Academic literature on the topic 'United States. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board'

Abstract. More than a decade ago, the United States disposal program discontinued all research activities focused on the unsaturated fractured tuff formation at Yucca Mountain as the geologic disposal site for spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste. A new research and development (R&D) program was initiated to provide a sound technical basis for alternative disposal options across clay, crystalline, and salt rocks. The goals of this broad program were (and still are) to (1) increase confidence in the robustness of generic disposal concepts, (2) develop the science and engineering tools needed to support disposal concept implementation, and (3) conduct R&D on the direct disposal of existing dual-purpose (storage and transportation) canisters. Recognizing the benefits of international collaboration toward the common goal of safely and efficiently managing the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle, the program emphasized international cooperation as an effective strategy for sharing information and knowledge. In a multi-laboratory effort coordinated by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the United States Department of Energy (DOE) program established formal and informal cooperation partnerships with several international initiatives and institutions and developed a number of collaborative R&D activities in important research areas, such as engineered barrier integrity, near-field perturbations, radionuclide transport, performance assessment, and methods for characterization and monitoring of engineered and natural barriers. This presentation gives an overview of these R&D activities, with a specific focus on activities that improve our current understanding of the coupled thermal–hydrological–mechanical–chemical (THMC) processes occurring in engineered and natural barriers. We start with a brief review of selected international collaboration initiatives and then describe a few specific collaboration projects. We focus specifically on such studies that use experimental data sets provided by international research cooperation for joint modeling work to increase confidence in performance-relevant predictions of coupled processes. Overall, the focus on international collaboration has allowed deep engagement of US researchers with the international waste management R&D community in terms of best practices, new scientific advances, state-of-the-art simulation tools, new monitoring and performance confirmation approaches, and lessons learned. The joint R&D with international researchers, worldwide sharing of knowledge and experience, and access to relevant data and experiments from a variety of host rocks have helped our researchers to significantly improve their understanding of the current technical basis for disposal in a range of potential host rock environments. International collaboration also provides ample opportunity for training and educating junior staff that are well suited to move the United States disposal research program forward into the next decades, a promising avenue for developing a next-generation workforce of disposal scientists.

Canada, along with other countries that are considering the permanent disposal of high-level radioactive wastes from nuclear power generation, is undertaking a program of research into deep geological disposal. This program, led by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) with support from Energy, Mines and Resources Canada, other federal government departments, universities, and industrial consultants, has been in progress since early in 1973. Geoscience research, the subject of this symposium, complements research on fuel waste immobilization to provide the data and information essential to the design and assessment of a complete disposal concept involving both natural and engineered barriers to the migration of radioactive material from the waste vault.During the early phases of the program, prior to 1975, an evaluation of the potential of Canadian salt deposits for nuclear waste disposal, as well as a preliminary assessment of the suitability of other geological formations, was made. Because the Province of Ontario was, and remains, the principal region in Canada for nuclear power development and because resources available for geoscience research would not permit simultaneous, intensive research on a number of rock types, the decision was taken to direct the main thrust of the geoscience research toward plutonic igneous rocks of the Canadian Shield in Ontario (Scott 1979). Lesser studies of salt and other sedimentary formations, including seabed, are continuing within the Geological Survey of Canada.Because the rock mass surrounding the vault will provide the principal barrier to the migration of radionuclides, should these be released from the emplaced wastes, knowledge and understanding of potential pathways through the rock mass and of the mechanisms of radionuclide transport and retention within the rock mass over the functional lifetime of the vault are fundamental requirements.Accordingly, the objectives of the geoscience research program (Dormuth and Scott 1984) are the following:(1) Develop and apply techniques to define the physical and chemical properties of large rock masses and of fluids within these rock masses.(2) Use these techniques in selected field research areas to calibrate and evaluate models developed to calculate fluid flow and mass transport through a large rock mass containing a hypothetical underground nuclear fuel waste-disposal vault.(3) Establish procedures to evaluate quantitatively rock bodies for their potential as disposal sites and thereby acquire the capability to compare different rock bodies.