Product Description
This text is a collection of international legal documents related to the current, controversial and politically sensitive issue of transboundary movements of hazardous wastes and their disposal. It should be of use to practicing lawyers and other experts, academics as well as students, concerned with the rapid developments in international environmental law. The global instruments cover the basic system of the UNEP Basel Convention/IAEA Code and the documents of various United Nations organizations, whose interest in hazardous waste movements has increased considerably due to the preparations for the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). Numerous regional instruments included are: those of the UN ECE, OECD, EEC and other organizations of the industrialized states, instruments related to Antarctica; and to the major developing state regions (Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, South Atlantic Zone, Asia and the Pacific), including the 1989 ACP-EEC Lome IV Convention and the 1991 OAU Bamako Convention. Two US treaties on hazardous waste export controls with Mexico and Canada form notable instances of bilateral measures.Some documents of Greenpeace and other non-governmental organizations are also added. An editors' introduction and a comprehensive general index aim to provide the reader with easy access to these instruments. This work is intended to clarify and aid the increasingly intricate international debate on hazardous waste production and disposal, and reduce the conflict between North and South on the export of such waste to Third World countries. In addition, the prospects of South-South traffic, as developing states push towards industrialization, underline the urgent need for prompt and tough action. The leading role of UNEP is seeking satisfactory solutions to the new environmental problems raised by hazardous wastes is accentuated in the preface to the book by Dr Mostafa K. Tolba, Executive-Director of UNEP. ... Read more

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Waste is things we do not need or want. People throw away things all the time, from food and paper to computers and cars. But where can it all go? We are running out of places to dump our mountains of rubbish, and we are polluting the Earth and its air with our toxic wastes. This book explains all the different kinds of waste, and how we can dispose of them more safely. You can learn about the three 'Rs' of rubbish: Reduce, Re-use and Recycle - which help to cut down the amount of waste produced in the first place. Discover what you can do to help improve your environment today. Throughout, 'Fact Panels' give stark statistics to highlight the problems and 'Try This!' panels give the reader simple activities which they can do to investigate the issues. These books are also weblinked which means that the reader is directed to specially selected websites where they can find out more. ... Read more

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The best resource available today for POTWs who need to know what their rights and responsibilities are for hazardous waste they receive and/or generate. Delineates the requirements and fundamentals of complying with the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, RCRA, CERCLA, Toxic Substances Control Act, Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, and the Safe Drinking Water Act. Includes information on the "Mixture Rule," the "Derived-From Rule," low-level radioactive mixed waste, medical waste, used oil, polychlorinated Biphenyls, and other frequently encountered hazardous wastes. ... Read more

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Originating from the Second International Conference on Waste Management and the Environment, these papers will be of interest to environmental engineers, local authority representatives, waste disposal experts, research scientists specializing in this area, and civil and chemical engineers. Topics covered include: Landfills, Design, Construction and Monitoring; Waste Pre-Treatment; Hazardous Waste, Disposal and Incineration; Waste Separation and Transformation; Waste Reduction and Recycling; Metal and Ceramic Recycling; Advanced Waste Treatment Technology; Methodologies and Practices; Waste Degradation, High Volume Waste Storage and Compaction; Clean Technologies; Biosolids, Composting and Agricultural Issues; Biological Treatment of Waste; Organic Waste For Soil Improvement; Environmental Health Effects; Waste Collection, Transportation and Logistics; Water and Wastewater Treatment. ... Read more

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Provides a detailed historical account of the policy and practice of radioactive waste management in Britain, Sweden, and Germany. This analysis of nuclear strategy, the politics of nuclear power, and the shifting emphasis of government regulation redefines the issue and sets it at the center of the current debate about power, the environment, and society. ... Read more

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Waste incineration is finding increasing favour as a waste disposal method and this Issue considers the topic of waste disposal and the place of incineration as an option. It reviews the emissions and environmental impacts of incineration and available control technologies, specific research upon emissions of trace metals and organic micropollutants, and the methodologies for environmental impact assessment. There is currently great interest and considerable controversy over waste incineration and this book gives a dispassionate view of the scientific and technical issues involved. It provides a broad overview of the role incineration can play in waste management and looks at how environmental impacts may be managed and assessed. For municipal waste, when coupled with energy recovery, waste incineration provides an efficient, spatially compact means of bulk waste reduction, which is widely favoured over landfill, and for some chemical wastes, provides the only presently viable disposal option. This book places incineration in the context of other waste disposal options and examines the relative benefits and environmental impacts in a balanced way. ... Read more

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Waste Management and Planning presents a comprehensive selection of leading papers covering four main aspects of waste management: the waste problem, evaluation of waste management options, economic instruments and legislation and policy.

