Publications Details
Monitoring of human activities for performance confirmation
Monitoring programs for nuclear-waste repositories are now conceived as an exercise in performance confirmation: the purpose of the monitoring program is to provide objective evidence that the repository system is functioning as expected. However, monitoring is still largely seen as being entirely focused on the near-repository environment, with the aim of verifying predictions made about such things as temperature or rock mass behavior that are relevant to the designed functioning of the repository. A more comprehensive approach comes from recognizing that the repository is embedded in a larger natural system that may be affected by factors in addition to the repository. At some current or prospective repository sites, various human activities that are amenable to monitoring might potentially (or actually) affect the natural system. Observing these anthropogenically induced changes in the natural system and being able to simulate them accurately using the models already constructed for repository performance assessment provide an additional opportunity for performance confirmation. Water-level changes induced by oil and gas exploration and/or potash mining activities near the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant site provided an opportunity to confirm important features of the groundwater model used in performance assessment calculations. Repository programs should evaluate the potential for ongoing or future human activities to affect the systems in which their repositories are situated and provide an opportunity for performance confirmation.