Proving and demonstrating reversibility

Addressing the issue of waste disposal reversibility, the authors first outline what needs to be proven (the flexibility of each disposal stage, the availability of technical options integrated from the disposal design), and then give an overview of scientific knowledge allowing the assessment of the potential of reversible management (constraints due to the geological environment, distribution of processes in space and in time, issue of thermal processes and heat release, monitoring of the thermal process, involved mechanical processes and their monitoring, hydraulic processes and their possible consequences, chemical processes such as corrosion and its monitoring). They describe the role of monitoring and surveying for a reversible management. They finally discuss whether reversibility can be proven, whether decision-makers will have the necessary information available