Monitoring

Assurance requirements were included in the disposal regulations to compensate in a qualitative manner for the inherent uncertainties in projecting the behavior of natural and engineered components of the WIPP for many thousands of years (50 FR 38072). Section 194.42 is one of the six assurance requirements in the Compliance Criteria. Section 194.42 specifically addresses requirements for monitoring the disposal system during preand post-closure operations. This requirement distinguishes between preand post-closure monitoring because of the differences in monitoring techniques used to access the repository during operations (pre­ closure) and after the repository has been backfilled and sealed (post-closure). The purpose of monitoring is to confirm that the repository is behaving as predicted.