This title, first published in 1987, examines the topic of nuclear waste management, and the way in which the public reacts to this issue. Part 1 explores the sources of public unease, such as the way in which nuclear waste had failed to be properly contained in the past. Part 2 looks at the search for a waste policy and the introduction of The Nuclear Waste Policy Act. Part 3 examines the waste problem from the standpoint of it being an international issue, and finally, Part 4 looks to the future and the lessons that we can learn from past nuclear waste management failures. This book will be of interest to students of environmental management.
This title, first published in 1987, examines the topic of nuclear waste management, and the way in which the public reacts to this issue. Part 1 explores the sources of public unease, such as the way in which nuclear waste had failed to be properly contained in the past. Part 2 looks at the search for a waste policy and the introduction of The Nuclear Waste Policy Act. Part 3 examines the waste problem from the standpoint of it being an international issue, and finally, Part 4 looks to the future and the lessons that we can learn from past nuclear waste management failures. This book will be of interest to students of environmental management.
In The Road to Yucca Mountain, J. Samuel Walker traces the U.S. government's tangled efforts to solve the technical and political problems associated with radioactive waste. From the Manhattan Project through the designation in 1987 of Yucca Mountain in Nevada as a high-level waste repository, Walker thoroughly investigates the approaches adopted by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). He explains the growing criticism of the AEC's waste programs, such as the AEC's embarrassing failure in its first serious effort to build a high-level waste repository in a Kansas salt mine. Clearly and accessibly, Walker explains the issues surrounding deep geological disposal and surface storage of high-level waste and spent reactor fuel. He analyzes the equally complex and divisive question of fuel “reprocessing.” He weaves reliable research with fresh insights about nuclear science, geology, politics, and public administration, making this original and authoritative account an essential guide for understanding the continuing controversy over an illusive and emotional topic.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is the premier public resource on scientific and technological developments that impact global security. Founded by Manhattan Project Scientists, the Bulletin's iconic "Doomsday Clock" stimulates solutions for a safer world.
Advanced Security and Safeguarding in the Nuclear Power Industry: State of the art and future challenges presents an overview of a wide ranging scientific, engineering, policy, regulatory, and legal issues facing the nuclear power industry. Editor Victor Nian and his team of contributors deliver a much needed review of the latest developments in safety, security and safeguards ("Three S's”) as well as other related and important subject matters within and beyond the nuclear power industry. This book is particularly insightful to countries with an interest in developing a nuclear power industry as well as countries where education to improve society's opinion on nuclear energy is crucial to its future success. Advanced Security and Safeguarding in the Nuclear Power Industry covers the foundations of nuclear power production as well as the benefits and impacts of radiation to human society, international conventions, treaties, and standards on the "Three S's”, emergency preparedness and response, and civil liability in the event of a nuclear accident.
The concept of risk is an outgrowth of our society's great concern about coping with the dangers of modern life. The Perception of Risk brings together the work of Paul Slovic, one of the world's leading analysts of risk, risk perception and risk management, to examine the gap between expert views of risk and public perceptions. Ordered chronologically, it allows the reader to see the evolution of our understanding of such perceptions, from early studies identifying public misconceptions of risk to recent work that recognizes the importance and legitimacy of equity, trust, power and other value-laden issues underlying public concern.
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.
"Focusing on problems and solutions, this authoritative reference work covers all aspects of the environment, from the Everglades to the Himalayas, from legislation in Australia to pollution problems in Eastern Europe, from tropical rain forests to the Porcupine Caribou herd of the Alaskan and Canadian Arctic." "Some of the best-known environmental professionals from 14 countries around the world have written original articles for this multidisciplinary Encyclopedia, including Norman Myers, Eugene C. Hargrove, Reed F. Noss, Max Oelschlaeger, J. Baird Callicott, George Sessions, M. S. Swaminathan, Gilbert F. White, Michael E. Kraft, Michael P. Cohen, Paul Ekins, and many others."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
