This book examines the impacts of radionuclides released from the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) accident on inland aquatic environments. The focus is on the dynamics of radiocesium in inland aquatic environments. The book comprises three parts: migration behavior of radiocesium in river and lake environment, accumulation of radiocesium into organisms in freshwater, and integrated environmental analysis in a lake system and a forest-freshwater system. Many studies on the dynamics of radionuclides have been published after the FDNPP accident, especially of radiocesium (134Cs 137Cs) in land and marine environment. The key features of this book are the new data of freshwater environment including transport of radionuclides in river and lake watershed, and accumulation of radiocesium in freshwater fishes and insects. Another feature of this book is that it summarizes the dataset of a model lake, Lake Akagi-Onuma, from geochemical and biological approaches. Readers will learn the actual dispersion behavior of radionuclides released from the Fukushima accident and their impacts on freshwater environments since the accident in 2011. The book presents valuable information for assessing the impacts of the FDNPP accident on ecosystem and human health, which are also useful in developing countermeasures for similar accidents and environmental contaminations.

In 1982, with Cold War anxieties running high, A.G. Mojtabai set out for Amarillo, Texas, home of Pantex, the final assembly plant for all nuclear weapons in the United States. Through the lens of this particular city, she sought to focus on our adaptation as a nation to the threat of nuclear war. Her interviews began with Pantex workers assured of both the necessity and the safety of the work that they did, and in the steady, beneficent, advance of science. Working alongside them were fundamentalist Christians who believed in inevitable catastrophe, and who testified to quite another, blessed, assurance of Divine rescue from the holocaust to come. This startling juxtaposition of apocalyptic and technocratic world views was not confined to Pantex. Blessed Assurance brilliantly examines this clash of spiritual visions as it presented itself repeatedly in the streets, churches, and corporate offices of Amarillo. The voices that you hear in this book are those of the people of Amarillo speaking for themselves. Their narratives powerfully reveal their hopes and fears, their sense of the meaning of history, and the future of the human race. Blessed Assurance won the year's Lillian Smith Award for the best book about the South in 1986.

Environmental tragedies such as Chernobyl and the "Exxon Valdez" remind us that catastrophic accidents are always possible in a world full of hazardous technologies. Yet, the "apparently" excellent safety record with nuclear weapons has led scholars, policy-makers, and the public alike to believe that nuclear arsenals can serve as a secure deterrent for the foreseeable future. In this provocative book, Scott Sagan challenges such optimism. Sagan's research into formerly classified archives penetrates the veil of safety that has surrounded U.S. nuclear weapons and reveals a hidden history of frightening "close calls" to disaster.

The proliferation of advanced weapons to volatile regions of the world has become a major issue in the post Cold War era. It was thought that no Third World nation could ever pose a technologically-based threat to the great powers by acquiring advanced weaponry. But this has proved to be wrong. The Persian Gulf War changed the worldwide perception of the spread of ballistic missiles to countries like Iraq. Access to a new type of weapon--cruise missiles--poses an even greater threat. With technology that is accessible, affordable, and relatively simple to produce, Third World countries could acquire highly accurate, long-range cruise missile forces to escalate local conflicts and threaten the forces and even the territories of the industrial powers. This book is a warning to policymakers. It is not too late to confront the realities of cruise missile proliferation and to devise international responses that could contain the worst possible consequences. Carus proposes a new regime of technology controls, security-building measures, and conflict resolution that need to be considered, and acted on, by policymakers and international relations experts everywhere.

Three Mile Island, Seabrook, Diablo Canyon: their controversies have come to symbolize the unhappy fate of American nuclear power. Three decades of effort and an investment of several hundred billion dollars have culminated in wide-spread public fear, huge financial losses, an unworkable regulatory system, and a virtual ban on new reactors. How did one of the world's most flexible political and economic systems produce such a technological white elephant? What does this enormous failure reveal about the compatibility of democracy and technology? And what lessons can be learned for future energy policy making? To answer these questions, Joseph Morone and Edward Woodhouse offer a nonpartisan diagnosis of the decision-making processes that led to the industry's current state. What we think of as nuclear power, they argue, is just one of many technical and organizational forms this energy source could have taken. It was shaped by political and economic choices of the 1950s and 1960s, not by any internal dynamic of the technology. If a few of those choices had been made differently--particularly regarding the scale-up and diffusion of reactors--the nuclear enterprise might have evolved far more acceptably. The ills of the first nuclear era stemmed not from any fundamental incompatibility between technology and democracy, but from a failure of democracy to live up to its own standards of good decision making. Although many nations have turned away from civilian nuclear power, problems with fossil fuels--particularly climate changes from the greenhouse effect--may lead to reappraisal of the nuclear option. A radically altered form of nuclear power, together with alternative energy sources and intensified conservation, could provide a more acceptable and less environmentally destructive energy future--if we learn from the failures of the first nuclear era.

