From observations of the moon’s phases to the introduction of the quartz crystal - regardless of our ever-improving capacity to measure time, its fundamental nature remains an enigma. Despite this intangible intrigue, we must accept time as the driver of our lives. It can be found everywhere that man is, and increasingly pursues him on his daily route - on his wrist, in his pocket, possibly even, in the not-too-distant future, on his retina. Our awareness of time dictates how we live, eat, work, sleep and feel. But how and why did our world become so obsessed with time?

You might be surprised to learn that time as we know it - a precise measurement structured into ordered geographic zones of regular intervals - is a relatively recent phenomenon. If you went back as few as two or three centuries, you would find the human experience of time to be quite different, especially if your time travel was followed by travel of the traditional variety. For example, whereas now London and Bristol - approximately 100 miles apart - share the exact same time, Bristol of the early 1800s was approximately ten minutes behind the capital.

To understand this leap better, let me start by painting a picture of early Enlightenment Britain. For the most part, and certainly relative to the Britain of today, the country was rather disconnected. There were, of course, roads connecting all settlements regardless of size, but because journeys between them were slow there was little call for exact measurements of duration. Besides, each little town kept its own time, based on its own astronomical observations - specifically the location of the sun throughout the day - and thus kept their own slow pace.

This pace began to quicken around the turn of the nineteenth century. As industrial centres ‘blossomed’ far from London, so the need for improved transport links to facilitate trade became more urgent. With the introduction of railroads, the journey to our familiar ‘small world’ had begun. To assist the increasingly confused travellers, who were forced to re-adjust their watches at every station, a standard British time based upon the yearly average time the sun crossed the Greenwich Meridian was introduced. By 1855, 98% of British clocks had been set to this time.

While Greenwich’s role in establishing the concept of time standardisation was crucial, the diminutive size of the country meant that the problems Britain had faced were solved by this simple development. Across the Atlantic, American infrastructure and industry were expanding so fast and on such scale that further adaptations had to be made. The introduction of 100 railroad time zones, while a step in the right direction, was only a partial solution and as trains became more rapid, so safety concerns become greater - with many trains sharing a single track, exact time became critical.

On November 18, 1883, the United States and Canada introduced five standard time zones. The exception was Detroit, who chose to continue using a local time basis until 1900, when the City Council gave in and prepared to follow Central Standard Time. Even then, though, there remained problems. Half of the city’s businesses obeyed, but many individuals refused, citing what they saw as the ‘dehumanising effect’ of exact time. Incredibly, this reluctance to standardise influenced the City Council to revert to its original solar time. However, it wasn’t long until pressure from railway companies forced them to re-adapt.

Not long after the establishment of time zones in North America, interest began to emerge for a standardised system worldwide, largely due to the booming shipping industry, which found itself in a situation not unlike that of the aforementioned railroads. They needed to agree upon just one prime meridian - a global standard. A number of meridians had been used for longitudinal references in the late 1800s but that in Greenwich became almost universally accepted at the International Meridian Conference in 1884. The reasons for this near-unanimity included the fact that an incredible 72% of the world’s commerce was reliant on sea-charts based around the Greenwich Meridian.

However, the French fervently refused to acknowledge the decision, instead establishing their meridian within Paris until 1911. Rather than suffer the indignity of giving in to their fierce historical rivals, they finally succumbed to using Greenwich Mean Time (later renamed as Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)) but retained national pride by labelling it as ‘Paris Mean Time minus 9 minutes and 21 seconds’. Not long after, France switched to Central European Time and has remained as such ever since.

From the 1920s, the recognition and official registration of time zones spread throughout the world, culminating in Nepal’s 1986 adoption of UTC + 5:45. We now have 24 standard meridians of longitude, 15 degrees apart, with which we structure our days. The concept is vital for our co-operation and commerce, which together form the driving force of the modern world. It is, however, important to recognise just how quickly this change has occurred - it is incredible to think that little over a century ago, the majority would have been comfortable referring to time simply as ‘morning’, ‘afternoon’, ‘evening’ and ‘night’. Might those resolute citizens of Detroit have had a point?