(4) Determine the long-term stability of plutonic rock masses by assessing the potential disturbance by seismic activity, glaciation, meteorite impact, and other disruptive events and processes.To achieve these objectives it has been necessary to undertake simultaneously a large number of research tasks involving the disciplines of geology, geophysics, hydrogeology, geomechanics, geochemistry, and mathematics. Some of these tasks are concerned primarily with regional aspects of the Canadian Shield, such as stress distribution, glaciation, and tectonic history; others with details of the surface and subsurface geology and hydrogeology of specific field research areas; and still others with the development and application of exploration technology to detect and evaluate the structural characteristics of igneous rock masses of relatively high integrity and uniformity. Field and office studies are supported by laboratory investigations of the physical and chemical properties of plutonic rocks, with specific reference to origin, history, and ability to retard or transmit radionuclides.Deep exploratory drilling and detailed surface mapping are carried out at designated field research areas in the Canadian Shield. Geoscience work at research areas has the two-fold purpose of (i) testing new and existing exploration techniques for the evaluation of rock masses; and (ii) through application of these airborne, surface, and subsurface techniques, providing the field data necessary for the development of concepts and models that form the basis for establishing site-selection criteria and performing safety analyses.The latest research areas have been established at Atikokan, Ontario, an area underlain by granitic rocks, and at East Bull Lake north of Massey, Ontario, where gabbroic rocks are the dominant type. These research areas complement previously established research areas developed on granitic rocks at AECL properties at Chalk River, Ontario, and Pinawa, Manitoba, and at a research area, also on granitic terrane, near White Lake, Ontario, where work was done early in the program to test geophysical exploration and borehole-logging equipment.The ability to predict subsurface geological and hydrogeological conditions at future waste-disposal sites is one of the primary goals of geoscience research in the Canadian Nuclear Fuel Waste Management Program (CNFWMP). One of the most important program elements designed to test this predictive capability was the construction of the Underground Research Laboratory (URL) in the Lac du Bonnet Batholith near the site of the Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment. Airborne, surface, and borehole methods were used to develop a geological model on the site, and hydrogeological investigations were carried out to establish preconstruction groundwater characteristics. As the excavation of the URL facilities proceeded, the geological features encountered and the changes in the hydrogeological systems were carefully monitored. These data are being used to assess and improve the geological and hydrogeological models being developed for the rock mass surrounding the URL.The URL provides an excellent opportunity to (i) study the effect of excavation techniques, heat, and stress on a rock mass; (ii) simulate and study the complex systems that may exist in a disposal vault environment; and (iii) develop and test shaft- and drift-sealing techniques. Recently, a bilateral agreement between AECL and the United States Department of Energy was signed for co-operative research on nuclear fuel waste disposal. A substantial part of this co-operative effort will be directed toward extension of the URL shaft beyond its present depth of 240 m and conducting a variety of nonnuclear experiments within the shaft and excavated chambers of the URL.From the time of formalization of CNFWMP over 10 years ago, a concerted effort has been made by AECL and other program participants to ensure both peer review of and widespread accessibility to results of research arising from CNFWMP. This symposium is the third to be sponsored by the Geological Association of Canada (GAC)—the two previous symposiums were held at GAC annual meetings in Winnipeg in 1982 and Toronto in 1978. In addition to these major symposia, general information meetings sponsored by AECL have been held annually at various centres across Canada, and research elements of CNFWMP formed a significant part of the technical program for an international meeting held by the Canadian Nuclear Society in Winnipeg in September 1986.Since 1979 the CNFWMP review process has been further enhanced by the Technical Advisory Committee chaired by L. W. Shemilt, McMaster University. This committee, comprising members nominated by major Canadian scientific and technical societies including the Canadian Geoscience Council, has annually provided a publicly available report of constructive criticism and recommendations for improvement in the research content of CNFWMP.During the second half of 1988 it is expecte

IIUM ENGINEERING JOURNAL CHIEF EDITOR Ahmad Faris Ismail, IIUM, Malaysia TECHNICAL EDITOR Erry Yulian Triblas Adesta, IIUM, Malaysia EXECUTIVE EDITOR AHM Zahirul Alam, IIUM, Malaysia ASSOCIATE EDITOR Anis Nurashikin Nordin, IIUM, Malaysia LANGUAGE EDITOR Lynn Mason, Malaysia COPY EDITOR Hamzah Mohd. Salleh, IIUM, Malaysia EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS Abdullah Al-Mamun, IIUM, Malaysia Abdumalik Rakhimov, IIUM, Malaysia Amir Akramin Shafie, IIUM, Malaysia Erwin Sulaeman, IIUM, Malaysia Hanafy Omar, Saudi Arabia Hazleen Anuar, IIUM, Malaysia Konstantin Khanin, University of Toronto, Canada Ma'an Al-Khatib, IIUM, Malaysia Md Zahangir Alam, IIUM, Malaysia Meftah Hrairi, IIUM, Malaysia Mohamed B. Trabia, United States Mohammad S. Alam, Texas A&M University-Kingsville, United States Muataz Hazza Faizi Al Hazza, IIUM, Malaysia Mustafizur Rahman, National University Singapore, Singapore Nor Farahidah Binti Za'bah, IIUM, Malaysia Ossama Abdulkhalik, Michigan Technological University, United States Rosminazuin AB. Rahim, IIUM, Malaysia Waqar Asrar, IIUM, Malaysia AIMS & SCOPE OF