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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2015

Second phase of the OECD NEA international initiative on the preservation of records, knowledge and memory across generations - 15616

The OECD/NEA initiative on the Preservation of Records, Knowledge and Memory across Generations (RK and M) constitutes an activity within the area of transfer of information about radioactive waste disposal projects for the benefit of future generations. Launched in 2011, the initiative has now entered Phase-II, which will run through to 2017. Building on results of Phase-I, which was dedicated to exploring issues of strategic relevance for the preservation of RK and M, Phase-II of the initiative will focus on developing an understanding of the interactions between the identified issues, while continuing to examine hitherto little aspects of the same issues. This corresponds to a systemic approach to RK and M preservation consisting in employing different means and methods to preserve RK and M, which are in a complementary but also redundant relationship to each other, and in situating and analysing activities in a wider context than radioactive waste management. The strategic issues for RK and M preservation are the use of archives, cultural heritage, the so-called Key Information File, transfer of responsibilities after closure, regulations governing RK and M preservation, markers and international mechanisms that could be adapted to foster RK and M preservation. The issues were discussed extensively at 'Constructing Memory - An International Conference and Debate', which was organised by the OECD/NEA with the support of Andra (French Radioactive Waste Management Organisation) and took place in September 2014 in Verdun, France. (authors)

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DOE OSTI2012

Preservation of Records, Knowledge and Memory Across Generations. An emerging Multidisciplinary Work Area and an NEA Project - 12218

Disposal in engineered facilities built in stable, deep geological formations is the reference means for permanently isolating long-lived radioactive waste from the human biosphere. This management method is designed to be intrinsically safe and final, i.e. not dependent on human presence and intervention in order to fulfil its safety goal. There is however no intention to forgo, at any time, knowledge and awareness either of the repository or of the waste that it contains. The preservation of Records, Knowledge and Memory (RK and M) is seen as an integral part of radioactive waste management, supporting lengthy and complex socio-technical processes across pre-operational, operational and post-operational lifetimes. Long-term preservation of RK and M is an emerging multidisciplinary work area in which much learning is expected over the coming years. Novel methods are being sought that are least vulnerable to both natural degradation and to changes in socio-economic conditions. Progress has been made in individual countries, but there is a need to internationalise the thinking, compare approaches, investigate potential solutions and share decisions. This is the task of the NEA RK and M project. A major outcome of the project will be a 'menu-driven document' that will allow people to identify the main elements of a strategic action plan for RK and M preservation. In sum, the preservation of RK and M is a unprecedented task in which technical, scientific and social information is interwoven and needs to be developed and preserved across generations and across specialist boundaries. Important studies have been undertaken in the past decades to explore a variety of approaches to preserving RK and M across different timescales, including archives and markers. The work of the past in this area is useful, but innovative thinking is also needed. Seen from today's perspective, very little work is available on for example the contextualization of data for later use; on the systematic identification of mechanisms for RK and M transfer; on implementing a culture of RK and M-keeping in organisations; and on creating cultural links between the waste disposals and the siting communities. Moreover, international cooperation is recognised as being crucial in providing shared means and meanings for memory transmission over longer timescales. International cooperation has also been identified as a catalyst to ensure that a wide range of approaches and experiences is considered, thus potentially reducing uncertainty related to variations in approach. Overall, multiple approaches, requiring active and less active care, need to be considered from the start of the radioactive waste management programme and refined in the course of time. The RK and M project members want to further investigate and deliver support to fulfil this task. (authors)

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DOE OSTI2017

Development of an Integrated System for the Long-term Preservation of Records, Knowledge and Memory relating to Radioactive Waste Disposal Facilities - 17099

The Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) has co-ordinated an international initiative to develop a common approach to the preservation of records, knowledge and long-term memory (RK and M), focused on radioactive waste disposals. The work programme has run in two phases, starting in 2011, with the current phase of the project due to be completed in 2018. Preparations for final reporting are now underway. The detailed implementation of an approach to RK and M preservation for any disposal facility will always remain a national decision. However, the NEA project has produced a 'menu' of tools and techniques that can be accessed and adapted to suit national needs. The common source of these menu components will help to ensure that the memory of the repository is kept alive, that messages to future populations can be clearly understood, and that evidence derived from the disposal environment can be properly interpreted. This paper describes the vision for implementation of the RK and M initiative within national programmes. Practical testing of some components of the menu of tools and techniques is currently underway in France, Sweden and USA, with encouraging results. Other disposal facilities, both under development or in planning, are invited to 'road test' the products and provide feedback. Refinement and maintenance of the tools remains important, and the NEA is committed to ensuring the continued accessibility and availability of the project outputs into the future. (authors)

