Research Article
Strategic Monitoring - A Proposal for the Institutional Surveillance of Complex and Long-Term Nuclear Waste Disposal Programmes
Thomas FlüelerDeep geological repositories for nuclear waste objectively are a long-term issue (regarding long-term safety) and require long-term institutional involvement of the techno-scientific community, the waste producers, the public administration, non-governmental organizations and the general public. The demonstration of their long-term safety is avowedly very challenging and monitoring techniques may contribute to substantiate evidence, support decision making and legitimate the programme [1]. What, where and when to monitor is determined by its goal setting. Therefore monitoring may be operational, confirmatory (in the near field) or environmental (in the far field). Strategic Monitoring, as proposed in this paper, may contribute to process, implementation or policy and institutional surveillance. The “preservation of records, knowledge and memory across generations†as labelled by the corresponding Nuclear Energy Agency, NEA initiative should encompass the tailored transfer of knowledge [2], concept and system understanding, insights, experience and documentation to specific audiences such as above. Strategic Monitoring is devised to be an integrative tool of targeted yet adaptive management. It is applicable to other long-term sociotechnical energy-resources-environmental fields such as Carbon Capture and Storage, CCS or (conventional) special toxic waste. The proposal is based on extensive empirical work in all three fields of application - as documented - but meant to be a conceptual framework for further/new empirical studies in precisely “strategic monitoringâ€.