Abstract
This chapter reflects the need to develop long-term research projects on the question of how information on nuclear waste and its repositories can be made sustainable and proposes that the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme becomes a partner of such efforts, which so far have been driven forward by institutions of the OECD. After introducing the strategies that institutions of the OECD have developed to cope with the problem, the chapter also sketches a framework describing the problem and the proposed strategies, including the Memory of the World Programme as a possible stakeholder. This framework is the paradigm of sustainable development plus sustainability. It is proposed to see nuclear waste through the perspective of “negative sustainability”. For its containment, besides repositories, sustainable long-term information is needed. To help provide such information is in accordance with MoW’s mandate. The challenge is to create a process in which information and the documents that are needed to keep it are both preserved and evolved. Future generations may see such documents as heritage.
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Notes
- 1.
Details about the accident can be found on the website of the World Nuclear Association: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/chernobyl-accident.aspx
- 2.
OECD, [Intergovernmental] Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, was created in 1961 to foster economic progress and world trade. It has 37 members, mostly developed countries. http://www.oecd.org/about/
- 3.
Markers are long-lasting, immobile and robust objects placed strategically at or near the site for immediate recognition or for discovery at a later time. They should provide messages that are likely to be understandable across generations. Marking can range from a simple stone to a contrived and monumental multicomponent system.
- 4.
This aspect is treated in MoW since recently in the UNESCO PERSIST Programme that aims at finding technical solutions for how to transmit digital documents to the far future. See https://unescopersist.org/about
- 5.
- 6.
Our numbers.
- 7.
The Brundtland Report 1987 (7.III, 2.4., 53) sees only the political situation of its time, assuming that the Nation State will be the model of the future: “There should be a clear presumption that all countries that generate nuclear waste dispose of it within their own territories or under strictly monitored agreements between states”.
- 8.
The World Summit on the Information Society (2003/2005) built already a bridge to MoW. UNESCO took over some tasks from the summit, and among them was to care about “Memory and Heritage” (UNESCO 2009a, p. 22).
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Palm, J., Jordan, L. (2020). How to Make Information on Nuclear Waste Sustainable? A Case for the Participation of the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme. In: Edmondson, R., Jordan, L., Prodan, A.C. (eds) The UNESCO Memory of the World Programme. Heritage Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18441-4_15
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