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Books > Earth & environment > The environment > Nuclear issues
This is a story of how ordinary people created a movement that changed New Zealand's foreign policy and our identity as a nation. The story of peace activism from our pre-recorded history to 1975 was told in Peace People: A history of peace activities in New Zealand by Elsie Locke. In this new book her daughter Maire Leadbeater takes the story up to the 1990s in an account of the dramatic stories of the colorful and courageous activist campaigns that led the New Zealand government to enact nuclear-free legislation in 1987. Politicians took the credit, but they were responding to a powerful groundswell of public opinion.
In situ leach or leaching (ISL) or in situ recovery (ISR) mining has become one of the standard uranium production methods. Its application to amenable uranium deposits (in certain sedimentary formations) has been growing in view of its competitive production costs and low surface impacts. This publication provides an historical overview and shows how ISL experience around the world can be used to direct the development of technical activities, taking into account environmental considerations, and emphasizing the economics of the process, including responsible mine closure. The publication provides information on how to design, operate and regulate current and future projects safely and efficiently, with a view to maximizing performance and minimizing negative environmental impact.
The massive release of radioactive material at the Chernobyl accident in 1986 led to widespread radiation exposure, in particular to people evacuated from the settlements near the reactor and workers involved in the clean-up operations, and also to several millons living in contaminated regions in Russia, Belorus and Ukraine. This book provides current research on the Chernobyl disaster. Chapter One provides a comparative analysis and evaluation of different types of countermeasures implemented in the aftermath of the accident at Chernobyl. Chapter Two discusses the artistic treatment of Chernobyl where the problem of apophasia arises. Chapter Three reviews the general tendencies of dynamics of frequencies of congenital malformations in the territories polluted by radioactive Chernobyl radionuclides. Chapter Four discusses the impact of low doses of radiation. Chapter Five provides an overview of the increase of non-cancer morbidity on the Chernobyl radioactively contaminated territories. Chapter Six develops a concept of premature aging development in liquidators in the remote period after the Chernobyl disaster. Chapter Seven discusses the long term consequences of atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons and Chernobyl disaster on the territory of South Bohemia in Czech Republic. Chapter Eight studies the stress adaptation of microscopic fungi from around the Chernobyl atomic energy station. Chapter Nine focuses on perspectives of nuclear safety. The final chapter is a short commentary on the radiation and risk of hematological malignancies in the Chernobyl clean-up workers.
In China, a lot of Nuclear Power Plants (NPP) are in the stages of planning, design, or construction. Thus it is necessary to do a comprehensive research on design standards for protective engineering and structural technology of the NPP based on the world's highest safety requirements. This book discusses the joint probability analysis of meteorological, oceanographic and hydrological hazards based on various distribution models.
The Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Nuclear Energy's (NE) approach to advanced reactor research and development (R&D) focuses on three reactor technologies -- high-temperature gas-cooled reactors, sodium-cooled fast reactors, and fluoride-salt-cooled high-temperature reactors -- but NE is also funding research into other advanced reactor technologies. NE's approach is to conduct research in support of multiple advanced reactor technologies, while collaborating with industry and academia, with the ultimate goal for industry to take the results of NE's research to the next step of development and commercialization. This book describes NE's approach to advanced nuclear reactor R&D and examines how NE plans and prioritizes its advanced reactor R&D activities, including deploying an advanced reactor. This book also discusses the DOE's International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) Agreement. It examines how and why the estimated costs and schedule of the U.S. ITER Project have changed since 2006; the reliability of DOE's current cost and schedule estimates; and actions DOE has taken to reduce U.S. ITER Project costs and plan for their impact on the overall U.S. fusion program.
During the late 1990s, the Department of Energy (DOE) had difficulties with a lack of clear management authority and responsibility that contributed to security problems at the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories and management problems with major projects. In response, Congress created the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) as a separately organised agency within the DOE under the NNSA Act. The NNSA is responsible for managing nuclear weapons and non-proliferation-related national security activities in laboratories and other facilities, collectively known as the nuclear security enterprise. This book examines the problems that have arisen with the nuclear security enterprise, from projects' cost and schedule overruns to inadequate oversight of safety and security at NNSA's sites. With the NNSA proposing to spend tens of billions of dollars to modernise its facilities, it is important to ensure scarce resources are spent in an effective and efficient manner.