Despite nuclear energy generally being considered an environmentally friendly source of electricity, the radioactive waste it leaves remains hazardous to life for at least 100,000 years. What to do with this unwanted by-product and how to protect people and the environment from it is a major challenge facing the proponents of nuclear power generation. Currently, it is mostly stored in cool water, which acts as a seal for the radiation, in facilities requiring round-the-clock guarding, surveillance, and maintenance. This may be an effective storage method for now, however, a solution is needed for the next hundred millennia and so scientists have been researching one.

In a remote area on the west coast of Finland, there may be an answer: Onkalo. Currently under construction, this spent nuclear fuel repository located at the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant in the municipality of Eurajoki is where they plan to bury this nuclear waste 500 metres below ground in the most secure and stable environment known: the bedrock. While above ground there are wars, natural disasters, the rise and fall of civilisations, the bedrock below remains unchanged for millions of years. This stability, argue scientists, makes it ideal for toxic material disposal. After intense screening of possible sites in the Finnish territory, this location was chosen due to the estimated lower geographical and environmental impact it would cause, as well as taking into consideration the consent of the local community. Construction began in 2004 and is expected to be finished in 2100, when Onkalo will be sealed, hopefully never to be opened again.

Onkalo means ‘hiding place’ or ‘cavity’ in Finnish, and will live up to its name. On a flat stretch of pine-tree-covered land, kilometres from the nearest town, Rauma, on Olkiluoto Island, stands an unprepossessing metal shutter set between walls of rock. From this entrance, a tunnel will snake down five kilometres, 500m into the depths of the earth, ending in tomb-like storage capsules. Nothing like Onkalo has been attempted by humanity before. The facility must last, undisturbed, for 100,000 years – an unimaginably long time, far longer than any other manmade structure so far. The Giza Pyramids, for example, currently the world’s oldest free-standing buildings, have yet to reach the 5000 year mark, a mere one-twentieth of the time Onkalo must withstand.

The main purpose of Onkalo is to keep future generations safe from the lethal waste buried within. It is ironic, then, that the main threat to the facility’s security is the very people it aims to protect. Scientists are concerned about future generations finding and opening Onkalo, and perhaps not understanding what they come across. These future generations are essentially unknowable. While it may be possible to predict the nature of people in a hundred years, Onkalo has to consider them in 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 years. The future becomes very foggy when thinking in these timescales and so, when thinking of the future, scientists often look to the past first. Considering 100,000 years ago Neanderthals still walked the Earth, it stands to reason that in another 100,000 people will be unimaginably different from us now. They may have more advanced technology, or, is it possible some disaster will have led them to lose it entirely? Is it equally possible that such poor environmental conditions mean life is only possible underground, or only on other planets? Future generations may interpret Onkalo as something religious, a burial ground, a hidden treasure. The human race could have ceased to exist at all.

There are many conflicting ideas about how to tackle this potential problem. One of the fiercest debates is whether to leave warnings for future generations in the form of markers. These would be penned in all major UN languages plus pictographs engraved in stone monoliths around the site. But others point out that anybody able to heed the warning may have died long before these messages were ever discovered. Even pictographs, which we instinctively feel are universal, may be interpreted differently in 50,000 years. More outlandish ideas include covering the ground above Onkalo with a concrete forest of enormous thorns, to make the area as foreboding as possible. Also, the very existence of markers may stoke people’s curiosity, driving them to want to find out what has been hidden. Could talk of Onkalo have become mythical, a legend similar to the Lost City of Atlantis, or would future generations even be familiar with the nature of nuclear waste, possibly having invented new energy sources? Again, we can connect to the past and the discovery of ancient Egyptian tombs; these were covered in warnings to leave well alone that were either not understood or completely disregarded. There is no reason to think the people of the future would be any different. This has led many scientists to conclude no markers should be left and that Onkalo should simply be sealed, covered, and forgotten.

Onkalo may very well end up being the longest lasting trace of Western civilisation, yet it will not be a thing of wonder like the Pyramids. It is something that must never be opened, for the safety of the future, though the Ancient Egyptians thought similarly and the deterrents they left were ultimately ignored. Despite the question of whether the past can help us to predict the future remaining moot, the need for a place like Onkalo leaves one with a certain feeling of ambivalence towards nuclear energy. This waste that comes as part and parcel of generating electricity in this manner is, for many, too high a price to pay.