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DOE OSTI2020

Panel Session 24B: Records, Knowledge, and Memory for Radioactive Waste Repositories: Generational Equity Focus

This panel focused on the latest thoughts, ideas, and methodologies being explored throughout the world on how to communicate with future generations regarding nuclear waste disposal. Scientists determined many years ago that geological disposal in a repository was the preferred solution for nuclear waste disposal given the longevity concerns of the waste(s). Future generations must be informed through records, memory keeping and permanent markers to ensure they are aware of, and knowledgeable of, the dangers associated with nuclear waste isolated from the biosphere. Panelists with presentations: You Want to Drill Where? Human Intrusion Messaging Considerations (Thomas Peake, Jonathan Major); Ethical Reflections on the Basic Reasons for RK and M Measures (Carl-Reinhold Brakenhielm); NEA Activities on Information, Data and Knowledge Management (Rebecca Tadesse); Records, Knowledge and Memory (RK and M) Across Generations: Recent Activities and Progress in Sweden (Claudio Pescatore)

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DOE OSTI2013

'Big Data' Collaboration: Exploring, Recording and Sharing Enterprise Knowledge

As data sources and data size proliferate, knowledge discovery from "Big Data" is starting to pose several challenges. In this paper, we address a specific challenge in the practice of enterprise knowledge management while extracting actionable nuggets from diverse data sources of seemingly-related information. In particular, we address the challenge of archiving knowledge gained through collaboration, dissemination and visualization as part of the data analysis, inference and decision-making lifecycle. We motivate the implementation of an enterprise data-discovery and knowledge recorder tool, called SEEKER based on real world case-study. We demonstrate SEEKER capturing schema and data-element relationships, tracking the data elements of value based on the queries and the analytical artifacts that are being created by analysts as they use the data. We show how the tool serves as digital record of institutional domain knowledge and a documentation for the evolution of data elements, queries and schemas over time. As a knowledge management service, a tool like SEEKER saves enterprise resources and time by avoiding analytic silos, expediting the process of multi-source data integration and intelligently documenting discoveries from fellow analysts.

Big Data↗
NASA NTRS2002

Hydrated Minerals on Asteroids: The Astronomical Record

Knowledge of the hydrated mineral inventory on the asteroids is important for deducing the origin of Earth's water, interpreting the meteorite record, and unraveling the processes occurring during the earliest times in solar system history. Reflectance spectroscopy shows absorption features in both the 0.6-0.8 and 2.5-3.5 micrometers regions, which are diagnostic of or associated with hydrated minerals. Observations in those regions show that hydrated minerals are common in the mid-asteroid belt, and can be found in unexpected spectral groupings, as well. Asteroid groups formerly associated with mineralogies assumed to have high temperature formation, such as M- and E-class asteroids, have been observed to have hydration features in their reflectance spectra. Some asteroids have apparently been heated to several hundred degrees Celsius, enough to destroy some fraction of their phyllosilicates. Others have rotational variation suggesting that heating was uneven. We summarize this work, and present the astronomical evidence for water- and hydroxyl-bearing minerals on asteroids.

Rivkin, A. S.↗
NASA NTRS2003

Hydrated Minerals on Asteroids: The Astronomical Record

Knowledge of the hydrated mineral inventory on the asteroids is important for deducing the origin of Earth's water, interpreting the meteorite record, and unraveling the processes occurring during the earliest times in solar system history. Reflectance spectroscopy shows absorption features in both the 0.6-0.8 and 2.5-3.5-micron regions, which are diagnostic of or associated with hydrated minerals. Observations in those regions show that hydrated minerals are common in the mid-asteroid belt, and can be found in unexpected spectral groupings as well. Asteroid groups formerly associated with mineralogies assumed to have high-temperature formation, such as M- and E-class steroids, have been observed to have hydration features in their reflectance spectra. Some asteroids have apparently been heated to several hundred degrees Celsius, enough to destroy some fraction of their phyllosilicates. Others have rotational variation suggesting that heating was uneven. We summarize this work, and present the astronomical evidence for water- and Hydroxl-bearing minerals on asteroids.