IIUMENGINEERING JOURNAL The IIUM Engineering Journal, published biannually, is a carefully refereed international publication of International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM). Contributions of high technical merit within the span of engineering disciplines; covering the main areas of engineering: Electrical and Computer Engineering; Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering; Automation and Mechatronics Engineering; Material and Chemical Engineering; Environmental and Civil Engineering; Biotechnology and Bioengineering; Engineering Mathematics and Physics; and Computer Science and Information Technology are considered for publication in this journal. Contributions from other areas of Engineering and Applied Science are also welcomed. The IIUM Engineering Journal publishes contributions under Regular papers, Invited review papers, Short communications, Technical notes, and Letters to the editor (no page charge). Book reviews, reports of and/or call for papers of conferences, symposia and meetings, and advances in research equipment could also be published in IIUM Engineering Journal with minimum charges. REFEREES’ NETWORK All papers submitted to IIUM Engineering Journal will be subjected to a rigorous reviewing process through a worldwide network of specialized and competent referees. Each accepted paper should have at least two positive referees’ assessments. SUBMISSION OF A MANUSCRIPT <![if !vml]><![endif]>A manuscript should be submitted online to the IIUM-Engineering Journal website: http://journals.iium.edu.my/ejournal. Further correspondence on the status of the paper could be done through the journal website and the e-mail addresses of the Executive Editor: zahirulalam@iium.edu.my Faculty of Engineering, International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), Jan Gombak, 53100, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Phone: (603) 6196 4529, Fax:(603) 6196 4488. INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE A. Anwar, United States Abdul Latif Bin Ahmad, Malaysia Farzad Ismail, USM, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia Hanafy Omar, Saudi Arabia Hany Ammar, United States Idris Mohammed Bugaje, Nigeria K.B. Ramachandran, India Kunzu Abdella, Canada Luis Le Moyne, ISAT, University of Burgundy, France M Mujtaba, United Kingdom Mohamed AI-Rubei, Ireland Mohamed B Trabia, United States Mohammad S. Alam, Texas A&M University-Kingsville, United States Nazmul Karim Ossama Abdulkhalik, Michigan Technological University, United States Razi Nalim, IUPUI, Indianapolis, Indiana, United States Syed Kamrul Islam, United States Tibor Czigany, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary Yiu-Wing Mai, The University of Sydney, Australia. Published by: IIUM Press, International Islamic University Malaysia Jalan Gombak, 53100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Phone (+603) 6196-5014, Fax: (+603) 6196-6298 Website: http://iiumpress.iium.edu.my/bookshop Whilst every effort is made by the publisher and editorial board to see that no inaccurate or misleading data, opinion or statement appears in this Journal, they wish to make it clear that the data and opinions appearing in the articles and advertisement herein are the responsibility of the contributor or advertiser concerned. Accordingly, the publisher and the editorial committee accept no liability whatsoever for the consequence of any such inaccurate or misleading data, opinion or statement. IIUM Engineering Journal ISSN: 1511-788X E-ISSN: 2289-7860 Volume 19, Issue 1, June 2018 https://doi.org/10.31436/iiumej.v19i1 Table of Content CHEMICAL AND BIOTECHNOLOGY ENGINEERING ADSORPTION OF HEAVY METALS AND RESIDUAL OIL FROM PALM OIL MILL EFFLUENT USING A NOVEL ADSORBENT OF ALGINATE AND MANGROVE COMPOSITE BEADS COATED WITH CHITOSAN IN A PACKED BED COLUMN... 1 Rana Jaafar Jawad, Mohd Halim Shah Ismail, Shamsul Izhar Siajam INVESTIGATION OF BIOFLOCCULANT AS DEWATERING AID IN SLUDGE TREATMENT........................................ 15 Mohammed Saedi Jami, Maizirwan Mel, Aysha Ralliya Mohd Ariff, Qabas Marwan Abdulazeez HYDROGEN PRODUCTION FROM ETHANOL DRY REFORMING OVER LANTHANIA-PROMOTED CO/AL2O3 CATALYST............................. 24 Fahim Fayaz, Nguyen Thi Anh Nga, Thong Le Minh Pham, Huong Thi Danh, Bawadi Abdullah, Herma Dina Setiabudi, Dai-Viet Nguyen Vo OPTIMIZATION OF RED PIGMENT PRODUCTION BY MONASCUS PURPUREUS FTC 5356 USING RESPONSE SURFACE METHODOLOGY......................................................... 34 Nor Farhana Hamid And Farhan Mohd Said PRODUCTION AND STABILITY OF MYCO-FLOCCULANTS FROM LENTINUS SQUARROSULUS RWF5 AND SIMPLICILLIUM OBCLAVATUM RWF6 FOR REDUCTION OF WATER TURBIDITY.............................................................................. 48 Nessa Jebun, Md. Zahangir Alam, Abdullah Al-Mamun, Raha Ahmad Raus ROLE OF SUBSTRATE BINDING ON THE PROTEIN DYNAMICS OF AN ENDOGLUCANASE FROM FUSARIUM OXYSPORUM AT DIFFERENT TEMPERATURES .............................................................307 Abdul Aziz Ahmad, Ibrahim Ali Noorbatcha, Hamzah Mohd. Salleh CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING DIMINISHING SEISMIC EFFECT ON BUILDINGS USING BEARING ISOLATION....................................................... 59 A. B. M. Saiful Islam ELECTRICAL, COMPUTER AND COMMUNICATIONS ENGINEERING A DISTRIBUTED ENERGY EFFICIENT CLUSTERING ALGORITHM FOR DATA AGGREGATION IN WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS.................................................................................. 72 Seyed Mohammad Bagher Musavi Shirazi, Maryam Sabet, Mohammad Reza Pajoohan POWER QUALITY IMPROVEMENT WITH CASCADED MULTILEVEL CONVERTER BASED STATCOM................. 91 Mahdi Heidari, Abdonnabi Kovsarian, S. Ghodratollah Seifossadat THE EFFECTS OF CABLE CHARACTERISTICS ON MAXIMUM OVERVOLTAGE IN COMBINED OVERHEAD/CABLE LINES PROTECTED BY SURGE ARRESTERS.............................................................................. 