A new ground-based technique is described, called distance of flight of cosmic-ray muons, for sensing the height of the layer of the Earth where cosmic-ray muons are generated, called the muopause, which is closely related to the height of the tropopause and lower stratosphere.

Under German law, crack damage stress must not be reached at any time during the operation or post-closure phase of a nuclear waste repository. This legal requirement can only be fulfilled if the parameter can be measured precisely. We have thus developed a new measurement technique, which overcomes the limitations of the conventional method. In combination, old and new methods offer an easy procedure to detect crack damage stress in fully saturated rocks in a fast and robust manner.