Metals are inorganic substances that occur naturally in geological formations. Naturally occurring metals are dissolved in water when it comes into contact with rock or soil material. Some metals are essential for life and are naturally available in our food and water. Trace amounts of metals are common in water, and these are normally not harmful to your health. In fact, some metals are essential to sustain life. Calcium, magnesium, potassium, and sodium must be present for normal body functions. Cobalt, copper, iron, manganese, molybdenum, selenium, and zinc are needed. However many of the metals and metalloids that are found in drinking water can have an adverse impact on human health. This book provides a state-of-the-art review of the health implications of metals and metalloids in drinking water and is a key reference in the risk assessment and management of water supplies. The increased urbanization and increased water demand in industrial areas has amplified the metals problem in groundwater sources. In fact the contamination of our water resources by poisonous metals occurs largely due to human activity.These activities include industrial processes, such as electronics industry and mining activity, agricultural activities, and the dumping of wastes in landfills. The International standard references concerning water resources are various and, though they are based on WHO guidelines, they are extremely diversified in relation to local issues and emerging problems. This report pulls the information together to provide an important reference source. This title belongs to Metals and Related Substances in Drinking Water: Research Report Series

This book studies the limits imposed by the depletion of fossil fuels and the requirements of climate stabilization on economic growth with a focus on China. The book intends to examine the potentials of various energy resources, including oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, wind, solar, and other renewables, as well as energy efficiency. Unlike many other books on the subject, this book intends to argue that, despite the large potentials of renewable energies and energy efficiency, economic growth eventually will have to be brought to an end as China and the world undertake the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energies. China has overtaken the US to become the world's largest energy consumer and greenhouse gas emitter. Their energy consumption is dominated by coal and China now accounts for one quarter of the world's total carbon dioxide emissions. Moreover, China is set to become the world's largest oil importer in the next decade. This book will consider energy development in the broader context of economic and social changes, especially the historical dynamics of the capitalist world system. Historical lessons of capitalism and socialism will be discussed. The book will evaluate the implications of ecological limits to growth on the economic system and argue that the existing capitalist system is fundamentally incompatible with ecological sustainability.

The United States is at risk of finding its nuclear weapons capabilities severely weakened by the absence of an available capability to enrich uranium. International legal obligations prohibit the United States from using, for military purposes, foreign-produced enriched uranium or uranium enriched here in this country by foreign-source technology. Efforts to deploy a next-generation American enrichment technology must succeed so that our nation has the ability to address the forthcoming shortage of this strategic material. This national security requirement could be met with little cost to taxpayers if the federal government implemented policies that ensure a strong U.S. enrichment industry.

This book examines the ongoing transformation of public utilities, also known as network-based industries, in Western Europe and the United States. Examples are telecommunications, energy, and water distribution. Most of these network-based industries were until recently natural monopolies. Over the last two decades national governments have embarked upon privatization, deregulation and liberalization of their public utilities. The contributors in this volume examine the many related aspects, including: * key characteristics and regulation of network based industries * the emerging EU regulatory framework * corporate strategies, industry dynamics, and organizational performance * case studies from the telecommunications and water industries * engineering competition versus engineering regulation. This book provides a non-ideological and multidisciplinary overview of recent views and experiences with the liberalization, privatization and regulatory reform of public utilities in Europe and the United States. As such it will be of interest to scholars and researchers of institutional economics, and organizational studies, as well as regulators, policymakers and consultants involved in both studying and governing network-based industries.

This Handbook examines the subject of energy security: its definition, dimensions, ways to measure and index it, and the complicating factors that are often overlooked. The volume identifies varying definitions and dimensions of energy security, including those that prioritize security of supply and affordability alongside those that emphasize availability, energy efficiency, trade, environmental quality, and social and political stewardship. It also explores the various metrics that can be used to give energy security more coherence, and also to enable it to be measured, including recent attempts to measure energy security progress at the national level, with a special emphasis placed on countries within the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), countries within Asia, and industrialized countries worldwide. This Handbook: * Broadens existing discussions of energy security that center on access to fuels, including "oil security" and "coal security." * Focuses not only on the supply side of energy but also the demand, taking a hard look at energy services and politics along with technologies and infrastructure; * Investigates energy security issues such as energy poverty, equity and access, and development; * Analyzes ways to index and measure energy security progress at the national and international level. This book will be of much interest to students of energy security, energy policy, economics, environmental studies, and IR/Security Studies in general.