104 Reza Alizadeh, Mohammad Mirzaie SMART PORTABLE CRYOTHERAPY SYSTEM REPHRASED I.E. WITH CONTROLLED THERMOELECTRIC COOLING MODULES FOR MEDICAL APPLICATIONS................................................................................................ 117 Abbas Rahmani, Reza Hassanzadeh Pack Rezaee, Naser Kordani STATIC PIPELINE NETWORK PERFORMANCE OPTIMISATION USING DUAL INTERLEAVE ROUTING ALGORITHM 129 Siva Kumar Subramaniam1, Shariq Mahmood Khan, Anhar Titik, Rajagopal Nilavalan A MODIFIED MODEL BASED ON FLOWER POLLINATION ALGORITHM AND K-NEAREST NEIGHBOR FOR DIAGNOSING DISEASES........................................................................ 144 Mehdi Zekriyapanah Gashti A SINGLE LC TANK BASED ACTIVE VOLTAGE BALANCING CIRCUIT FOR BATTERY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM .158 A K M Ahasan Habib, S. M. A. Motakabber, Muhammad Ibn. Ibrahimy, A. H. M. Zahirul Alam ENGINEERING MATHEMATICS AND APPLIED SCIENCE ON THE CONTROL OF HEAT CONDUCTION.......................................... 168 Fayziev Yusuf Ergashevich MATERIALS AND MANUFACTURING ENGINEERING GREEN SYNTHESIS OF SILVER NANOPARTICLES USING SAGO (METROXYLON SAGU) VIA AUTOCLAVING METHOD......178 Aliyah Jamaludin, Che Ku Mohammad Faizal EFFECT OF ALKALINE TREATMENT ON PROPERTIES OF RATTAN WASTE AND FABRICATED BINDERLESS PARTICLEBOARD....185 Zuraida Ahmad, Maisarah Tajuddin, Nurul Farhana Fatin Salim, Zahurin Halim AMORPHOUS STRUCTURE IN CU-ZN-V-AL OXIDE COMPOSITE CATALYST FOR METHANOL REFORMING..... 197 Mohd Sabri Mahmud, Zahira Yaakob, Abu Bakar Mohamad, Wan Ramli Wan Daud, Vo Nguyen Dai Viet PERFORMANCE OF ELECTRICAL DISCHARGE MACHINING (EDM) WITH NICKEL ADDED DIELECTRIC FLUID....215 Ahsan Ali Khan, Muataz Hazza Faizi Al Hazza, A K M Mohiuddin, Nurfatihah Abdul Fattah, Mohd Radzi Che Daud ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION OF DURIAN SKIN NANOFIBRE BIOCOMPOSITE.......................................... 233 Siti Nur E’zzati Mohd Apandi, Hazleen Anuar, Siti Munirah Salimah Abdul Rashid MECHANICAL AND AEROSPACE ENGINEERING A REVIEW ON RHEOLOGY OF NON-NEWTONIAN PROPERTIES OF BLOOD....................................................... 237 Esmaeel Fatahian, Naser Kordani, Hossein Fatahian NUMERICAL STUDY OF THERMAL CHARACTERISTICS OF FUEL OIL-ALUMINA AND WATER-.......................... 250 Hossein Fatahian, Hesamoddin Salarian, Majid Eshagh Nimvari, Esmaeel Fatahian A PARAMETRIC STUDY ON CONTROL OF FLOW SEPARATION OVER AN AIRFOIL IN INCOMPRESSIBLE REGIME....270 Lakshmanan Prabhu, Jonnalagadda Srinivas OPTIMIZATION OF BOX TYPE GIRDER WITH AND WITHOUT INDUSTRIAL CONSTRAINTS................................ 289 Muhammad Abid, Shahbaz Mahmood Khan, Hafiz Abdul Wajid

When George Orwell encountered ideas of a technological utopia sixty-five years ago, he acted the grumpy middle-aged man Reading recently a batch of rather shallowly optimistic “progressive” books, I was struck by the automatic way in which people go on repeating certain phrases which were fashionable before 1914. Two great favourites are “the abolition of distance” and “the disappearance of frontiers”. I do not know how often I have met with the statements that “the aeroplane and the radio have abolished distance” and “all parts of the world are now interdependent” (1944). It is worth revisiting the old boy’s grumpiness, because the rhetoric he so niftily skewers continues in our own time. Facebook features “Peace on Facebook” and even claims that it can “decrease world conflict” through inter-cultural communication. Twitter has announced itself as “a triumph of humanity” (“A Cyber-House” 61). Queue George. In between Orwell and latter-day hoody cybertarians, a whole host of excitable public intellectuals announced the impending end of materiality through emergent media forms. Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman, Daniel Bell, Ithiel de Sola Pool, George Gilder, Alvin Toffler—the list of 1960s futurists goes on and on. And this wasn’t just a matter of punditry: the OECD decreed the coming of the “information society” in 1975 and the European Union (EU) followed suit in 1979, while IBM merrily declared an “information age” in 1977. Bell theorized this technological utopia as post-ideological, because class would cease to matter (Mattelart). Polluting industries seemingly no longer represented the dynamic core of industrial capitalism; instead, market dynamism radiated from a networked, intellectual core of creative and informational activities. The new information and knowledge-based economies would rescue First World hegemony from an “insurgent world” that lurked within as well as beyond itself (Schiller). Orwell’s others and the Cold-War futurists propagated one of the most destructive myths shaping both public debate and scholarly studies of the media, culture, and communication. They convinced generations of analysts, activists, and arrivistes that the promises and problems of the media could be understood via metaphors of the environment, and that the media were weightless and virtual. The famous medium they wished us to see as the message —a substance as vital to our wellbeing as air, water, and soil—turned out to be no such thing. Today’s cybertarians inherit their anti-Marxist, anti-materialist positions, as a casual glance at any new media journal, culture-industry magazine, or bourgeois press outlet discloses. The media are undoubtedly important instruments of social cohesion and fragmentation, political power and dissent, democracy and demagoguery, and other fraught extensions of human consciousness. But talk of media systems as equivalent to physical ecosystems—fashionable among marketers and media scholars alike—is predicated on the notion that they are environmentally benign technologies. This has never been true, from the beginnings of print to today’s cloud-covered computing. Our new book Greening the Media focuses on the environmental impact of the media—the myriad ways that media technology