INTRODUCTION

1.2. Evolutions in RK&M preservation thinking: A historical review

The attention for RK&M preservation in the framework of radioactive waste disposal is not new. The idea of “communicating with the future” became compelling to various actors as soon as the necessity of long-term RWM came to the foreground, notably from the 1970s onwards. Ever since that time it has been addressed in the literature, including: professional (e.g. reports from nuclear organisations), academic (e.g. articles in scientific journals) and more popular (e.g. opinion pieces in magazines, newspapers and blogs). Throughout the duration of the RK&M initiative, group members compiled an “RK&M bibliography” for an overview of the former two literature categories and kept a close eye on the latter. These tasks helped the RK&M project participants identify topics of concern, focal trends and lessons learnt in radioactive wasterelated RK&M literature.

The RK&M reference bibliography

The RK&M reference bibliography10 (NEA, 2018) aims at providing a literature overview over work performed in the field of the preservation of RK&M in relation with RWM, especially disposal. It includes references to professional and (semi)scientific papers, reports, articles, books and other materials that bear on the subject matter. The list was continually updated by the RK&M initiative members. The oldest reference in the RK&M bibliography dates back to 1972 and the most recent references are from 2018. By the end of the RK&M initiative, the bibliography contained over 200 references to publicly available materials.11 The language focus was English, but a number of relevant documents in French, German and Swedish were also identified. The bibliography can be accessed at: www.oecd-nea.org/rwm/rkm.

The compilation of the bibliography confirmed that the main discussion terms within radioactive waste-related RK&M preservation thinking have been established in pioneer works steered by RWM organisations from the United States and the Nordic countries in the 1980s and 1990s (L. Aparicio in NEA, 2012: pp. 67-68). RK&M preservation notably came to the foreground as a potential means to prevent or deter inadvertent human intrusion. Two reactions could be discerned (Idem). One perspective, developed mainly by the Nordic countries (see notably Jensen, 1993), focuses on the creation of a mediated communication link to the future, via the next generations (e.g. through institutional RK&M transfer mechanisms). The second, developed mainly in the United States (see notably Trauth et al., 1993), emphasises the long term and the creation of a direct link to future generations, over the next generations, through more technical RK&M devices (notably markers). This distinction was found relevant within the RK&M initiative, which used the terms “mediated” and “non-mediated” transmission of information that further developed into the idea of a “dual-track strategy” (see Annex 1: RK&M glossary and Section 4.5 on multiple transmission modes).

Overall it was found that since the publications by the American and Nordic pioneers, a body of literature on the topic of RK&M preservation has become available, principally produced or commissioned by professional national and international nuclear institutions in the form of reports. An analysis of the bibliography revealed that, overall, a significant portion of the existing references deals with one of two main topic areas:

•preservation of RK&M for short-term,12 primarily operational purposes;

•long-term preservation of RK&M aimed at notifying future generations about the existence of and hazards posed by a geologic repository.

10.www.oecd-nea.org/rwm/docs/2011/rwm2011-13-rev5.pdf.

11.Hard copies of the documents in the bibliography are also maintained at the Nagra library in Switzerland, which, as a RK&M project member, led the bibliography compilation.

12.Please consult the RK&M glossary (Annex 1) and Figure 4.1 for the use of the reference timeframes short/medium/long term.