Rivkin, A. S.↗
NASA NTRS2017

Overview of NASA's MODIS and Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) snow-cover Earth System Data Records

Knowledge of the distribution, extent, duration and timing of snowmelt is critical for characterizing the Earth's climate system and its changes. As a result, snow cover is one of the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) essential climate variables (ECVs). Consistent, long-term datasets of snow cover are needed to study interannual variability and snow climatology. The NASA snow-cover datasets generated from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra and Aqua spacecraft and the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (S-NPP) Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) are NASA Earth System Data Records (ESDR). The objective of the snow-cover detection algorithms is to optimize the accuracy of mapping snow-cover extent (SCE) and to minimize snow-cover detection errors of omission and commission using automated, globally applied algorithms to produce SCE data products. Advancements in snow-cover mapping have been made with each of the four major reprocessings of the MODIS data record, which extends from 2000 to the present. MODIS Collection 6 (C6) and VIIRS Collection 1 (C1) represent the state-of-the-art global snow cover mapping algorithms and products for NASA Earth science. There were many revisions made in the C6 algorithms which improved snow-cover detection accuracy and information content of the data products. These improvements have also been incorporated into the NASA VIIRS snow cover algorithms for C1. Both information content and usability were improved by including the Normalized Snow Difference Index (NDSI) and a quality assurance (QA) data array of algorithm processing flags in the data product, along with the SCE map.The increased data content allows flexibility in using the datasets for specific regions and end-user applications.Though there are important differences between the MODIS and VIIRS instruments (e.g., the VIIRS 375m native resolution compared to MODIS 500 m), the snow detection algorithms and data products are designed to be as similar as possible so that the 16C year MODIS ESDR of global SCE can be extended into the future with the S-NPP VIIRS snow products and with products from future Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) platforms.These NASA datasets are archived and accessible through the NASA Distributed Active Archive Center at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.

Earth System Data Record↗
DOE OSTI2013

The Revised WIPP Passive Institutional Controls Program - A Conceptual Plan - 13145

The Department of Energy/Carlsbad Field Office (DOE/CBFO) is responsible for managing all activities related to the disposal of TRU and TRU-mixed waste in the geologic repository, 650 m below the land surface, at WIPP, near Carlsbad, New Mexico. The main function of the Passive Institutional Controls (PIC's) program is to inform future generations of the long-lived radioactive wastes buried beneath their feet in the desert. For the first 100 years after cessation of disposal operations, the rooms are closed and the shafts leading underground sealed, WIPP is mandated by law to institute Active Institutional Controls (AIC's) with fences, gates, and armed guards on patrol. At this same time a plan must be in place of how to warn/inform the future, after the AIC's are gone, of the consequences of intrusion into the geologic repository disposal area. A plan was put into place during the 1990's with records management and storage, awareness triggers, permanent marker design concepts and testing schedules. This work included the thoughts of expert panels and individuals. The plan held up under peer review and met the requirements of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Today the NEA is coordinating a study called the 'Preservation of Records, Knowledge and Memory (RK and M) Across Generations' to provide the international nuclear waste repository community with a guide on how a nuclear record archive programs should be approached and developed. CBFO is cooperating and participating in this project and will take what knowledge is gained and apply that to the WIPP program. At the same time CBFO is well aware that the EPA and others are expecting DOE to move forward with planning for the future WIPP PIC's program; so a plan will be in place in time for WIPP's closure slated for the early 2030's. The DOE/CBFO WIPP PIC's program in place today meets the regulatory criteria, but complete feasibility of implementation is questionable, and may not be in conformance with the international guidance being developed. International guidance currently under development may suggest that the inter-generational equity principle strives to warn the future, however, in doing so not to unduly burden present generations. Building markers and monuments that are out of proportion to the risk being presented to the future is not in keeping with generational equity. With this in mind the DOE/CBFO is developing conceptual plans for re-evaluating and revising the current WIPP PIC's program. These conceptual plans will suggest scientific and technical work that must be completed to develop a 'new' PICs program that takes the best ideas of the present plan, blended with new ideas from the RK and M project, and proposed alternative permanent markers designs and materials in consideration. (authors)

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DOE OSTI2017

Re-evaluation of Waste Isolation Pilot Plant's Passive Institutional Controls Program - Status - 17116

