Sites that following the categorization proposed by Alois Riegl in his fundamental text on the cult of monuments would be defined as unintentional monuments. The mounds, craters and caves that punctuate these sites, along with others dispersed both through the US and other countries that experienced nuclear testing and activity, testify of the great sacrifices that were inflicted upon territories that, realistically, will never return to their original condition.