consumes, despoils, and wastes natural resources. We introduce ideas, stories, and facts that have been marginal or absent from popular, academic, and professional histories of media technology. Throughout, ecological issues have been at the core of our work and we immodestly think the same should apply to media communications, and cultural studies more generally. We recognize that those fields have contributed valuable research and teaching that address environmental questions. For instance, there is an abundant literature on representations of the environment in cinema, how to communicate environmental messages successfully, and press coverage of climate change. That’s not enough. You may already know that media technologies contain toxic substances. You may have signed an on-line petition protesting the hazardous and oppressive conditions under which workers assemble cell phones and computers. But you may be startled, as we were, by the scale and pervasiveness of these environmental risks. They are present in and around every site where electronic and electric devices are manufactured, used, and thrown away, poisoning humans, animals, vegetation, soil, air and water. We are using the term “media” as a portmanteau word to cover a multitude of cultural and communications machines and processes—print, film, radio, television, information and communications technologies (ICT), and consumer electronics (CE). This is not only for analytical convenience, but because there is increasing overlap between the sectors. CE connect to ICT and vice versa; televisions resemble computers; books are read on telephones; newspapers are written through clouds; and so on. Cultural forms and gadgets that were once separate are now linked. The currently fashionable notion of convergence doesn’t quite capture the vastness of this integration, which includes any object with a circuit board, scores of accessories that plug into it, and a global nexus of labor and environmental inputs and effects that produce and flow from it. In 2007, a combination of ICT/CE and media production accounted for between 2 and 3 percent of all greenhouse gases emitted around the world (“Gartner Estimates,”; International Telecommunication Union; Malmodin et al.). Between twenty and fifty million tonnes of electronic waste (e-waste) are generated annually, much of it via discarded cell phones and computers, which affluent populations throw out regularly in order to buy replacements. (Presumably this fits the narcissism of small differences that distinguishes them from their own past.) E-waste is historically produced in the Global North—Australasia, Western Europe, Japan, and the US—and dumped in the Global South—Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe, Southern and Southeast Asia, and China. It takes the form of a thousand different, often deadly, materials for each electrical and electronic gadget. This trend is changing as India and China generate their own media detritus (Robinson; Herat). Enclosed hard drives, backlit screens, cathode ray tubes, wiring, capacitors, and heavy metals pose few risks while these materials remain encased. But once discarded and dismantled, ICT/CE have the potential to expose workers and ecosystems to a morass of toxic components. Theoretically, “outmoded” parts could be reused or swapped for newer parts to refurbish devices. But items that are defined as waste undergo further destruction in order to collect remaining parts and valuable metals, such as gold, silver, copper, and rare-earth elements. This process causes serious health risks to bones, brains, stomachs, lungs, and other vital organs, in addition to birth defects and disrupted biological development in children. Medical catastrophes can result from lead, cadmium, mercury, other heavy metals, poisonous fumes emitted in search of precious metals, and such carcinogenic compounds as polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxin, polyvinyl chloride, and flame retardants (Maxwell and Miller 13). The United States’ Environmental Protection Agency estimates that by 2007 US residents owned approximately three billion electronic devices, with an annual turnover rate of 400 million units, and well over half such purchases made by women. Overall CE ownership varied with age—adults under 45 typically boasted four gadgets; those over 65 made do with one. The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) says US$145 billion was expended in the sector in 2006 in the US alone, up 13% on the previous year. The CEA refers joyously to a “consumer love affair with technology continuing at a healthy clip.” In the midst of a recession, 2009 saw $165 billion in sales, and households owned between fifteen and twenty-four gadgets on average. By 2010, US$233 billion was spent on electronic products, three-quarters of the population owned a computer, nearly half of all US adults owned an MP3 player, and 85% had a cell phone. By all measures, the amount of ICT/CE on the planet is staggering. As investigative science journalist, Elizabeth Grossman put it: “no industry pushes products into the global market on the scale that high-tech electronics does” (Maxwell and Miller 2). In 2007, “of the 2.25 million tons of TVs, cell phones and computer products ready for end-of-life management, 18% (414,000 tons) was collected for recycling and 82% (1.84 million tons) was disposed of, primarily in landfill” (Environmental Protection Agency 1). Twenty million computers fell obsolete across the US in 1998, and the rate was 130,000 a day by 2005. It has been estimated that the five hundred million personal computers discarded in the US between 1997 and 2007 contained 6.32 billion pounds of plastics, 1.58 billion pounds of lead, three million pounds of cadmium, 1.9 million pounds of chromium, and 632000 pounds of mercury (Environmental Protection Agency; Basel Action Network and Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition 6). The European Union is expected to generate upwards of twelve million tons annually by 2020 (Commission of the European Communities 17). While refrigerators and dangerous refrigerants account for the bulk of EU e-waste, about 44% of the most toxic e-waste measured in 2005 came from medium-to-small ICT/CE: computer monitors, TVs, printers, ink cartridges, telecommunications equipment, toys, tools, and anything with a circuit board (Commission of the European Communities 31-34). Understanding the enormity of the environmental problems caused by making, using, and disposing of media technologies should arrest our enthusiasm for them. But intellectual correctives to the “love affair” with technology, or technophilia, have come and gone without establishing much of a foothold against the breathtaking flood of gadgets and the propaganda that proclaims their awe-inspiring capabilities.