The United States government set forth in 40CFR194.43 requirements for 'Passive Institutional Controls' for nuclear waste repositories. This regulation stated compliance applications for a repository 'shall include detailed descriptions of the measures that will be employed to preserve knowledge about the location, design and contents of the disposal system.' In the early 1990's the U.S. Department of Energy developed and proposed in the Compliance Certification Application of 1996 a robust and complex technical and engineering Passive Institutional Controls Program including such things as records management, large surface markers, salt berms, buried and above-ground information rooms and small subsurface markers/plaques. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant Passive Institutional Control program meets the regulatory requirements and is certified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Presently this program is being re-evaluated in light of the Nuclear Energy Agency's, Records Knowledge and Memory initiative, shrinking government budgets, and the ethical/moral considerations of risks versus expenditures. This paper will discuss progress made to date in re-evaluating the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant Passive Institutional Controls program and expected plans for the future. (authors)

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NASA NTRS2024

Exploring the Moon: Preserving the Legacy Through Spacesuit Knowledge Capture and Strategic Communication

NASA is returning to the Moon to stay. To establish a sustained lunar presence, astronauts will pack spacesuits, surface-mobility tools, rovers, and decades’ worth of knowledge. The U.S. Spacesuit Knowledge Capture (SKC) and Strategic Communications (Strat Comm) team is specialized in capturing, preserving, and sharing space-related knowledge with NASA scientists, technicians, engineers, vendors, and the public to support space exploration. Since the SKC Program’s 2007 inception, its focus has been to capture and share valuable spacesuit-related knowledge with the NASA community. As the program evolved, its notoriety, funding, scope, and staffing expanded from a one-person, part-time, unfunded operation to a small-team, funded entity. Currently, this team has been formulated with a diverse skillset to meet the requirements of its stakeholders. The SKC and Strat Comm team has used its skills to produce over 260 recorded knowledge captures of subject-matter experts (SMEs) and photoshoots. These knowledge captures are in the form of photographs, lectures, workshops, vignettes, videos, and interviews containing essential space-related knowledge. To help educate the space community and public, this trove of information (e.g., videos of world-class facilities, photographs, and SME lectures), produced inside NASA Johnson Space Center, can be obtained through various sources. During Fiscal Year 2024, the SKC and Strat Comm team will focus on several initiatives. Examples of initiatives include the following: 1) share lessons learned during NASA’s internal venues such as Safety & Health Day and Day of Remembrance; 2) share knowledge with the public, educators, and students through a media production titled Exploring the Moon; and 3) highlight NASA’s unique capabilities and expertise in a video series titled What’s Behind This Door? This paper discusses the team's approach, unique capture capability, initiatives, and much more.

Cinda Chullen↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Exploring the Moon: Preserving the Legacy Through Spacesuit Knowledge Capture and Strategic Communication

NASA is returning to the Moon to stay. To establish a sustained lunar presence, astronauts will pack spacesuits, surface-mobility tools, rovers, and decades’ worth of knowledge. The U.S. Spacesuit Knowledge Capture (SKC) and Strategic Communications (Strat Comm) team is specialized in capturing, preserving, and sharing space-related knowledge with NASA scientists, technicians, engineers, vendors, and the public to support space exploration. Since the SKC Program’s 2007 inception, its focus has been to capture and share valuable spacesuit-related knowledge with the NASA community. As the program evolved, its notoriety, funding, scope, and staffing expanded from a one-person, part-time, unfunded operation to a small-team, funded entity. Currently, this team has been formulated with a diverse skillset to meet the requirements of its stakeholders. The SKC and Strat Comm team has used its skills to produce over 260 recorded knowledge captures of subject-matter experts (SMEs) and photoshoots. These knowledge captures are in the form of photographs, lectures, workshops, vignettes, videos, and interviews containing essential space-related knowledge. To help educate the space community and public, this trove of information (e.g., videos of world-class facilities, photographs, and SME lectures), produced inside NASA Johnson Space Center, can be obtained through various sources. During Fiscal Year 2024, the SKC and Strat Comm team will focus on several initiatives. Examples of initiatives include the following: 1) share lessons learned during NASA’s internal venues such as Safety & Health Day and Day of Remembrance; 2) share knowledge with the public, educators, and students through a media production titled Exploring the Moon; and 3) highlight NASA’s unique capabilities and expertise in a video series titled What’s Behind This Door? This paper discusses the team's approach, unique capture capability, initiatives, and much more.

