RK&M PRESERVATION APPROACHES AND MECHANISMS

Table 5.4. Time capsules: Mechanisms overview table

Note: This table shows the mechanisms – with a profile of their key characteristics – that belong to the RK&M preservation approach presented in this section. The full descriptions of the individual mechanisms follow, in a comprehensive, structured and standardised format, in Annex 2.2. The rows in this table are derived from those description sheets. For a full explanation of the descriptors, please see Annex 2.1.

5.6. Culture, education and art

This approach refers to a series of cultural, educational and artistic mechanisms for RK&M preservation. It includes tangible media (such as buildings, man-made landscapes, books and works of visual art66) and intangible media (such as commemorations, traditions, teaching and storytelling). The approach notably aims at RK&M preservation for the short and medium term, and the mechanisms mostly deploy mediated transmission modes which include features such as adaptability and flexibility over time. Some mechanisms are proposed to be implemented/located at the site of the waste repository (e.g. alternative reuse of the site or its infrastructure (e.g. hiking/biking trails or an information centre), or maintaining the surface infrastructure as industrial heritage). Others are to be developed and found at various places in society (e.g. literature, art works, education about radioactivity and RWM, and information dissemination activities including exhibitions, documentaries and websites), or combine both

66.The Constructing Memory conference held in 2014 in Verdun had a session dedicated to art as an RK&M preservation mechanism. See NEA, 2015a: pp. 109-135.

RK&M PRESERVATION APPROACHES AND MECHANISMS

on-site and off-site elements (e.g. school visits, research agreements with universities and international commemorations linked to individual facilities). Most mechanisms are directed at or involve a broad range of actors, including local communities, non-governmental organisations, (local) historians, artists, journalists, etc.

It is acknowledged that what may become part of culture or a subject in education and art is not easily pre-defined or controlled. Topics of interest in these fields change over time and are subject to continuous reinterpretation. Nevertheless, they can be powerful frameworks for RK&M preservation as they aim to construct “disposal sites as part of the community, not apart from the community” (NEA, 2015c). The general idea behind the RK&M preservation mechanisms under this approach is to create a long-lasting awareness of and interest in the disposal site with activities that create a type of added value, be it cultural, educational, recreational, aesthetical, intellectual or economic (see also C. Pescatore and C. Mays in NEA, 2013a: pp. 97-103).

As an example, HABOG (Figure 5.3), the high-level waste treatment and storage building at the Central Organisation for Radioactive Waste (COVRA) in the Netherlands, is conceived to change colour from orange in 2003 to white in 2103 as a metaphor for radioactive decay. As such, the surface facility is turned into an art work with features of a marker integrated with other complementary mechanisms such as visiting tours and collaboration with regional museums (H. Codée and E. Verhoef in NEA, 2015a: pp. 53-56).

Figure 5.3. Example of an artistic approach: “Metamorphosis 2003-2103” by William Verstraeten

Source: COVRA.

Saint Barbara (Figure 5.4), patron of mining, can be found at many underground research laboratories and disposal facilities today. She has been referred to as a type of “cultural marker”.

Nucleus, the nuclear and Caithness archives at Wick, United Kingdom (see Footnote 59), includes an advertisement from 1958 for employment at the nearby Dounreay nuclear facility, a clear example of local history67 (Figure 5.5). The archive wrote the following about it: “In 1958 we see the Dounreay boom begin to happen with job adverts in many fields. The John O’Groat Journals are a great way to view the rise of Dounreay as they record events as they happen. We

67. “Heimatkunde” in German, “hembygdskunskap” in Swedish.

RK&M PRESERVATION APPROACHES AND MECHANISMS

also have a collection of documents relating to Dounreay in this era including [copies of] the Haggis magazine, which were composed by Dounreay workers themselves!”.68

Figure 5.4. Example of a “cultural marker”: Saint Barbara

Source: EURIDICE.

Figure 5.5. Example of local heritage: Dounreay employment advertisement, 1958

Source: Nucleus. The Nuclear and Caithness

Archives.

68.Nucleus Nuclear and Caithness Archives Facebook page, www.facebook.com/nucleuscaithnessarchive/photos.

