How to Make Information on Nuclear Waste Sustainable? A Case for the Participation of the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme

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.