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Whose Backyard, Whose Risk : Fear and Fairness in Toxic and Nuclear Waste Siting
by Michael B. Gerrard.

Book Description
In Whose Backyard, Whose Risk, environmental lawyer, professor, and commentator Michael B. Gerrard tackles the thorny issue of how and where to dispose of hazardous and radioactive waste. Gerrard, who has represented dozens of municipalities and community groups that have fought landfills and incinerators, as well as companies seeking permits, clearly and succinctly analyzes a problem that has generated a tremendous amount of political conflict, emotional anguish, and transaction costs. He proposes a new system of waste disposal that involves local control, state responsibility, and national allocation to deal comprehensively with multiple waste streams. Gerrard draws on the literature of law, economics, political science, and other disciplines to analyze the domestic and international origins of wastes and their disposal patterns. Based on a study of the many failures and few successes of past siting efforts, he identifies the mistaken assumptions and policy blunders that have helped doom siting efforts. Gerrard first describes the different kinds of nonradioactive and radioactive wastes and how each is generated and disposed of. He explains historical and current siting decisions and considers the effects of the current mechanisms for making those decisions (including the hidden economics and psychology of the siting process). A typology of permit rules reveals the divergence between what underlies most siting disputes and what environmental laws actually protect. Gerrard then looks at proposals for dealing with the siting dilemma and examines the successes and failures of each. He outlines a new alternative for facility siting that combines a political solution and a legal framework for implementation. A hypothetical example of how a siting decision might be made in a particular case is presented in an epilogue.

Behind the Nuclear Curtain : Radioactive Waste Management in the Former Soviet Union
by David R. Payson, Don J. Bradley.

Book Description
This book tells the story of half a century of nuclear waste management activities and contamination incidents in the former Soviet Union (FSU). It paints a striking picture of the USSR and now FSU nuclear waste management activities, tracing the evolution of what is likely the world's largest nuclear waste management problem. The information in this book - taken from hundreds of literature sources, as well as from the author's first-hand knowledge of nuclear-waste-related events in Russia - represents the largest compilation ever on nuclear waste management practices, past and present in the former Soviet Union.

It covers uranium mining, milling, and enrichment, as well as reprocessing and disposal. In addition, separate chapters are devoted to naval waste management and contamination of oceans and seas, as well as the conditions in the FSU and the Baltic countries and the weapons test sites. Finally, separate chapters are devoted to Chornobyl and the three processing centers, Mayak, Tomsk, and Krasnoyarsk.

The appendices contain information on the operating and decommissioned reactors, as well as on comparative worldwide releases of radioactivity into the environment, nuclear accidents, and nuclear weapons tests.

Behind the Nuclear Curtain reveals some of the truths behind decades of nuclear neglect in that part of the world. Information from Russian scientists, along with illustrations, maps, and schematics of contamination sites, helps bring into focus a problem that has long been unknown, misunderstood, and under-estimated and is now emerging with long-term environmental restoration implications.

Burying Uncertainty : Risk and the Case Against Geological Disposal of Nuclear Waste
by Kristin S. Shrader-Frechette.

Book Description
Shrader-Frechette looks at current U.S. government policy regarding the nation's high-level radioactive waste both scientifically and ethically. What should be done with our nation's high-level radioactive waste, which will remain hazardous for thousands of years? This is one of the most pressing problems faced by the nuclear power industry, and current U.S. government policy is to bury "radwastes" in specially designed deep repositories. K. S. Shrader-Frechette argues that this policy is profoundly misguided on both scientific and ethical grounds. Scientifically because we cannot trust the precision of 10,000-year predictions that promise containment of the waste. Ethically because geological disposal ignores the rights of present and future generations to equal treatment, due process, and free informed consent. Shrader-Frechette focuses her argument on the world's first proposed high-level radioactive waste facility at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Analyzing a mass of technical literature, she demonstrates the weaknesses in the professional risk- assessors' arguments that claim the site is sufficiently safe for such a plan. We should postpone the question of geological disposal for at least a century and use monitored, retrievable, above-ground storage of the waste until then. Her message regarding radwaste is clear: what you can't see can hurt you.

Nuclear Waste Disposal : Geophysical Safety
by Alexei V. Byalko.

Book Description
This book provides an important review of the present state and possible future development of high-level nuclear waste disposals. The author discusses the structure, thermal history, and dynamics of the earth's crust, explaining their importance in nuclear safety. The author presents critical reviews of disposal methods and proposes an original method for high-level nuclear waste disposal that involves placing capsules with nuclear waste into deep boreholes filled with sulfur. The behavior of such a complex system is analyzed, considering such aspects as thermodynamics, hydrodynamics, possible chemical and mineralogical reactions, radionuclides diffusion, and mass transfer. The book takes a physical approach to nuclear waste disposal making it different from other books that take a geological viewpoint. A diskette included with the book provides modeling executive programs and Pascal computer codes that will be valuable for developing an in-depth understanding of calculations.

One Hundred Centuries of Solitude : Redirecting America's High-Level Nuclear Waste Policies
by James Flynn, James Chalmers, Easterling.

Book Description
When Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, it directed the Department of Energy to locate, study, license, and develop a deep underground repository for high-level nuclear wastes. As the authors of this study show, by 1987 the program was in shambles, beset by opposition from every state that had a potential storage site. Congress passed amendments to the original legislation that designated Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as the only site for study and development.