Publication of Modern2020 Deliverable 5.1

Deliverable D5.1 has been produced as a social sciences’ contribution to Modern2020. It seeks to enable a better understanding of how monitoring the underground plays and can play a part in the governance of deep disposal facilities for nuclear waste.

The first part focuses on how four radioactive waste management organizations in Sweden, Finland, Belgium and France plan to monitor future repositories containing high-level long-lived nuclear waste. The report describes how these organisations frame the notion of monitoring, how they report on their plans to monitor future repositories, what role and weight is given to underground repository monitoring within the facility and what legislative demands there are in the respective countries.

The second part looks at the role and framing of underground monitoring in the case of carbon capture and storage as another example of a technology designed for the perpetual safekeeping of a hazardous substance in deep geological formations.