Project management is a leadership function primarily concerned with the organization, coordination and control of large undertakings, with the aim of achieving technical excellence by working to quality standards, optimizing the schedule and the supply chain, and minimizing costs. Competent project management can reduce costs through more efficient work sequences, higher productivity, shorter activity durations and the parallel reduction of accumulated interest during construction of nuclear power plants. Based on past proven practices in Member States, this publication provides guidance on project management from the preparatory phase to plant turnover to commissioning of nuclear power plants. The guidelines and experiences described will enable project managers to obtain better performance in nuclear power plant construction.
The seismic design criteria applied to sitting commercial nuclear power plants operating in the U.S. received increased attention following the March 11th, 2011 earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. Since the events, some in Congress have begun to question whether U.S. plants are vulnerable to a similar threat, particularly in light of the Nuclear Regulatory Commissions's (NRC)ongoing reassessment of seismic risks at certain plant sites. This book presents some of the general design concepts of operating nuclear power plants in order to discuss design considerations for seismic events.
After a tsunami destroyed the cooling system at Japan's Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, triggering a meltdown, protesters around the world challenged the use of nuclear power. Germany announced it would close its plants by 2022. Although the ills of fossil fuels are better understood than ever, the threat of climate change has never aroused the same visceral dread or swift action. Spencer Weart dissects this paradox, demonstrating that a powerful web of images surrounding nuclear energy holds us captive, allowing fear, rather than facts, to drive our thinking and public policy. Building on his classic, "Nuclear Fear, " Weart follows nuclear imagery from its origins in the symbolism of medieval alchemy to its appearance in film and fiction. Long before nuclear fission was discovered, fantasies of the destroyed planet, the transforming ray, and the white city of the future took root in the popular imagination. At the turn of the twentieth century when limited facts about radioactivity became known, they produced a blurred picture upon which scientists and the public projected their hopes and fears. These fears were magnified during the Cold War, when mushroom clouds no longer needed to be imagined; they appeared on the evening news. Weart examines nuclear anxiety in sources as diverse as Alain Resnais's film "Hiroshima Mon Amour, " Cormac McCarthy's novel "The Road, " and the television show "The Simpsons." " " Recognizing how much we remain in thrall to these setpieces of the imagination, Weart hopes, will help us resist manipulation from both sides of the nuclear debate.
In Publication 103, the Commission included a section on the protection of the environment, and indicated that it would be further developing its approach to this difficult subject by way of a set of Reference Animals and Plants (RAPs) as the basis for relating exposure to dose, and dose to radiation effects, for different types of animals and plants. Subsequently, a set of 12 RAPs has been described in some detail, particularly with regard to estimation of the doses received by them, at a whole-body level, in relation to internal and external radionuclide concentrations; and what is known about the effects of radiation on such types of animals and plants. A set of dose conversion factors for all of the RAPs has been derived, and the resultant dose rates can be compared with evaluations of the effects of dose rates using derived consideration reference levels (DCRLs). Each DCRL constitutes a band of dose rates for each RAP within which there is likely to be some chance of the occurrence of deleterious effects. Site-specific data on Representative Organisms (i.e. organisms of specific interest for an assessment) can then be compared with such values and used as a basis for decision making.
Today when the world is facing serious energy crisis and climate change problems, the issue of nuclear energy and power has regained much importance particularly in countries with rapidly growing energy demands like India and China, and where alternatives sources are scarce or expensive like in Japan and South Korea. The book, divided into seven chapters, focuses on various positive and negative aspects of nuclear energy and power. The chapters elaborate on issues like an in depth analysis of contemporary nuclear power production, nuclear safety and existing systems of safeguard, including the roles and responsibilities of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the performance of nuclear reactors worldwide, the transport, storage and disposal of radioactive materials and wastes, environmental health and other effects of nuclear energy and power technologies.