Cinda Chullen↗
DOE OSTI2016

A Conceptual World Information Library (WIL) and Land Use Information System (LUIS) - 16181

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development Nuclear Energy Agency initiative on the Preservation of Records, Knowledge and Memory is addressing the topic of communicating with future generations on the location, specific contents, and potential risks associated with deep geologic nuclear waste repositories. At the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in the United States, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has committed, prior to the facility closure, to develop a Passive Institutional Controls (PICs) program designed to last as long as practicable. A portion of this PICs program includes development of records packages, selection of data storage materials and methods, and a determination of records retention/storage locations. The approved plan for record retention at WIPP includes the storage of information including hard copies of data, figures and maps in multiple libraries and archive record centers. With this in mind, it is easy to envision reams of various paper documents in a robust physical archive record center similar to one of the museums in Washington D.C., or DOE's Legacy Management facility in Morgantown, West Virginia. While some portion of records for nuclear waste burial sites should be maintained in this fashion for near-term retrieval purposes, it is widely accepted that this is not an efficient way to communicate with future generations even 1,000 years from now. Transmitting large detailed volumes of information to the future should be captured in an electronic format; maintained on computers, translated by computers, and perhaps updated by artificial intelligence as machine and human languages change over the centuries. In addition to a physical records development and storage process for transmittal to future generations, a web-based electronic database system should be developed. A World Electronic Library (WEL) database could be funded from various nations and perhaps sanctioned by the United Nations and/or the IAEA. This WEL could contain information regarding several different subjects with the intent of being a one-stop-information-shop for future generations. This database would require updates and maintenance for as long as there is a recipient. One subset of the WEL would be a spatial database containing all the information available to any set of GPS coordinates, anywhere within the world. This Land Use Information System (LUIS) database would contain information on past and present land use, natural resources, known geology, hydrology and atmospheric conditions, potential warnings, and other pertinent information. The LUIS database is where specific electronic information, a subset of all the records data gathered for a nuclear waste repository, could reside. For not only would LUIS provide the information on a nuclear waste repository when specific GPS coordinates were entered; but a search from the LUIS on 'Nuclear Waste Repositories' could bring up information, including data on location of repositories, radionuclides, operations, D and D, maps, and regulations, plus many other details for locations throughout the world. This tool could be used by future generations for a number of land use or resource exploration decisions. So what can we do now? We can agree to the types of information that should be captured into an electronic database for nuclear waste repositories. We can agree to the levels of detail, the file names and the formats, for ease of combining information sets in the future. Perhaps we can agree to a central electronic data storage site, or sites, where this information will reside for import into a centralized electronic record system, if one is ever developed. (authors)

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DOE OSTI2018

Results of the OECD-NEA Initiative 'Preservation of RK and M Across Generations' - 18084

The OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) has co-ordinated an international initiative to develop understanding and guidelines related to the long-term preservation of records, knowledge and memory (RK and M) for radioactive waste repositories. The initiative will come to a close in April 2018. Currently, a number of deliverables are in the process of publication and a preview and overview is presented in this paper. Central is the 'Final Report of the RK and M Initiative', which sets out the RK and M fundamentals, including basic principles of RK and M preservation, the concept of oversight and the relevant time frames, the mediated and non-mediated transmission of messages, and ultimately the need for a systemic strategy. Furthermore, it presents a menu of approaches and mechanisms of RK and M preservation, such as markers, time capsules, archives, the Key Information File (KIF), education, art, land use control, and monitoring. Finally, the main report provides suggestions on how to develop a systemic strategy. A bibliography and a regulatory catalogue on RK and M preservation, and concept reports describing the KIF and the Set of Essential Records (SER), will complement the set of deliverables of the RK and M Initiative. (authors)

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DOE OSTI2016

Ethical Considerations for Developing Repository Warning Messages to the Future - 16152