The challenges in Russia's energy sector are changing. On the demand side, Europe is seeking to limit its dependence on Russian oil and gas, with the result that China and other Asian countries are likely to eventually become growing export markets for Russian energy. On the supply side, oil and gas fields in West Siberia are diminishing and in future Russia's energy will have to come more from East Siberia and the Arctic, which will necessitate new infrastructure development and the employment of advanced technologies, which may increase Russia's dependence on commercial partners from outside Russia. This book explores the challenges facing Russia's energy sector and the resulting security implications. It includes a discussion of how far the Russian state is likely to continue to monopolise the energy sector, and how far competition from private and foreign companies might be allowed.

Death, Men and Modernism argues that the figure of the dead man becomes a locus of attention and a symptom of crisis in British writing of the early to mid-twentieth century. While Victorian writers used dying women to dramatize aesthetic, structural, and historical concerns, modernist novelists turned to the figure of the dying man to exemplify concerns about both masculinity and modernity. Along with their representations of death, these novelists developed new narrative techniques to make the trauma they depicted palpable. Contrary to modernist genealogies, the emergence of the figure of the dead man in texts as early as Thomas Hardy's Jude theObscure suggests that World War I intensified-but did not cause-these anxieties. This book elaborates a nodal point which links death, masculinity, and modernity long before the events of World War I.

The main objective of the research is the analysis of corruption in infrastructure delivery. This includes a review of accountability initiatives in infrastructure delivery and the nature of the impact of greater accountability.

Public sector funding and resources are often inadequate to meet increasing demands for investment and effective management, and a growing case history shows increasing involvement by the private sector in provision of infrastructure and services through PPP arrangements. The objective of this book is to determine, and make recommendations on, means of optimizing the use of Public Private Partnerships (PPP) in development of infrastructure whilst ensuring the sustainable long term provision of water and waste water services. The focus is on providing detailed recommendations on contractual issues and contract structures to achieve this objective. Public Private Partnerships in the Water Sector - Innovation and Financial Sustainability: Identifies what is needed to establish effective and sustainable water and wastewater service reform when using a PPP arrangement, and importantly how those issues can be addressed contractually. Provides specific recommendations of a comprehensive and detailed approach to contract drafting to ensure effective, sustainable and long term provision of water and wastewater services, including an approach for adaptation of public procurement procedures for PPP arrangements. Recommends a proposed approach to dealing with the influence of imperfect or unavailable data on the long term effectiveness or sustainability. This is a practical and pragmatic book in which the authors share their considerable experience on devising and implementing PPPs in the water sector. It is aimed primarily at practitioners working with developing countries but its recommendations will also be suitable for application in developed countries. It is also a useful reference for postgraduates and academics studying infrastructure development. See also: Public and Private Participation in the Water and Wastewater Sector - Developing Sustainable Legal Mechanisms, Cledan Mandri-Perrott, 2009 Private Sector Participation in Water Infrastructure, Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), 2009.

Climate change, combined with the rapid and often unplanned urbanisation trends, is associated with a rising trend in the frequency and severity of disasters triggered by natural hazards. In order to face the impacts of such threats, it is necessary to have an appropriate Disaster Risk Assessment (DRA). Traditional DRA approaches for disaster risk reduction (DRR) have focused mainly on the hazard component of risk, with little attention to the vulnerability and the exposure components. To address this issue, this dissertation's main objective is to develop and test a disaster risk modelling framework that incorporates socioeconomic vulnerability and the adaptive nature of exposure associated with human behaviour in extreme hydro-meteorological events in the context of SIDS. To achieve the objective, an Adaptive Disaster Risk Assessment (ADRA) framework is proposed. ADRA uses an index-based approach (PeVI) to assess the socioeconomic vulnerability using three components: susceptibility, lack of coping capacities, and lack of adaptation. Furthermore, ADRA explicitly incorporates the exposure component using two approaches; first, a logistic regression model was built using the actual evacuation rates observed during Hurricane Irma, and second, an Agent-based model is used to simulate how households change their exposure levels in relation to different sources of information