[i] There is a peculiar enchantment with the seeming magic of wireless communication, touch-screen phones and tablets, flat-screen high-definition televisions, 3-D IMAX cinema, mobile computing, and so on—a totemic, quasi-sacred power that the historian of technology David Nye has named the technological sublime (Nye Technological Sublime 297).[ii] We demonstrate in our book why there is no place for the technological sublime in projects to green the media. But first we should explain why such symbolic power does not accrue to more mundane technologies; after all, for the time-strapped cook, a pressure cooker does truly magical things. Three important qualities endow ICT/CE with unique symbolic potency—virtuality, volume, and novelty. The technological sublime of media technology is reinforced by the “virtual nature of much of the industry’s content,” which “tends to obscure their responsibility for a vast proliferation of hardware, all with high levels of built-in obsolescence and decreasing levels of efficiency” (Boyce and Lewis 5). Planned obsolescence entered the lexicon as a new “ethics” for electrical engineering in the 1920s and ’30s, when marketers, eager to “habituate people to buying new products,” called for designs to become quickly obsolete “in efficiency, economy, style, or taste” (Grossman 7-8).[iii] This defines the short lifespan deliberately constructed for computer systems (drives, interfaces, operating systems, batteries, etc.) by making tiny improvements incompatible with existing hardware (Science and Technology Council of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 33-50; Boyce and Lewis). With planned obsolescence leading to “dizzying new heights” of product replacement (Rogers 202), there is an overstated sense of the novelty and preeminence of “new” media—a “cult of the present” is particularly dazzled by the spread of electronic gadgets through globalization (Mattelart and Constantinou 22). References to the symbolic power of media technology can be found in hymnals across the internet and the halls of academe: technologies change us, the media will solve social problems or create new ones, ICTs transform work, monopoly ownership no longer matters, journalism is dead, social networking enables social revolution, and the media deliver a cleaner, post-industrial, capitalism. Here is a typical example from the twilight zone of the technological sublime (actually, the OECD): A major feature of the knowledge-based economy is the impact that ICTs have had on industrial structure, with a rapid growth of services and a relative decline of manufacturing. Services are typically less energy intensive and less polluting, so among those countries with a high and increasing share of services, we often see a declining energy intensity of production … with the emergence of the Knowledge Economy ending the old linear relationship between output and energy use (i.e. partially de-coupling growth and energy use) (Houghton 1) This statement mixes half-truths and nonsense. In reality, old-time, toxic manufacturing has moved to the Global South, where it is ascendant; pollution levels are rising worldwide; and energy consumption is accelerating in residential and institutional sectors, due almost entirely to ICT/CE usage, despite advances in energy conservation technology (a neat instance of the age-old Jevons Paradox). In our book we show how these are all outcomes of growth in ICT/CE, the foundation of the so-called knowledge-based economy. ICT/CE are misleadingly presented as having little or no material ecological impact. In the realm of everyday life, the sublime experience of electronic machinery conceals the physical work and material resources that go into them, while the technological sublime makes the idea that more-is-better palatable, axiomatic; even sexy. In this sense, the technological sublime relates to what Marx called “the Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour” once they are in the hands of the consumer, who lusts after them as if they were “independent beings” (77). There is a direct but unseen relationship between technology’s symbolic power and the scale of its environmental impact, which the economist Juliet Schor refers to as a “materiality paradox” —the greater the frenzy to buy goods for their transcendent or nonmaterial cultural meaning, the greater the use of material resources (40-41). We wrote Greening the Media knowing that a study of the media’s effect on the environment must work especially hard to break the enchantment that inflames popular and elite passions for media technologies. We understand that the mere mention of the political-economic arrangements that make shiny gadgets possible, or the environmental consequences of their appearance and disappearance, is bad medicine. It’s an unwelcome buzz kill—not a cool way to converse about cool stuff. But we didn’t write the book expecting to win many allies among high-tech enthusiasts and ICT/CE industry leaders. We do not dispute the importance of information and communication media in our lives and modern social systems. We are media people by profession