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There are unconventional fuels that may serve as near term major replacements for conventional mineral oil and natural gas. These include fuels from oil shale and bitumen, liquid fuels from coal, methane from methane hydrates, biofuels and the secondary fuel hydrogen. Here, these fuels will be reviewed as to their presumable stocks and life cycle wastes, emissions and inputs of natural resources. The unconventional fuels are usually characterized by a relatively poor source-to-burner energy efficiency when compared with current conventional mineral oil and gas. Apart from some varieties of hydrogen and biofuel, their life cycles are characterized by relatively large water inputs, emissions, and wastes. The unconventional...
Governmental policy options in response to increasing concern over an emerging greenhouse warming are reviewed. These will reflect differing levels of pofitical concem as understanding on the future size and impacts of the greenhouse effect evolves. High levels of concem will place emphasis on the option of limiting C02 emissions by restricting fossil fuel use. This option requires emphasis on energy efficiency and changes in energy supply, with increased use of natural gas, nuclear power or renewable energy sources. The progressive industrialization of the LDCs with the consequent growth in energy demand, may put additional pressure on developed countries to take action on this policy option.
Environmental monitoring has been an ongoing activity on the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Site in southeastern Washington for almost 50 years. Objectives are to detect and assess potential impacts of Site operations on air, surface and ground waters, foodstuffs, fish, wildlife, soil and vegetation. Data from monitoring effects are used to calculate the overall radiological dose to humans working onsite or residing in nearby communities. In 1989, measured Hanford Site perimeter concentrations of airborne radionuclides were below applicable guidelines. Concentrations of radionuclides and nonradiological water quality in the Columbia River were in compliance with applicable standards. Foodstuffs irrigated with...
Issues related to energy saving and pollution reduction are closely related. Their importance has increased in recent years and presents considerable academic and industrial challenges. They generally represent complex tasks of a considerable scale and comprehensive interactions. The methodology and concepts of Process Integration have been developing over last thirty years [1] and have been considerably expended to tackle these problems [2]. International conferences provide a good opportunity to review the state-of-the-art in this field. One of the most established and well known conference is PRES. The 13th Conference on “Process Integration, Modelling and Optimisation for Energy Saving and Pollution Reduction...
This study proposes a new use of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to measure the operational, environmental and both-unified efficiency measures of US coal-fired power plants. The power plants produce not only desirable outputs (e.g., electricity) but also undesirable outputs (e.g., CO2 and NOx) as a result of their plant operations. A Range-Adjusted Measure (RAM) is used as an original non-radial DEA model. Then, it is reformulated for handling undesirable (bad) outputs. The proposed use of DEA models measures the environmental and unified performance of power plants under two variable alternatives (with and without CO2 emission control) in order to examine both the influence of US Clean Air Act (CAA) on the acid...
The Swedish programme for geological disposal of spent nuclear fuel is approaching major milestones in the form of permit applications for an encapsulation plant and a deep geologic repository. This paper presents an overview of the bedrock and surface modelling work that comprises a major part of the on-going site characterization in Sweden and that results in syntheses of the sites, called site descriptions. The site description incorporates descriptive models of the site and its regional setting, including the current state of the geosphere and the biosphere as well as natural processes affecting long-term evolution. The site description is intended to serve the needs of both repository engineering with respect...
The increased urgency of dealing with mitigation of the looming climate change has sparked renewed interest in the nuclear energy option. There exists a substantial stream of research on the amount of embodied energy and greenhouse gas emissions associated with nuclear generated electricity. While conventional fossil fuelled power plants cause emissions almost exclusively from the plant site, the majority of greenhouse gas emissions in the nuclear fuel cycle are caused in processing stages upstream and downstream from the plant. This paper distils the findings from a comprehensive literature review of energy and greenhouse gas emissions in the nuclear fuel cycle and determines some of the causes for the widely varying...
The Swedish programme for geological disposal of spent nuclear fuel is approaching major milestones in the form of permit applications for an encapsulation plant and a deep geologic repository. This paper presents an overview of the bedrock and surface modelling work that comprises a major part of the on-going site characterization in Sweden and that results in syntheses of the sites, called site descriptions. The site description incorporates descriptive models of the site and its regional setting, including the current state of the geosphere and the biosphere as well as natural processes affecting long-term evolution. The site description is intended to serve the needs of both repository engineering with respect...
A detailed Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been conducted on a low energy family house recently built in Northern Italy. The yearly net winter heat requirement is 10 kWh/m(2), while the same unit with legal standard insulation would require 110 kWh/m(2). As the building was claimed to be sustainable on the basis of its outstanding energy saving performances, an ex post LCA was set up to understand whether, and to what extent, the positive judgement could be confirmed in a life cycle perspective. The dramatic contribution of materials-related impacts emerged. The shell-embedded materials represented the highest relative contribution, but maintenance operations also played a major role. The contributions of plants,...
Traditionally the majority of building energy use has been linked to its operation (heating, cooling, lighting, etc.), and much attention has been directed to reduce this energy use through technical innovation, regulatory control and assessed through a wide range of rating methods. However buildings generally employ an increasing amount of materials and systems to reduce the energy use in operation, and energy embodied in these can constitute an important part of the building's life cycle energy use. For buildings with ‘zero-energy’ use in operation the embodied energy is indeed the only life cycle energy use. This is not addressed by current building energy assessment and rating methods. This paper proposes a...