The oil and gas industry is going through a major technological shift. This is particularly true of the Norwegian continental shelf where new work processes are being implemented based on digital infrastructure and information technology. The term Integrated Operations (IO) has been applied to this set of new processes. It is defined by the Centre for Integrated Operations in the Petroleum Industry as 'work processes and technology to make smarter decisions and better execution, enabled by ubiquitous real time data, collaborative techniques and access to multiple expertise'. It's claimed that IO is efficient, optimises exploration, reduces costs and improves safety performance. However, the picture is not as clear-cut as it may appear. On the one hand, the new work processes do not prevent major accidents: IO-related factors have been identified in recent events such as the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. On the other hand, IO technology provides improved decision-making support (such as access to real-time data and expertise), which can reduce human and material losses and damage to the environment. Given these very different properties, it's vital that the industry has a detailed understanding of the benefits and drawbacks of IO, which this book sets out to do from a multidisciplinary point of view. It analyses Integrated Operations from the angles of statistics, management science, human factors and resilience engineering. These varied disciplines provide a multifaceted understanding of IO that better informs risk assessment practices, as well as explaining new techniques and methods and provides state-of-the-art guidance to risk assessment practitioners working in the oil and gas industry.

The effect of corrosion in the oil industry leads to the failure of parts. This failureresults in shutting down the plant to clean the facility. The annual cost of corrosion to the oil and gas industry in the United States alone is estimated at $27 billion (According to NACE International)-leading some to estimate the global annual cost to the oil and gas industry as exceeding $60 billion. In addition, corrosion commonly causes serious environmental problems, such as spills and releases. An essential resource for all those who are involved in the corrosion management of oil and gas infrastructure, "Corrosion Control in the Oil and Gas Industry" provides engineers and designers with the tools and methods to design and implement comprehensive corrosion-management programs for oil and gas infrastructures. The book addresses all segments of the industry, including production, transmission, storage, refining and distribution.
Selects cost-effective methods to control corrosionQuantitatively measures and estimates corrosion ratesTreats oil and gas infrastructures as systems in order to avoid the impacts that changes to one segment if a corrosion management program may have on othersProvides a gateway to more than 1,000 industry best practices and international standards"

Renewable energy is a fast expanding field, welcomed by many as part of the answer to climate change and energy security concerns. But can renewables deliver? This book reviews the basic technological options and what is happening around the world, so as to convey the sense of excitement that abounds in this new area of technological development. But it also looks at the problems, including local environmental impacts and the need to deal with the variability of some renewable energy sources.

Britain was the first country to exploit atomic energy on a large scale, and at its peak in the mid-1960s, it had generated more electricity from nuclear power than the rest of the world combined. The civil atomic energy programme grew out of the military programme which produced plutonium for atomic weapons. In 1956, Calder Hall power station was opened by the Queen. The very next year, one of the early Windscale reactors caught fire and the world's first major nuclear accident occurred. The civil programme ran into further difficulty in the mid-1960s and as a consequence of procrastination in the decision-making process, the programme lost momentum and effectively died. No nuclear power stations have been built since Sizewell B in the late 1980s. This book presents a study of Government papers that have recently become available in the public domain. For the first time in history, the research reactor programme is presented in detail, along with a study of the decision-making by the Government, the Atomic Energy Authority (AEA), and the Central Electricity Board (CEGB).This book is aimed at both specialists in nuclear power and the interested public as a technical history on the development and ultimate failure of the British atomic energy programme.

The existence of water, energy, and food (WEF) is critical for people to fulfil their basic needs, to achieve welfare, and to support the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The WEF security topic is becoming widely discussed in developing and developed countries. Major components of WEF security i.e. availability, accessibility, and quality should be achieved integratedly to avoid unexpected impacts. The interconnectedness among endogenous and exogenous variables such as environmental, socio-economic, and political factors makes this issue immensely complex. The nexus approach attempts to integrate management and governance across sectors and scales to improve WEF security. This study aims to grasp WEF security in a local context and evaluate the implications of planned local interventions by developing a conceptual and quantitative analysis with local stakeholders. Karawang Regency in Indonesia is chosen as the case study. Several strategies for WEF-related sectors are formulated using location quotient (LQ) and competitive position (CP) methods. In addition, qualitative and quantitative system dynamics models are established by involving related stakeholders through group model building. Finally, a nexus-based framework for WEF security is developed to assist local policymakers in doing the evaluation and planning of WEF resources in the region.