RK&M PRESERVATION APPROACHES AND MECHANISMS

Table 5.5. Culture, education and art: Mechanisms overview table

Culture, education and art

Note: This table shows the mechanisms – with a profile of their key characteristics – that belong to the RK&M preservation approach presented in this section. The full descriptions of the individual mechanisms follow, in a comprehensive, structured and standardised format, in Annex 2.2. The rows in this table are derived from those description sheets. For a full explanation of the descriptors, please see Annex 2.1.

5.7. Knowledge management

Knowledge management is defined as the process of creating, structuring, using, sharing and retaining knowledge held by individuals and organisations in a range of forms or formats. In this context it is necessary to differentiate “knowledge” from “information”, “data”, “memory” and “records”. Knowledge emerges from and accrues in a multi-phase process to create and perform informed decisions and actions, in which an actor understands the consequences. In the context of RWM, knowledge management refers to a mediated, multidisciplinary approach that makes the best use of knowledge across generations, through planned accumulation, sharing and preservation, creating knowledge capacities for as long and for as many stakeholders as possible.

RK&M PRESERVATION APPROACHES AND MECHANISMS

An effective knowledge management strategy typically works with the knowledge owners in a “push-pull” regime. In practice, the “push” phase involves the active management of knowledge, by encoding the knowledge of specialists into a “shared knowledge repository” that can be broadly accessed. The alternative “pull” phase involves “knowledge receivers” making knowledge requests from experts associated with a particular subject or from recorded knowledge previously deposited in an organised manner in the shared knowledge repository.

Knowledge management, including efforts such as on-the-job discussions, discussion fora, corporate libraries, professional training and mentoring programmes, has a long history. However, the discipline and the technology of “knowledge management” has arisen only in the late twentieth century on the basis of the latest information and communication technologies (ICT). With essentially universal access to computer systems, a wide variety of new approaches have been introduced during the last decades, including expert systems, knowledge portals, group decision support systems, collaborative software technologies (ICT-platforms) and artificial intelligence (machine learning) systems. The history of knowledge management as a discipline that uses the latest ICT can be described in four waves:

1.Extraction and preservation of expert knowledge: access to codified knowledge in format of local expert systems (knowledge bases), managed by metadata (since the 1980s).

2.Transfer of best practices: access to cycles of circulation of knowledge in the format of organisational/corporate knowledge management systems with their own applied ontology (since the 1990s).

3.Integrating local expert network systems into “communities of practice” with corporate knowledge management systems: promotion of open innovation, where each user of the product or service can continue to improve it, using his/her access to develop innovative combinations of creation and use of knowledge in multi-agent, ICT based systems (since the 2000s).

4.Building a global architecture for the transfer of knowledge flows including the generation of new knowledge on the basis of global information resources and robotics, including big data, predictive analytics and systems of deep machine learning (since 2010s).

It is clear that this is a rapidly evolving field, which is likely to continue to develop in the future. Artificial intelligence and machine learning may be developed and employed further in the future to allow solutions for intergenerational transmission, inter-cultural translation and inter-organisational knowledge transfers.69

For the time being, however, knowledge management notably remains a short-term RK&M preservation mechanism. Commonly used knowledge management processes are fit for building up new knowledge and the maintenance of existent knowledge for time frames that common organisations are used to working with. The RK&M initiative attempted to make a start with addressing the need to consolidate knowledge for reuse across longer time frames with the concepts of KIF and SER (see Section 5.2). Further work still needs to be undertaken on research questions such as: how can current efforts towards the preervation of records, data and metadata (see the RepMet project, www.oecd-nea.org/rwm/igsc/repmet) be broadened to the preservation of knowledge? Also, could the concept of a “knowledge retention plan” (J. Day and E. Kruizinga in NEA, 2013a: pp. 57-61) be further developed to cover the short and the medium term of a repository project?

69.Examples in this direction can be found in the IAEA (e.g. the ICT platform CONNECT), which enables communities of practice to maintain communication and form a network of expertise, and the platform ARTEMIS, which allows IAEA experts to construct models of activities in the areas of RWM, spent nuclear fuel management and decommissioning, and systematise the best practices.