A groundbreaking study of how emotions motivate attempts to counter species loss. This groundbreaking book brings together environmental history and the history of emotions to examine the motivations behind species conservation actions. In Recovering Lost Species in the Modern Age, Dolly Jorgensen uses the environmental histories of reintroduction, rewilding, and resurrection to view the modern conservation paradigm of the recovery of nature as an emotionally charged practice. Jorgensen argues that the recovery of nature-identifying that something is lost and then going out to find it and bring it back-is a nostalgic practice that looks to a historical past and relies on the concept of belonging to justify future-oriented action. The recovery impulse depends on emotional responses to what is lost, particularly a longing for recovery that manifests itself in such emotions as guilt, hope, fear, and grief. Jorgensen explains why emotional frameworks matter deeply-both for how people understand nature theoretically and how they interact with it physically. The identification of what belongs (the lost nature) and our longing (the emotional attachment to it) in the present will affect how environmental restoration practices are carried out in the future. A sustainable future will depend on questioning how and why belonging and longing factor into the choices we make about what to recover.

Originally perceived as a cheap and plentiful source of power, the commercial use of nuclear energy has been controversial for decades. Worries about the dangers that nuclear plants and their radioactive waste posed to nearby communities grew over time, and plant construction in the United States virtually died after the early 1980s. The 1986 disaster at Chernobyl only reinforced nuclear power's negative image. Yet in the decade prior to the Japanese nuclear crisis of 2011, sentiment about nuclear power underwent a marked change. The alarming acceleration of global warming due to the burning of fossil fuels and concern about dependence on foreign fuel has led policymakers, climate scientists, and energy experts to look once again at nuclear power as a source of energy.
In this accessible overview, Charles D. Ferguson provides an authoritative account of the key facts about nuclear energy. What is the origin of nuclear energy? What countries use commercial nuclear power, and how much electricity do they obtain from it? How can future nuclear power plants be made safer? What can countries do to protect their nuclear facilities from military attacks? How hazardous is radioactive waste? Is nuclear energy a renewable energy source? Featuring a discussion of the recent nuclear crisis in Japan and its ramifications, Ferguson addresses these questions and more in Nuclear Energy: What Everyone Needs to Know(r), a book that is essential for anyone looking to learn more about this important issue.
What Everyone Needs to Know(r) is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press

The reactor core is the central part of a nuclear reactor where nuclear fission occurs. It consists of four basic systems and components: the fuel (including fuel rods and the fuel assembly structure), the coolant, the moderator and the control rods, as well as additional structures such as reactor pressure vessel internals, core support plates, and the lower and upper internal structure in light water reactors. This Safety Guide provides recommendations on meeting the safety requirements established in SSR-2/1 (Rev. 1) applied to the design of the reactor core for nuclear power plants. The publication addresses the safety aspects of the core design and includes neutronic, thermohydraulic, thermomechanical, and structural mechanical aspects. Other aspects considered are those relating to reactor core control, shutdown and monitoring, and core management.

The development and implementation of an appropriate infrastructure to support the successful introduction of nuclear power and its safe, secure, peaceful and sustainable application is an issue of central concern, especially for countries that are considering and planning their first nuclear power plant. In preparing the necessary nuclear infrastructure, there are several activities that need to be completed. These activities can be split into three progressive phases of development. This publication provides a description of the conditions expected to be achieved by the end of each phase to assist with the best use of resources. 'Milestones' refer to the conditions necessary to demonstrate that the phase has been successfully completed.

This book is a comprehensive compilation of reports, correspondence and other publications on Ukraine. Some of the issues discussed include: *U.S. Policy *The Conflict with Russia *The Presidential Election *The Whistleblower Complaint *Atomic Energy