Three Mile Island burst into the nation's headlines twenty-five years ago, forever changing our view of nuclear power. The dramatic accident held the world's attention for an unsettling week in March 1979 as engineers struggled to understand what had happened and brought the damaged reactor to a safe condition. Much has been written since then about TMI, but it is not easy to find up-to-date information that is both reliable and accessible to the nonscientific reader. TMI 25 Years Later offers a much-needed "one-stop" resource for a new generation of citizens, students, and policy makers. The legacy of Three Mile Island has been far reaching. The worst nuclear accident in U.S. history marked a turning point in our policies, our perceptions, and our national identity. Those involved in the nuclear industry today study the scenario carefully and review the decontamination and recovery process. Risk management and the ability to convey risks to the general population rationally and understandably are an integral part of implementing new technologies. Political, environmental, and energy decisions have been made with TMI as a factor, and while studies reveal little environmental damage from the accident, long-term studies of health effects continue. TMI 25 Years Later presents a balanced and factual account of the accident, the cleanup effort, and the many facets of its legacy. The authors bring extensive research and writing The authors bring extensive research and writing experience to this book. After the accident and the cleanup, a significant collection of videotapes, photographs, and reports was donated to the University Libraries at Penn State University. Bonnie Osif and Thomas Conkling are engineering librarians at Penn State who maintain a database of these materials, which they have made available to the general public through an award-winning website. Anthony Baratta is a nuclear engineer who worked with the decontamination and recovery project at TMI and is an expert in nuclear accidents. The book features unique photographs of the cleanup and helpful appendixes that enable readers to investigate further various aspects of the story.
The disposal of nuclear waste is becoming a major concern. Many nuclear power plants around the world are nearing the end of their operating lives. This is particularly true in the United States where most nuclear power plants are approaching the end of the operational time period allowed in their licenses. The disposal of radioactive waste from nuclear power plants and nuclear missiles is as politically intense an issue as the plants and missiles themselves. Yet the three issues have remained curiously separate in spite of their close physical ties. Few debates on nuclear power or nuclear weapons discuss the problems of waste disposal should the power plant or missile be decommissioned. Few debates on nuclear waste disposal discuss the opportunities to close nuclear power plants or get rid of nuclear weapons a disposal site would afford. Nuclear waste can be generally classified a either "low level" radioactive waste or "high level" radioactive waste. Low level nuclear waste usually includes material used to handle the highly radioactive parts of nuclear reactors (i.e. cooling water pipes and radiation suits) and waste from medical procedures involving radioactive treatments or x-rays. Low level waste is comparatively easy to dispose of. The level of radioactivity and the half life of the radioactive isotopes in low level waste is relatively small. Storing the waste for a period of 10 to 50 years will allow most of the radioactive isotopes in low level waste to decay, at which point the waste can be disposed of as normal refuse. High level radioactive waste is generally material from the core of the nuclear reactor or nuclear weapon. This waste includes uranium, plutonium, and other highly radioactive elements made during fission. Most of the radioactive isotopes in high level waste emit large amounts of radiation and have extremely long half-lives (some longer than 100,000 years) creating long time periods before the waste will settle to safe levels of radioactivity. This new book explores the issues pertaining, either directly or indirectly, to nuclear waste disposal.
More than a quarter-century has now passed since the United States set off the last of three underground atomic blasts in the remote wilderness of the Aleutian islands, off the coast of Alaska. Cannikin, as this third test was called, exploded as planned on November 6, 1971, on Amchitka Island. The first test, Project Long Shot (1965), was designed to determine whether the blast's shock waves could be distinguished from earthquakes. Milrow, the second (1969), and Cannikin were part of the U.S. anti-ballistic missile development program. Amchitka and the Bomb looks at how these nuclear explosions were planned and conducted by the U.S. Department of Defense and the Atomic Energy Commission, in spite of vehement protests by political and civilian groups. In addition to demonstrating the feasibility of a new generation of weapons, the government defended the nuclear tests on Amchitka as providing U.S. presidents, and especially Richard Nixon, with negotiating power to force the Soviet Union to accept a satisfactory arms limitation agreement. Dean Kohlhoff traces the enormous environmental impact of the blasts on the Aleutian wildlife refuge system. He also examines the social and political fallout from the tests on Aleut civilian populations. As the tests inexorably went forward, an emerging environmental movement was galvanized to action. Passionate but ultimately futile attempts to stop the blasts were made by such nascent groups as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and the Wilderness Society. Although Alaskan Aleuts sued to halt Cannikin and environmental groups joined them for an injunction against the test, a split U.S. Supreme Court eventually approved the 5.1-megaton explosion. Amchitka and the Bomb tells a harrowing story of the struggle of private citizens and small environmental groups to counter the weight of the federal government. It adds immeasurably to our understanding of the nuclear history of the United States. Its concise interweaving of the military, scientific, economic, and social implications surrounding the nuclear explosions on Amchitka Island exposes the unpleasant consequences of allowing treasured national values to become victim to political necessity. Kohlhoff has contributed a vital chapter to Alaska's history and to the history of the American environmental movement.