America s nuclear energy industry is in decline. Low natural gas prices, financing hurdles, failure to find a permanent repository for high-level nuclear waste, reactions to the Fukushima accident in Japan, and other factors are hastening the day when existing U.S. reactors become uneconomic. The decline of the U.S. nuclear energy industry could be much more rapid than policy makers and stakeholders anticipate. China, India, Russia, and others plan on adding nuclear technology to their mix, furthering the spread of nuclear materials around the globe. U.S. companies must meet a significant share of this demand for nuclear technology, but U.S. firms are currently at a competitive disadvantage due to restrictive and otherwise unsupportive export policies. Without a strong commercial presence in new markets, America s ability to influence nonproliferation policies and nuclear safety behaviors worldwide is bound to diminish. The United States cannot afford to become irrelevant in a new nuclear age.

This book sheds light on how the modern 3-bladed wind turbine came into being, and who, how and what in the proceeding period caused the success. It looks back over three decades to find the roots of this exciting development, a long cavalcade of developers, inventors, and manufacturers including the Danish authors who themselves were part of the breakthrough. Written for non-specialists, the book covers minimal science, emphasizing the story of how wind power became a worldwide 30-billion-euro business employing nearly one million people.

Within the nuclear field, a vast body of knowledge, involving scientific, technical and managerial fields, is distributed among many organizations of different types. Managing and provisioning distributed knowledge is therefore becoming one of the major challenges in federated organizational environments. This publication provides information to organizations dealing with nuclear knowledge and its management. It covers an introduction to semantic information technologies, the Worldwide Web standards developed for interoperability, the construction of knowledge bases on the basis of distributed knowledge, and the development of knowledge driven applications. In addition to providing insight into the development of distributed knowledge bases, the intent of this publication is to provide examples of applications of semantic technologies specifically in the nuclear field.

Safety, reliability, and productivity in the nuclear industry result from a systematic consideration of human performance. A plant or other facility consists of both the engineered system and the human users of that system. It is therefore crucial that engineering activities consider the humans who will be interacting with those systems. Engineering design, specifically instrumentation and control (I&C) design, can influence human performance by driving how plant personnel carry out work and respond to events within a nuclear power plant. As a result, human-system interfaces (HSIs) for plant operators as well as the maintenance and testing of the I&C system cannot be designed by isolated disciplines. The focus of this publication is to integrate knowledge from the disciplines of human factors engineering (HFE) and I&C to emphasize an interdisciplinary approach for the design of better HSIs and consequently improved human performance in nuclear power plants. This is accomplished by practical explanations of the HFE processes and corresponding outputs that inform the I&C development. More specifically, the publication addresses issues in the design process where collaboration between HFE, I&C and other important disciplines and stakeholders is paramount and identifies key tools and tasks for exchanging inputs and outputs between different design disciplines, particularly I&C and HFE. The practical information provided in this publication is intended to support Member States' capabilities to improve their approach to I&C through the consideration of HFE.

This book sheds light on how global warming has caused the ongoing environmental disaster in the Arctic, namely its melting. This development, if left unabated, will have a major negative environmental impact, not only on the Arctic itself, but on the entire planet, including the worsening of global warming and rising sea levels. The latter is a major threat to all island countries and all countries having coastlines with open seas with major environmental, social, economic, political and military/security implications. The Arctic melting is bringing about challenges while opening doors for certain opportunities. These are the accessibility of the region's large oil, gas and coal reserves and minerals, including rare earth elements. They are in demand both in the Arctic littoral states (Canada, Denmark/Greenland, Norway, Russia and USA) and the Greater Arctic countries (Iceland, Finland and Sweden) as well as in other parts of the world. In particular, major oil and gas importers (China, India, Japan and South Korea) are interested in the Arctic energy resources, the main non-regional countries with a capability to engage in the region. The obvious importance of the regional energy and mineral resources makes the division of the region among the regional countries crucial. The melting of the Arctic ice will also lead to the availability for at least a few months a year of a Northern Sea Route and a Northwest Passage connecting Europe to North America and the North-Eastern part of Asia. The importance of these northern routes and the Arctic mineral and energy resources is contributing to a growing military presence of mainly the USA and Russia in this region, which could lead to an arms race. This book offers invaluable insights on the issues that have grave implications for energy security and geopolitics in the arctic.