How an alliance of the labor and environmental movements used law as a tool to clean up the trucking industry at the nation's largest port. In Blue and Green, Scott Cummings examines a campaign by the labor and environmental movements to transform trucking at America's largest port in Los Angeles. Tracing the history of struggle in an industry at the epicenter of the global supply chain, Cummings shows how an unprecedented "blue-green" alliance mobilized to improve working conditions for low-income drivers and air quality in nearby communities. The campaign for "clean trucks," Cummings argues, teaches much about how social movements can use law to challenge inequality in a global era. Cummings shows how federal deregulation created interrelated economic and environmental problems at the port and how the campaign fought back by mobilizing law at the local level. He documents three critical stages: initial success in passing landmark legislation requiring port trucking companies to convert trucks from dirty to clean and drivers from contractors to employees with full labor rights; campaign decline after industry litigation blocked employee conversion; and campaign resurgence through an innovative legal approach to driver misclassification that realized a central labor movement goal-unionizing port truckers. Appraising the campaign, Cummings analyzes the tradeoffs of using alternative legal frameworks to promote labor organizing, and explores lessons for building movements to regulate low-wage work in the "gig" economy. He shows how law can bind coalitions together and split them apart, and concludes that the fight for legal reform never ends, but rather takes different turns on the long road to justice.

Bahman Zohuri, PhD opens this book by first describing the history of nuclear power plants and then supplements this information by making a case for their importance. Chapter One proposes the use of combined cycles to produce electricity through nuclear fuel in order to yield a greater investment return. Next, Chapter Two by Jurgen K. Grunwald presents a study wherein the power, concerning nuclear non-proliferation, of two European organizations is explored. In Chapter Three, Takayuki Nakamura discusses the necessity for the upcoming generation to attain knowledge about nuclear safety and regulations. The creation of a project which encourages students to create robots with the goal of decommissioning Fukushina Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant is explained.

Medical exposure to ionising radiation remains by far the largest contributor to the radiation dose from manmade sources of radiation. Strategies for dose and risk management, with a focus on the minimisation of the stochastic effect and prevention of tissue reactions are presented in Chapter One. A critical review about solid radioactive wastes in Nuclear Medicine facilities and its management, storage and disposal is covered in Chapter Two. Chapter Three presents an assessment of a mixed system for calculating electromagnetic dosimetry that combined experimental radiation parameters and Finite Differences in Temporal Domain simulations based on numerical phantom rats. Chapter Four described and compares the legislation and legal provisions on waste disposal for medium, low and high levels of radiation among BRICS countries Brazil, Russia Federation, India, Peoples Republic of China and South Africa. Chapter Five introduces studies on the assessment of local acceptance of radioactive waste facilities.

The nuclear industry is in a state of flux. Proclamations of a nuclear renaissance have given way to predictions of the industry's ultimate decline, and now, in the face of new carbon emissions regulation, renewed optimism for the future. Yet, nuclear plants are currently at-risk due to electricity market design issues and competition with low priced natural gas. This book attempts to provide clarity to the potential outlook for the nuclear industry by examining the factors that influence it. It includes an analysis of recent trends affecting nuclear power generation while focusing on the specific potential impact of the EPA's proposed Clean Power Program on nuclear power.

Book & CD-ROM. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) defines an abandoned uranium mine (mine) as a named mine or complex developed to extract uranium ore for atomic energy defense-related activities of the United States from 1947 to 1970, as verified by purchase of ore by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) or other means. This book addresses five issues which include the location of defense-related abandoned uranium mines on federal, state, tribal, and private lands; the extent of radiation hazards, other public health and safety threats, and environmental degradation caused, or may have been caused, by the mines; a priority ranking to reclaim and remediate the mines; the potential cost and feasibility of reclamation and remediation in accordance with applicable federal law; and the status of any mine reclamation and remediation efforts. This book is accompanied by a CD-ROM which includes three reports on defense-related uranium mines locations; the radiological risk to human health and the environment; and prioritization.

The March 2011 accident at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant led to a worldwide review of nuclear power programs. NRC licenses and oversees civilian nuclear reactors. The State Department coordinates policy matters with international organisations and treaties, including those dealing with nuclear safety. This book examines the actions nuclear regulatory bodies from selected countries have taken to strengthen nuclear safety; the extent to which these countries have established automated systems to collect and transmit accident data; and steps international organisations have taken to support nuclear regulatory bodies and promote nuclear safety worldwide since the accident.

The United States (US) program for siting interim storage and permanent disposal facilities for used nuclear fuel (UNF) is at a crossroads. The March 2010 request by the US Department of Energy (DOE) to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for termination of the Yucca Mountain Project (YMP) license application, followed one year later by the disastrous nuclear events in Fukushima, Japan, have resulted in a fundamental reconsideration of approaches for siting interim and permanent UNF management facilities in the US. This book provides findings from a set of social science studies undertaken by the Center for Risk and Crisis Management (CRCM) and Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), which focus on public attitudes and preferences concerning the siting of nuclear repositories and interim storage facilities. This book is also a framework for moving toward a sustainable program to deploy an integrated system capable of transporting, storing, and disposing of used nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste from civilian nuclear power generation, defence, national security and other activities.

