[en] This book contains information on energy and the environment. Topics covered include: Resources and technologies; Policy; Risks and impacts; Behavioral aspects; Economics; International and regional issues; and Energy and use and conservation

[en] Improvement in East-West relations, the lessons of the Gulf War, and concerns about global change point toward new forms of international cooperation between the industrialized and developing worlds. Energy decision-makers in developing countries face a triple threat of increasing demand for energy services, capital constraints, and environmental pressures. This article attempts to give shape to the relatively new concept of energy-environment-economic development bargaining. It describes characteristics and issues to be considered, identifies some of the opportunities for and barriers to bargaining, and suggests that a wide variety of experimentation is needed as well as teams of capable deal managers

[en] The progress made in fusion research in the past 10 years, or even 20 years, is likely to judged in very different ways by those who are involved in this research and by those who look at it from the outside. From the point of view of the fusion community there is little doubt that great progress has been achieved. Outsiders, on the other hand, tend to judge progress not so much in terms of what has been achieved, but rather in terms of what remains to be done; in this respect, the final goal of obtaining commercial energy from nuclear fusion appears today to be 40 or 50 years away, more distance in the future than it was thought to be 10 or 20 years ago. The present article tries to consider both points of view, and, as far as possible, to reconcile them. The authors concentrate on what we consider key issues, rather than attempting a complete coverage of the subject. Most of the article discuss the magnetic confinement approach to fusion, since this is closer to the direct experience of the authors, and it represents the overwhelming majority of the fusion research effort in Europe. In the United States, expenditures on inertial-confinement fusion research are about as large as those of magnetic confinement, but most of the inertial-confinement work is funded out of the military budget for this relevance to nuclear-weapon physics and, consequently, is not published in the open literature. Only a short mention of the inertial confinement approach is made there; this does not necessarily means that its prospects forth future are considered less interesting than those of the magnetic confinement approach

[en] The impacts of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments on utilities are substantial, presenting a host of new technical challenges, introducing new business risks, changing costs of electric generation, creating new winners and losers, and calling for new organizational responses capable of dealing with the complexity and short time for decisions. The magnitude of costs and unknowns puts clean air compliance into a new league of energy issues, in which the decisions utilities must make are not simply technological or engineering economic choices, but rather are very complex business decisions with numerous stakeholders, pitfalls, and opportunities. This paper summarizes the key regulatory requirements of the CAAA, outlines compliance options and questions facing the utility industry, and addresses how utility strategic business decisions could be affected

[en] Problems and opportunities frequently cross national borders. Informal and formal international arrangements-loosely termed regimes, defined in this paper as systems of rule or government that have widespread influence-arise for the collective management of such transboundary issues. Regimes are pervasive; their number and extent have grown markedly in the 20th century, especially since the Second World War. Students of the international system study the conditions under which regimes are formed and the factors that contribute to their success. These include distribution of power among states, the nature of the issue, its linkages to other issues, the roles and functions of international organizations, the processes of bargaining and rule-making, and the influence of domestic politics. Scholars also theorize how regimes are maintained and changed. In the past two decades students of international cooperation have increasingly applied their tools to issues of the environment and natural resources

[en] The management of the radioactive wastes produced in the course of electricity generation from nuclear fission is a problem of concern to the electric-power sectors, governments, and publics of all of the 25 nations that obtain some of their electricity in this way, as well as to people in other countries who might be affected by choices about how and where such wastes will be shipped, processed, and stored. This paper reports on the evolution of the radioactive-waste issue as a policy problem in the United States, attempting to address the following major questions: What has been the role of the radioactive-waste issue in US decisions about the future of nuclear energy? How and why has the issue become, from a policy standpoint, so intractable? What policy dilemmas associated with waste management are evident from the US experience to date, and what are the pros and cons of the possible choices

[en] This paper reports that it is not uncommon in complex, technological systems that the human element is discovered well into the system's operating history. Costs and lost revenues associated with personnel performance that cannot be passed on to consumers are often those associated with avoidable human error. Investments in improving personnel performance through human-factors applications pay off in more ways than avoiding fines and lost revenues, however; enhanced safety, reduced long-term operating costs, and better-motivated personnel are additional likely benefits

[en] Virtually every phase of energy production, delivery, and use exacts some environmental toll: land disturbance from coal mining, toxic residues as a by-product of petroleum extraction, oil spillage from tanker operations, airborne emissions from power pants, buildup of radioactive nuclear wastes. Despite these cost, however, energy delivers services that are essential to economic well-being. The challenge is to mange the energy system to produce both the economic and environmental benefits that people value. Meeting this goal is a global challenge on both fronts. The economic challenge is neither less daunting nor less global. The purpose of this article is to assess whether the energy system can in fact be managed to produce both the economic and environmental services likely to be demanded of it. There is as yet not definitive answer to this question, and we do not provide one here. The authors can, however, sketch some of the prerequisites to a successful outcome

[en] In 1990 the 23,000 wind turbines in the world connected to utility grids were rated at a total of 2200 MW and produced 3,353,000,000 kWh of electricity. This represents the residential use of a city with population of 1,000,000 at US energy use rates, or 2,000,000 at European rates. Denmark produced about 2% of its electricity from the wind, while California and Hawaii produced about 1% of theirs. California wind farms produced 76% of the world total, and Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG and E) received nearly half of this. In addition to these grid-connected turbines, more than 50,000 smaller turbines (averaging about 100 watts each) supplied electricity to remote areas, such as Mongolia. Such non-grid-connected turbines can be components of hybrid generation systems when combined with energy storage and/or complementary power sources. However, the emphasis of this paper is on utility-connected wind turbines. Wind also supplies mechanical energy, such as for water pumping