Governmental policy options in response to increasing concern over an emerging greenhouse warming are reviewed. These will reflect differing levels of pofitical concem as understanding on the future size and impacts of the greenhouse effect evolves. High levels of concem will place emphasis on the option of limiting C02 emissions by restricting fossil fuel use. This option requires emphasis on energy efficiency and changes in energy supply, with increased use of natural gas, nuclear power or renewable energy sources. The progressive industrialization of the LDCs with the consequent growth in energy demand, may put additional pressure on developed countries to take action on this policy option.
Governmental policy options in response to increasing concern over an emerging greenhouse warming are reviewed. These will reflect differing levels of pofitical concem as understanding on the future size and impacts of the greenhouse effect evolves. High levels of concem will place emphasis on the option of limiting C02 emissions by restricting fossil fuel use. This option requires emphasis on energy efficiency and changes in energy supply, with increased use of natural gas, nuclear power or renewable energy sources. The progressive industrialization of the LDCs with the consequent growth in energy demand, may put additional pressure on developed countries to take action on this policy option.
The increased urgency of dealing with mitigation of the looming climate change has sparked renewed interest in the nuclear energy option. There exists a substantial stream of research on the amount of embodied energy and greenhouse gas emissions associated with nuclear generated electricity. While conventional fossil fuelled power plants cause emissions almost exclusively from the plant site, the majority of greenhouse gas emissions in the nuclear fuel cycle are caused in processing stages upstream and downstream from the plant. This paper distils the findings from a comprehensive literature review of energy and greenhouse gas emissions in the nuclear fuel cycle and determines some of the causes for the widely varying...
A detailed Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been conducted on a low energy family house recently built in Northern Italy. The yearly net winter heat requirement is 10 kWh/m(2), while the same unit with legal standard insulation would require 110 kWh/m(2). As the building was claimed to be sustainable on the basis of its outstanding energy saving performances, an ex post LCA was set up to understand whether, and to what extent, the positive judgement could be confirmed in a life cycle perspective. The dramatic contribution of materials-related impacts emerged. The shell-embedded materials represented the highest relative contribution, but maintenance operations also played a major role. The contributions of plants,...
This study proposes a new use of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to measure the operational, environmental and both-unified efficiency measures of US coal-fired power plants. The power plants produce not only desirable outputs (e.g., electricity) but also undesirable outputs (e.g., CO2 and NOx) as a result of their plant operations. A Range-Adjusted Measure (RAM) is used as an original non-radial DEA model. Then, it is reformulated for handling undesirable (bad) outputs. The proposed use of DEA models measures the environmental and unified performance of power plants under two variable alternatives (with and without CO2 emission control) in order to examine both the influence of US Clean Air Act (CAA) on the acid...
The Swedish programme for geological disposal of spent nuclear fuel is approaching major milestones in the form of permit applications for an encapsulation plant and a deep geologic repository. This paper presents an overview of the bedrock and surface modelling work that comprises a major part of the on-going site characterization in Sweden and that results in syntheses of the sites, called site descriptions. The site description incorporates descriptive models of the site and its regional setting, including the current state of the geosphere and the biosphere as well as natural processes affecting long-term evolution. The site description is intended to serve the needs of both repository engineering with respect...
Due to its compatibility with the current energy infrastructures and the potential to reduce CO2 emissions significantly, CO2 capture and geological storage is recognised as one of the main options in the portfolio of greenhouse gas mitigation technologies being developed worldwide. The CO2 capture technologies offer a number of alternatives, which involve different energy consumption rates and subsequent environmental impacts While the main objective of this technology is to minimise the atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions, it is also important to ensure that CO2 capture and storage does not aggravate other environmental concerns This requires a holistic and system-wide environmental assessment rather than focusing...
The Swedish programme for geological disposal of spent nuclear fuel is approaching major milestones in the form of permit applications for an encapsulation plant and a deep geologic repository. This paper presents an overview of the bedrock and surface modelling work that comprises a major part of the on-going site characterization in Sweden and that results in syntheses of the sites, called site descriptions. The site description incorporates descriptive models of the site and its regional setting, including the current state of the geosphere and the biosphere as well as natural processes affecting long-term evolution. The site description is intended to serve the needs of both repository engineering with respect...
A detailed Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been conducted on a low energy family house recently built in Northern Italy. The yearly net winter heat requirement is 10 kWh/m(2), while the same unit with legal standard insulation would require 110 kWh/m(2). As the building was claimed to be sustainable on the basis of its outstanding energy saving performances, an ex post LCA was set up to understand whether, and to what extent, the positive judgement could be confirmed in a life cycle perspective. The dramatic contribution of materials-related impacts emerged. The shell-embedded materials represented the highest relative contribution, but maintenance operations also played a major role. The contributions of plants,...
With the continuing increase in world population, and rising standard of living, more and more water will be necessary to satisfy basic human needs. The global picture with regard to water use and availability is very uneven, and the policy options for major sectoral uses -- rural and urban water supply, agricultural requirements and hydro-electric power generation are explored. The social and environmental implications of water development are briefly discussed. Finally, the question of the availability of adequate water to sustain future world population and development to the year 2000 is analysed. It is concluded that the major problem in the area of water-resources development is not one of the Malthusian spectre...