An updated edition of a guide to the basic science of climate change, and a call to action. The vast majority of scientists agree that human activity has significantly increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere-most dramatically since the 1970s. Yet global warming skeptics and ill-informed elected officials continue to dismiss this broad scientific consensus. In this updated edition of his authoritative book, MIT atmospheric scientist Kerry Emanuel outlines the basic science of global warming and how the current consensus has emerged. Although it is impossible to predict exactly when the most dramatic effects of global warming will be felt, he argues, we can be confident that we face real dangers. Emanuel warns that global warming will contribute to an increase in the intensity and power of hurricanes and flooding and more rapidly advancing deserts. But just as our actions have created the looming crisis, so too might they avert it. Emanuel calls for urgent action to reduce greenhouse gases and criticizes the media for downplaying the dangers of global warming (and, in search of "balance," quoting extremists who deny its existence). This edition has been updated to include the latest climate data, a discussion of the earth's carbon cycle, the warming hiatus of the first decade of this century, the 2017 hurricanes, advanced energy options, the withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, and more. It offers a new foreword by former U.S. Representative Bob Inglis (R-SC), who now works on climate action through his organization RepublicEN.
"Is it safe?" "What are the risks involved?" are questions frequently asked by members of the public. This unique book explains the fundamental problems faced in modern-day life. Terms such as "risk" and "safe" are clearly defined, and the risks encountered between birth and death are discussed, including transport, the home, healthcare, diet, and the workplace. The perception of risk, and the risks from radiation (natural, radwaste and nuclear reactors) are covered, along with management of risk and the psychology of risk perception. What is Safe? The Risks of Living in a Nuclear Age is illustrated with examples from the most deeply researched areas. Written for the lay-person, the volume also includes a complete reprint of the late Lord Walter Marshall's famous lecture "The Radioactive Garden." It will be of interest to students, teachers, researchers, industrialists or indeed anyone wishing for an up-to-date view of risk and safety.
First published in 1978, Helen Caldicott's cri du coeur about the dangers of nuclear power became an instant classic. In the intervening sixteen years much has changed - the Cold War is over, nuclear arms production has decreased, and there has been a marked growth in environmental awareness. But the nuclear genie has not been forced back into the bottle. The disaster at Chernobyl and the "incidents" at other plants around the world have disproven the image of "safe" nuclear power. Nuclear waste dumping has further poisoned our environment, and developing nuclear technology in the Third World poses still further risks. In this completely revised, updated, and expanded edition, Dr. Caldicott defines for the 1990s the dangers of this madness - including the insidious influence of the nuclear power industry and the American government's complicity in medical "experiments" using nuclear material - and calls on us to accept the moral challenge to fight against it, both for our own sake and for that of future generations.
Shrader-Frechette looks at current U.S. government policy regarding
the nation's high-level radioactive waste both scientifically and
ethically.
In the past two decades young people, environmentalists, church
activists, leftists, and others have mobilized against nuclear
energy. Anti-nuclear protest has been especially widespread and
vocal in Western Europe and the United States. In this lucid,
richly documented book, Christian Joppke compares the rise and fall
of these protest movements in Germany and the United States,
illuminating the relationship between national political structures
and collective action. He analyzes existing approaches to the study
of social movements and suggests an insightful new paradigm for
research in this area. Joppke proposes a political process
perspective that focuses on the interrelationship between the state
and social movements, a model that takes into account a variety of
forces, including differential state structures, political
cultures, movement organizations, and temporal and contextual
factors.
This book constitutes the Proceedings of a meeting held in Pugwash, Nova Scotia, 18-20 July 1989, which was the eighteenth in a series of Workshops on Nuclear Forces held in the framework of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. This particular series of Workshops was initiated in January 1980, that is, immediately after the NATO "double-track" decision of December 1979 that in the short run led to the deployment in Europe of new US nuclear-armed missiles ground launched cruise missiles and medium-range ballistic missiles (Pershing II) but that was also instrumental in setting into motion the process that led to the total elimination of all US and Soviet ground-based missiles having ranges from 500 to 5500km."