This book examines the U.S.-foreign partnership efforts to prevent nuclear smuggling and terrorist travel. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) established the Megaports Initiative in 2003 to deter, detect, and interdict nuclear or other radiological materials smuggled through foreign seaports. The Initiative funds the installation of radiation detection equipment at select seaports overseas and trains foreign personnel to use this equipment to scan shipping containers entering and leaving these seaports, regardless of destination. Additionally, the U.S. government has identified four key gaps in foreign countries' capacity to prevent terrorist travel overseas. The book evaluates how U.S. capacity-building efforts address those gaps and assesses the extent to which the U.S. government is measuring progress in its efforts to close those gaps.

This book examines uranium mining and management in the United States with a focus on federal considerations. From 2005 to 2007, uranium prices increased from about $20 a pound to over $140 a pound, which led to renewed interest in uranium mining, both exploration and extraction, on federal land in the U.S. In early 2012, thousands of claims have been filed to explore for and potentially extract uranium on federal land. This increase in claims filed, has raised concerns about the potential impacts that an increased level of uranium exploration and extraction could have on the environment. During uranium extraction, the waste rock piles that are formed can introduce radionuclides (such as radium) and heavy metals (such as selenium and arsenic) into the environment. Before the mid-1970s, many mines on federal land, were abandoned without any reclamation, leaving a costly legacy of abandoned mines that pose potential health, safety, and environmental hazards.

The Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future was chartered to recommend a new strategy for managing the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle. The Nation's failure to come to grips with the nuclear waste issue has already proved damaging and costly and it will be more damaging and more costly the longer it continues: damaging to prospects for maintaining a potentially important energy supply option for the future, damaging to state-federal relations and public confidence in the federal government's competence, and damaging to America's standing in the world -- not only as a source of nuclear technology and policy expertise but as a leader on global issues of nuclear safety, non-proliferation, and security. This book examines the use of nuclear energy as a low-carbon energy resource with a focus on the management of the nuclear fuel cycle, based on emerging technologies and developments.

Weapons of mass destruction (WMD), especially in the hands of radical states and terrorists, represent a major threat to U.S. national security interests. Multilateral regimes were established to restrict trade in nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and missile technologies, and to monitor their civil applications. Congress may consider the efficacy of these regimes in considering the potential renewal of the Export Administration Act, as well as other proliferation-specific legislation in the 111th Congress. This book provides background and current status information on nuclear non-proliferation regimes which encompass several treaties, extensive multilateral and bilateral diplomatic agreements, multilateral organisations and domestic agencies, and the domestic laws of participating countries.

This book presents and reviews the current nuclear ambitions and issues of several Middle Eastern countries such as: Iran, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates and India. This book provides background information on the nuclear programs of these countries, reviews developments to date, analyses proposed nuclear co-operation with the U.S. and discusses relevant legislative proposals and options.

On January 27, 1951, the first atomic weapon was detonated over a section of desert known as Frenchman Flat in southern Nevada, providing dramatic evidence of the Nevada Test Site's beginnings. Fifty years later, author A. Costandina Titus reviews contemporary nuclear policy issues concerning the continued viability of that site for weapons testing. Titus has updated her now-classic study of atomic testing with fifteen years of political and cultural history-from the mid-1980s Reagan-Gorbachev nuclear standoff to the authorization of the Nevada Test Site Research Center, a Desert Research Institute facility scheduled to open in 2001. In the second edition of Bombs in the Backyard, Titus deftly covers the post-Cold War transformation of American atomic policy as well as our overarching cultural interest in all matters atomic, making this a must-read for anyone interested in atomic policy and politics.

Nuclear Reactions explores the nuclear consensus that emerged in post-World War II America, characterized by widespread support for a diplomatic and military strategy based on nuclear weapons and a vision of economic growth that welcomed nuclear energy both for the generation of electricity and for other peaceful and industrial uses. Unease about the environmental consequences of nuclear energy and weapons development became apparent by the early 1960s and led to the first challenges to that consensus. The documents in this collection address issues such as the arms race, "mutually assured destruction," the emergence of ecosystems ecology and the environmental movement, nuclear protests, and climate change. They raise questions about how nuclear energy shaped-and continues to shape-the contours of postwar American life. These questions provide a useful lens through which to understand the social, economic, and environmental tradeoffs embedded within American choices about the use and management of nuclear energy.