Part I examines the technical aspects of waste management, such as waste generation, composition, management options and technologies. Part II discusses the evaluation of waste management options and includes papers on lifecycle assessment, multicriteria evaluation, and economic assessments. Part III focuses on economic instruments, packing policies, virgin material taxes and unit pricing. Part IV includes papers on public participation, waste facility siting and waste policy and legislation in the US, Europe and Tanzania.

This volume will be an invaluable source of reference for waste management students and practitioners, and environmentalists, students and all those interested in waste management issues. ... Read more

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The long-term governance of radioactive waste continues to be a major complex and contentious socio-technical issue worldwide. Traditionally, it has been considered as mainly a challenge to scientists and engineers to develop technical "solutions" to specific problems. But increasingly these narrow solutions have been enlarged by wider societal considerations such as ethics, public involvement, control and retrievability – needs that have in the meanwhile been recognised by the nuclear community, at least in a general way. In this book, we analyse motives for a broad discourse as well as suggest prerequisites to launch it. The author attempts to give a novel, empirically based and technically sound treatment of fundamental issues in long-term management and governance. Written to be accessible to a wide selection of the interested public, the study proposes a combination of technical design issues, analysis methods and institutional backup in a dynamic procedure, and with involvement at all levels of political, commercial and social life.

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This book presents a critical review of designing, siting, constructing and demonstrating the safety and environmental impact of deep repositories for radioactive wastes. It is structured to provide a broad perspective of this multi-faceted, multi-disciplinary topic: providing enough detail for a non-specialist to understand the fundamental principles involved and with extensive references to sources of more detailed information.

Emphasis is very much on "deep" geological disposal - at least some tens of metres below land surface and, in many cases, many hundred of metres deep. Additionally, only radioactive wastes are considered directly - even though such wastes often contain also significant chemotoxic or otherwise hazardous components. Many of the principles involved are generally applicable to other repository options (e.g. near-surface or on-surface disposal) and, indeed, to other types of hazardous waste.

* Presents a current critical review in designing, siting, constructing and demonsrating the safety and environmental impact of deep repositories for radwaste
* Addresses the fundamental principles of radioactive waste with up-to-date examples and real-world case studies
* Written for a multi-disciplinary audience, with an appropriate level of detail to allow a non-specialist to understand ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Methods of Storage/Disposal of Radioactive Waste: An Overview
This anthology of articles is quite comprehensive for its small size. Each article has a large bibliography for further study. A nation-by-nation survey of radwaste-disposal methods is elaborated. Costs are included.

There is a good introduction to the sources of radioactivity and its classification, the main radioactive isotopes responsible, relative volumes of wastes per waste-classification category, etc.A brief history of radwaste disposal is given. Then attention is devoted to the enclosure of radwastes in ostensibly leak-proof containers, in ostensibly water-proof geologic sites (e. g., abandoned salt mines), etc. There is discussion of the storage of radwastes in such things as boreholes, previously-molten rock, etc.

Some visionary proposals are mentioned. The impracticality of laser-induced destruction of radioactive isotopes is vividly demonstrated. Disposal of radwastes into outer space is contemplated, and shown to be impractical--apart from being risky.

A major political factor in radwaste disposal has come to be known as the NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard) syndrome, although the authors do not use this term to describe it (pp. 228-229). It is difficult to convince people that a local accumulation of radwaste is not dangerous and that it is immobile. Part of the problem is that laypersons do not understand the mathematical models of radwaste repository behavior and how they predict the immobility of radwastes over long periods of time.
... Read more