Crude oil extraction in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria generates 96% of all foreign earnings and 85% of state revenues, making it crucial to the survival of the Nigerian state. Several generations of state neglect, corruption and mismanagement have ensured that the Delta region is one of the most socio-economically and politically deprived in the country. By the late 1990s there was a frightening proliferation of armed gangs and insurgent groups. Illegal oil bunkering, pipeline vandalism, disruption of oil production activities, riots, and demonstrations intensified and in 2003, insurgents began kidnapping oil workers at a frenetic pace. In late 2005, an uber-insurgent movement 'organization' was formed in Nigeria. Christened the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), it operates as an amorphous, multifaceted amalgam of insurgent groups with an unprecedented clinical precision in execution of intents. By focussing on kidnappings that are putatively connected to the struggle for emancipating the Niger Delta, Oriola makes the case for analysing MEND as a social movement organization, rather than a terrorist or criminal gang by showing how political processes shape kidnappings in the Delta. The use of violent repertoires of contention has not garnered sufficient attention in the social movement literature, despite the fact that that around the world, many similar groups are adopting violent tactics without necessarily eschewing non-violent techniques. Based on multi-actor research, including interviews and focus group discussions with community members, military authorities, 42 ex-insurgents directly involved in illegal oil bunkering and kidnapping, and official email statements from 'Jomo Gbomo', the spokesperson of MEND, this book will be of interest to sociologists, political scientists and peace and security studies scholars.

The identification and assessment of threats provides an essential basis for the selection, design, and implementation of nuclear security measures. For nuclear material and other radioactive material that is under regulatory control, and associated facilities and activities, the results of this identification and assessment are expressed as a design basis threat or representative threat statement describing the intentions and capabilities of potential adversaries against which the materials and associated facilities and activities are to be protected. An Implementing Guide was issued in 2009 under the title of Development, Use and Maintenance of the Design Basis Threat which was updated and revised. The result of this revision is the current publication. It provides a step?bystep methodology for conducting a national nuclear security threat assessment including both physical and computer security aspects, and for the development, use and maintenance of design basis threats and representative threat statements.

The revised edition of this book captures new developments in economics and finance. Turning its focus towards the application of Engle's (1982) autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (ARCH) in cutting-edge research and a discussion of whether energy prices reflect long memory, this book will keep readers up-to-date with current developments in the literature. It presents twenty-one empirical studies of econometric time series analysis of crude oil, natural gas and electricity markets in face of the rapidly changing dynamics of the energy markets. Amongst them, several studies employ nonlinear time series methods, unlike the standard linear approach commonly used, to reflect the nonlinear nature of the economic system.Two new chapters are included, extending beyond the leading-edge research and innovative energy markets econometrics detailed in the first edition: Chapter 17 examines the effects of oil price changes and speculations on economic activity and Chapter 20 re-evaluates empirical evidence for random walk type behavior in energy futures prices using a statistical physics approach.

This volume examines energy security in a privatized, liberalized, and increasingly global energy market, in which the concept of sustainability has developed together with a higher awareness of environmental issues, but where the potential for supply disruptions, price fluctuation, and threats to infrastructure safety must also be considered. Part I commences with an essential introductory chapter which defines energy security and sets forth the key issues and themes of the book. There then follow several cross-cutting chapters which include sceptical analysis of energy security claims from an environmental perspective and a broader geopolitical analysis of energy security. Part II examines a wide variety of international, regional, and national approaches to energy security issues. Energy security concerns differ considerably from country to country, however most of the chapters examining particular nations provide an economic and historical context of their energy security concerns, followed by a detailed analysis of the legal provisions relating to each of the main energy sectors (oil, gas, coal, electricity, nuclear, and renewable energies). This entails examination of regulation, organization, and planning for security and other purposes. In a number of cases, energy security law is shaped by other factors such as market liberalization, environmental protection, and competition policy. Part III comprises two final chapters, the first contrasting the various national and regional approaches and analysing cross-cutting issues, whilst the concluding chapter forecasts future trends in the legal regulation of energy security.

An increase in major natural disasters-and the growing number of damaging events involving gas, electric, water, and other utilities-has led to heightened concerns about utility operations and public safety. Due to today's complex, compliance-based environment, utility managers and planners often find it difficult to plan for the action needed to help ensure organization-wide resilience and meet consumer expectations during these incidents. Emergency Planning Guide for Utilities, Second Edition offers a working guide that presents new and field-tested approaches to plan development, training, exercising, and emergency program management. The book will help utility planners, trainers, and responders-as well as their vendors and suppliers-to more effectively prepare for damaging events and improve the level of the utility's resilience. It also focuses on planning needed in the National Incident Management System and ICS environment that many utilities are embracing going forward. In doing so, utilities will be able to improve the customer experience while reducing the impact that damaging events have on the utility's infrastructure, people, and resources.