and personal choice, and deeply immersed in the study and use of emerging media technologies. But we think it’s time for a balanced assessment with less hype and more practical understanding of the relationship of media technologies to the biosphere they inhabit. Media consumers, designers, producers, activists, researchers, and policy makers must find new and effective ways to move ICT/CE production and consumption toward ecologically sound practices. In the course of this project, we found in casual conversation, lecture halls, classroom discussions, and correspondence, consistent and increasing concern with the environmental impact of media technology, especially the deleterious effects of e-waste toxins on workers, air, water, and soil. We have learned that the grip of the technological sublime is not ironclad. Its instability provides a point of departure for investigating and criticizing the relationship between the media and the environment. The media are, and have been for a long time, intimate environmental participants. Media technologies are yesterday’s, today’s, and tomorrow’s news, but rarely in the way they should be. The prevailing myth is that the printing press, telegraph, phonograph, photograph, cinema, telephone, wireless radio, television, and internet changed the world without changing the Earth. In reality, each technology has emerged by despoiling ecosystems and exposing workers to harmful environments, a truth obscured by symbolic power and the power of moguls to set the terms by which such technologies are designed and deployed. Those who benefit from ideas of growth, progress, and convergence, who profit from high-tech innovation, monopoly, and state collusion—the military-industrial-entertainment-academic complex and multinational commandants of labor—have for too long ripped off the Earth and workers. As the current celebration of media technology inevitably winds down, perhaps it will become easier to comprehend that digital wonders come at the expense of employees and ecosystems. This will return us to Max Weber’s insistence that we understand technology in a mundane way as a “mode of processing material goods” (27). Further to understanding that ordinariness, we can turn to the pioneering conversation analyst Harvey Sacks, who noted three decades ago “the failures of technocratic dreams [:] that if only we introduced some fantastic new communication machine the world will be transformed.” Such fantasies derived from the very banality of these introductions—that every time they took place, one more “technical apparatus” was simply “being made at home with the rest of our world’ (548). Media studies can join in this repetitive banality. Or it can withdraw the welcome mat for media technologies that despoil the Earth and wreck the lives of those who make them. In our view, it’s time to green the media by greening media studies. References “A Cyber-House Divided.” Economist 4 Sep. 2010: 61-62. “Gartner Estimates ICT Industry Accounts for 2 Percent of Global CO2 Emissions.” Gartner press release. 6 April 2007. ‹http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=503867›. Basel Action Network and Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia. Seattle: Basel Action Network, 25 Feb. 2002. Benjamin, Walter. “Central Park.” Trans. Lloyd Spencer with Mark Harrington. New German Critique 34 (1985): 32-58. Biagioli, Mario. “Postdisciplinary Liaisons: Science Studies and the Humanities.” Critical Inquiry 35.4 (2009): 816-33. Boyce, Tammy and Justin Lewis, eds. Climate Change and the Media. New York: Peter Lang, 2009. Commission of the European Communities. “Impact Assessment.” Commission Staff Working Paper accompanying the Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) (recast). COM (2008) 810 Final. Brussels: Commission of the European Communities, 3 Dec. 2008. Environmental Protection Agency. Management of Electronic Waste in the United States. Washington, DC: EPA, 2007 Environmental Protection Agency. Statistics on the Management of Used and End-of-Life Electronics. Washington, DC: EPA, 2008 Grossman, Elizabeth. Tackling High-Tech Trash: The E-Waste Explosion & What We Can Do about It. New York: Demos, 2008. ‹http://www.demos.org/pubs/e-waste_FINAL.pdf› Herat, Sunil. “Review: Sustainable Management of Electronic Waste (e-Waste).” Clean 35.4 (2007): 305-10. Houghton, J. “ICT and the Environment in Developing Countries: Opportunities and Developments.” Paper prepared for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2009. International Telecommunication Union. ICTs for Environment: Guidelines for Developing Countries, with a Focus on Climate Change. Geneva: ICT Applications and Cybersecurity Division Policies and Strategies Department ITU Telecommunication Development Sector, 2008. Malmodin, Jens, Åsa Moberg, Dag Lundén, Göran Finnveden, and Nina Lövehagen. “Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Operational Electricity Use in the ICT and Entertainment & Media Sectors.” Journal of Industrial Ecology 14.5 (2010): 770-90. Marx, Karl. Capital: Vol. 1: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, 3rd ed. Trans. Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, Ed. Frederick Engels. New York: International Publishers, 1987. Mattelart, Armand and Costas M. Constantinou. “Communications/Excommunications: An Interview with Armand Mattelart.” Trans. Amandine Bled, Jacques Guot, and Costas Constantinou. Review of International Studies 34.1 (2008): 21-42. Mattelart, Armand. “Cómo nació el mito de Internet.” Trans. Yanina Guthman. El mito internet. Ed. Victor Hugo de la Fuente. Santiago: Editorial aún creemos en los sueños, 2002. 25-32. Maxwell, Richard and Toby Miller. Greening the Media. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Nye, David E. American Technological Sublime. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994. Nye, David E. Technology Matters: Questions to Live With. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 2007. Orwell, George. “As I Please.” Tribune. 12 May 1944. Richtel, Matt. “Consumers Hold on to Products Longer.” New York Times: B1, 26 Feb. 2011. Robinson, Brett H. “E-Waste: An Assessment of Global Production and Environmental Impacts.” Science of the Total Environment 408.2 (2009): 183-91. Rogers, Heather. Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage. New York: New Press, 2005. Sacks, Harvey. Lectures on Conversation. Vols. I and II. Ed. Gail Jefferson. Malden: Blackwell, 1995. Schiller, Herbert I. Information and the Crisis Economy. Norwood: Ablex Publishing, 1984. Schor, Juliet B. Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth. New York: Penguin, 2010. Science and Technology Council of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Digital Dilemma: Strategic Issues in Archiving and Accessing Digital Motion Picture Materials. Los Angeles: Academy Imprints, 2007. Weber, Max. “Remarks on Technology and Culture.” Trans. Beatrix Zumsteg and Thomas M. Kemple. Ed. Thomas M. Kemple. Theory, Culture [i] The global recession that began in 2007 has been the main reason for some declines in Global North energy consumption, slower turnover in gadget upgrades, and longer periods of consumer maintenance of electronic goods (Richtel). [ii] The emergence of the technological sublime has been attributed to the Western triumphs in the post-Second World War period, when technological power supposedly supplanted the power of nature to inspire fear and astonishment (Nye Technology Matters 28). Historian Mario Biagioli explains how the sublime permeates everyday life through technoscience: "If around 1950 the popular imaginary placed science close to the military and away from the home, today’s technoscience frames our everyday life at all levels, down to our notion of the self" (818). [iii] This compulsory repetition is seemingly undertaken each time as a novelty, governed by what German cultural critic Walter Benjamin called, in his awkward but occasionally illuminating prose, "the ever-always-the-same" of "mass-production" cloaked in "a hitherto unheard-of significance" (48).

Abstract Research studies by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) established the technical and operational requirements necessary to enable the onsite cask-to-cask dry transfer of spent nuclear fuel. Use of the dry transfer system has the potential to permit shutdown reactor sites to decommission pools and provide the capability of transferring assemblies from storage casks or small transportation casks to sealed transportable canisters. Following an evaluation by the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Academy of Sciences, a cooperative program was established between DOE and EPRI, which led to the cost-shared design of a dry transfer system (DTS). EPRI used Transnuclear, Inc., of Hawthorne, New York, to design the DTS in accordance with the technical and quality assurance requirements of the code of Federal Regulations, Title 10, Part 72 (10CFR72). EPRI delivered the final design report to DOE in 1995 and the DTS topical safety analysis report (TSAR) in 1996. DOE submitted the TSAR to the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for review under 10CFR72 and requested that the NRC staff evaluate the TSAR and issue a Safety Evaluation Report (SER) that could be used and referenced by an applicant seeking a site-specific license for the construction and operation of a DTS. DOE also initiated a cold demonstration of major subsystem prototypes in 1996. After careful assessment, the NRC agreed that the DTS concept has merit. However, because the TSAR was not site-specific and was lacking some detailed information required for a complete review, the NRC decided to issue an Assessment Report (AR) rather than a SER. This was issued in November 2000. Additional information that must be included in a future site-specific Safety Analysis Report for the DTS is identified in the AR. The DTS consists of three major sections: a Preparation Area, a Lower Access Area, and a Transfer Confinement Area. The Preparation Area is a sheet metal building where casks are prepared for loading, unloading, or shipment. The Preparation Area adjoins the Lower Access Area and is separated from the Lower Access Area by a large shielded door. The Lower Access Area and Transfer Confinement Area are contained within concrete walls approximately three feet thick. These are the areas where the casks are located and where the fuel is moved during transfer operations. A floor containing two portals separates the Lower Access Area and the Transfer Confinement Area. The casks are located below the floor, and the fuel transfer operation occurs above the floor. The cold demonstration of the DTS was successfully conducted at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) as a cooperative effort between the DOE and EPRI. The cold demonstration was limited to the fuel handling equipment, the cask lid handling equipment, and the cask interface system. The demonstration included recovery operations associated with loss of power or off-normal events. The demonstration did not include cask receiving and lid handling; cask transport and lifting; vacuum/inerting/leak test; canister welding; decontamination; heating, ventilation, and air conditioning; and radiation monitoring. The demonstration test was designed to deliberately challenge the system and determine whether any specific system operation could adversely impact or jeopardize the operation or safety of any other function or system. All known interlocks were challenged. As in all new systems, there were lessons learned during the operation of the system and a few minor modifications made to ease operations. System modifications were subsequently demonstrated. The demonstration showed that the system operated as expected and provided times for normal fuel transfer operations. The demonstration also showed that recovery could be made from off-normal events.