How the US Environmental Protection Agency designed the governance of risk and forged its legitimacy over the course of four decades. The US Environmental Protection Agency was established in 1970 to protect the public health and environment, administering and enforcing a range of statutes and programs. Over four decades, the EPA has been a risk bureaucracy, formalizing many of the methods of the scientific governance of risk, from quantitative risk assessment to risk ranking. Demortain traces the creation of these methods for the governance of risk, the controversies to which they responded, and the controversies that they aroused in turn. He discusses the professional networks in which they were conceived; how they were used; and how they served to legitimize the EPA. Demortain argues that the EPA is structurally embedded in controversy, resulting in constant reevaluation of its credibility and fueling the evolution of the knowledge and technologies it uses to produce decisions and to create a legitimate image of how and why it acts on the environment. He describes the emergence and institutionalization of the risk assessment-risk management framework codified in the National Research Council's Red Book, and its subsequent unraveling as the agency's mission evolved toward environmental justice, ecological restoration, and sustainability, and as controversies over determining risk gained vigor in the 1990s. Through its rise and fall at the EPA, risk decision-making enshrines the science of a bureaucracy that learns how to make credible decisions and to reform itself, amid constant conflicts about the environment, risk, and its own legitimacy.
This part gives metabolic data for 30 further elements, including Annual Limits on Intakes (ALI's) for their isotopes. The data given in this report are intended to be used together with the text and dosimetric models described in ICRP Publication 30, Part 1.
'Absolutely stunning. . . a formidable achievement. A six-part historical thriller that is essential reading for both our politicians and the ordinary citizen' Kai Bird Best-selling historian Serhii Plokhy returns with an illuminating exploration of the atomic age through the history of six nuclear disasters In 2011, a 43-foot-high tsunami crashed into a nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan. In the following days, explosions would rip buildings apart, three reactors would go into nuclear meltdown, and the surrounding area would be swamped in radioactive water. It is now considered one of the costliest nuclear disasters ever. But Fukushima was not the first, and it was not the worst. . . In Atoms and Ashes, acclaimed historian Serhii Plokhy tells the tale of the six nuclear disasters that shook the world: Bikini Atoll, Kyshtym, Windscale, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. Based on wide-ranging research and witness testimony, Plokhy traces the arc of each crisis, exploring in depth the confused decision-making on the ground and the panicked responses of governments to contain the crises and often cover up the scale of the catastrophe. As the world increasingly looks to renewable and alternative sources of energy, Plokhy lucidly argues that the atomic risk must be understood in explicit terms, but also that these calamities reveal a fundamental truth about our relationship with nuclear technology: that the thirst for power and energy has always trumped safety and the cost for future generations.
In this study of the nuclear theme in Japanese intellectual and artistic life, John Whittier Treat argues that we have much to learn from Japanese writers and artists about the substance and meaning of the nuclear age. Treat recounts the controversial history of Japanese public discourse around Hiroshima and Nagasaki - a discourse alternatively celebrated and censored - from August 6, 1945, to the present day. He includes works from the earliest survivor writers, including Hara Tamiki and Ota Yoko, to such important modern Japanese intellectuals as Oe Kenzaburo and Oda Makoto. Treat argues that the insights of Japanese writers into the lessons of modern atrocity share much in common with those of Holocaust writers in Europe and the practitioners of recent post-structuralist nuclear criticism in America. In chapters that take up writers as diverse as Hiroshima poets, Tokyo critics and Nagasaki women novelists, he explores the implications of these works for critical, literary and cultural theory. Treat summarizes the Japanese contribution to such ongoing international debates as the crisis of modern ethics, the relationship of experience to memory and the possibility of writing history. This Japanese perspective, Treat shows, both confirms and amends many of the assertions made in the West on the shift that the death camps and nuclear weapons have jointly signalled for the modern world and for the future.
How Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and China deal with such urban environmental issues as ports, goods movement, air pollution, water quality, transportation, and public space. Over the past four decades, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and key urban regions of China have emerged as global cities-in financial, political, cultural, environmental, and demographic terms. In this book, Robert Gottlieb and Simon Ng trace the global emergence of these urban areas and compare their responses to a set of six urban environmental issues. These cities have different patterns of development: Los Angeles has been the quintessential horizontal city, the capital of sprawl; Hong Kong is dense and vertical; China's new megacities in the Pearl River Delta, created by an explosion in industrial development and a vast migration from rural to urban areas, combine the vertical and the horizontal. All three have experienced major environmental changes in a relatively short period of time. Gottlieb and Ng document how each has dealt with challenges posed by ports and the movement of goods, air pollution (Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and urban China are all notorious for their hazardous air quality), water supply (all three places are dependent on massive transfers of water) and water quality, the food system (from seed to table), transportation, and public and private space. Finally they discuss the possibility of change brought about by policy initiatives and social movements. |
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