One topic being addressed internationally through the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Nuclear Energy Agency initiative on the Preservation of Records, Knowledge and Memory is the nature of messages to be sent into the distant future, and the means whereby to send them. The U.S. Department of Energy Carlsbad Field Office is the owner of a mined geologic repository, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. By regulation, this office must implement, prior to the repository being closed, 'passive institutional controls' that last as long as practicable. In the case of this specific repository, all the waste is government generated (defense programs) hence all funding is public money. As such, the preliminary vision for this message conveyance is a somewhat elaborate system that includes records rooms, monoliths, and inscriptions in seven different languages. As the time for repository closure approaches, this aspect of the repository investment will incur a considerable portion of the closure funds appropriated by the U.S. Congress. An ethical question that arises concerns the effects of the public investment to be made on the generations paying for it, and the risk-avoidance benefit to be expected for the generations going into the far future. This is an especially pressing question where taxpayer (public) money is involved, although it does not make sense to waste money collected from any source. This paper explores the ethical dimensions of creating a substantial and sophisticated system of warnings that communicates into the future and concludes that the repository warning system needs to be practicable from a technical point of view, reasonable from an investment point of view, and ethical from an inter-generational equity point of view. (authors)

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NASA NTRS2012

Sampling South Pole-Aitken Basin: The Moonrise Approach

The South Pole-Aitken basin (SPA) is the largest of the giant impact basins in the inner Solar System, and its location on Earth s Moon makes it the most accessible. Exploration of SPA through direct collection and analysis of representative materials addresses issues as fundamental as the characteristics of the chemical reservoir from which the Moon originated, early differentiation and production of crust and development of global asymmetry, relationships between magmatic activity and internal thermal evolution, and effects of giant impact events on the terrestrial planets. Owing to its great size and superposition relationships with other lunar impact basins, SPA is the oldest and as such anchors the lunar chronology. Moreover, numerous large impact craters and basins are contained within it such that materials (rocks) of the SPA basin contain a record of the early impact chronology, one less likely to have been affected by the large, late nearside basins (e.g., Imbrium). Understanding the early basin chronology is key to deciphering the sequence and effects of early giant impact bombardment of the inner Solar System. That record exists on the Moon, and materials of the SPA basin will allow us to read that record. Knowledge of the early bombardment history will test - and may reshape - a key paradigm relating to early Solar System evolution. Did the planets form with the alignment of today, or was there a major reorientation of the giant planets that led to destabilization of asteroid orbits, and a cataclysmic bombardment of the inner Solar System hundreds of millions of years after accretion of the planets? Implications include understanding environments for early life-supporting habitats on Earth and Mars, and relationships to new observations of extra-solar planetary systems.

Jolliff, B. L.↗
DOE OSTI2013

Memory Saves Lives: Inter-generational Warnings Effectiveness - 13556

The 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami was a world-class natural disaster. It has been described as the most powerful earthquake ever in Japan, and as one of the most powerful earthquakes ever noted in the world. The toll in terms of human lives lost and property destruction was unimaginable. Even the word 'horrible' is inadequate to describe the suffering and misery that resulted. Nations with nuclear power programs are engaged in, or at least planning to become engaged in, arranging to eventually dispose of their higher-level radioactive waste materials in deep geologic repositories. Geologic repositories are passive safety systems, and if undisturbed isolate these dangerous materials form the biosphere for extremely long times. The key words, however, are 'if undisturbed'. To assure that future generations do not inadvertently drill into repositories, national programs, and the international community (the Records, Knowledge and Memory (RK and M) preservation project of the Nuclear Energy Agency, for example), are proposing to place markers and/or monuments on closed repository sites that say 'do not drill here, and this is why' in various sophisticated ways. Such markers or monuments are attempts at providing passive institutional controls. The effectiveness of messages from past generations to a present generation may give an indication of how effective such passive institutional controls may be. (authors)

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DOE OSTI2016

Key Information File for Radioactive Waste Repositories - Preliminary Tests - 16169

The Key Information File (KIF) is a document designed to provide a summary of the existence, location and content of an engineered facility for the permanent disposal of radioactive wastes. It should be recognized as part of an internationally integrated system of records and memory. Its primary function would be to maintain awareness of the site, and long-term confidence in the effectiveness of the disposal system, so that the likelihood of unnecessary human disturbance is minimized. In order to ensure this document is accessible to a large audience, it would need to be limited in size. A draft format for the KIF has been proposed, and testing is being conducted on two cases, that of the 'Centre de stockage de la Manche', the closed French Repository (surface) and that of the planned Swedish Spent Fuel Repository (geological). Preliminary results show the potential for such a document. Comments and questions raised by the 'Records, Knowledge and Memory preservation' (RK and M) initiative, coordinated by the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) of OECD, are presented. (authors)

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