New UK National Nuclear Archive to be established
Colleagues may have missed the announcement that The UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority will invest £8 million in plans to create the UKs National Nuclear Archive (NNA) in Caithness, Scotland. The money will be invested over three years and will help get the £20 million project off the ground.
For those interested in the digital preservation issues involved in the NNA, I would refer you to an informative presentation by Simon Tucker Information Manager at NDA. This was a presentation to the ‘Nuclear Information over the Millennia Workshop’ held in November 2006.
The NNA will potentially hold between 20 and 30 million digital, paper and photographic records primarily concerning the history, development and decommissioning of the UKs civil nuclear industry since the 1940s. Around 20 specialist jobs will be created by the project. The archive will take about four years to build and many more to establish as an exemplar in its field. Land near the airport, currently owned by the local authority, has been earmarked as a potential site.
The development will undoubtably be an important one and is a good reminder of the long-term value over centuries of some electronic records and digital preservation issues in key industries.
2 comments neil | Digital Preservation, e-Research, Science and Industry
I wonder if Half Life will be a Significant Property of these records? 🙂
[…] Neil Begrie notes in his blog that a National Nuclear Archive will be established in the United Kingdom: The NNA will potentially hold between 20 and 30 million digital, paper and photographic records primarily concerning the history, development and decommissioning of the UKs civil nuclear industry since the 1940s. Around 20 specialist jobs will be created by the project. The archive will take about four years to build and many more to establish as an exemplar in its field. Land near the airport, currently owned by the local authority, has been earmarked as a potential site. […]