The nuclear fuel cycle can be truly closed by supp lementing today’s thermal reactors with fast reactors, which can use as fuel the heavy, fissionable isotopes that accumulate in thermal-reactor fuel. In a fully closed cycle, the waste for disposal consists only of fission products with trace amounts of actinides. Eliminating the transuranics reduces the heat load in the repository, increasing ...

Among the most important aspects of the atmospheric pollution problem are the anthropogenic impacts on the stratospheric ozone layer, the related trends of the total ozone content drop and the solar ultraviolet radiation enhancement at the Earth's surface level. During September 2002, the ozone hole over the Antarctic was much smaller than in the previous six years. It has split into two separa...

Generation expansion planning problems should take into account not only satisfaction of future demand but also environmental constraints, such as government imposed limits on pollution produced by coal based power plants. For a vertically integrated system of power plants, we model those features as a two-stage stochastic programming problem with recourse that can be solved by decomposition me...

Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) are a family of biopolyesters synthesized by many types of bacteria as carbon and energy reserve materials. PHAs combine properties of thermal processibility, biodegradability, biocompatibility and sustainability. They have attracted attention from fermentation, materials and biomedical industries. Recent environmental concerns such as CO(2) emissions and plastic po...

A study was conducted in Louisburg, North Carolina, to determine the effect of level spreader–vegetative filter strip (LS-VFS) storm-water control measures (SCMs) on runoff temperature and thermal loading. Two LS-VFS systems draining an urban catchment were monitored during the summers of 2008 and 2009. The first VFS was 7.6 m wide and entirely grassed. The second was 15.2 m wide, with the firs...

Ozonizers have been used for over a century in water treatment and for about two decades in advanced oxidation. Ozonizers are fundamentally based on non-thermal plasmas, which are useful for generating reactive species (free radicals) in gas streams. Because radical-attack reaction rate constants are very large for many chemical species, entrained pollutants are readily decomposed by these radi...