Burial

Into the under-land we have long placed that which we fear and wish to lose, and that which we love and wish to save. Robert MacFarlane, Underland: A Deep Time Journey (2019) From the Soviet ruins of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant to the ancient tombs of the Etruscans, from the Andra nuclear fuel repository under France to the atomic deserts and abandoned mines of New Mexico, Burial takes us deep into the earth, not only past the thin crust of surface beneath us but into time. Technological, geological, metaphysical, Burial follows the cycle of power, the fi re of creation and destruction, through dreamy suns-capes to the shadowy underlands where we bury both the dead and the apocalyptic wastes of our progress. Arc welders slice piece by piece the blades of nuclear reactors from the remains of Chernobyl’s twin sister plant in Lithuania while a python slithers and curls over its abandoned control room. Remnants from the dying burst of a supernova six billion years ago, uranium journeys from extraction to production until finally the spent fuel rods end their loop, hidden back into the earth; a grave radioactive with poison burning a half-life of 159,000 years. A cycle, an eternal return, another snake eating its tail.