Most of the nuclear facilities built since the Second World War have ceased active operation and have been decommissioned. Some of the sites are heavily contaminated with radioactive substances. Correct and efficient action to mitigate the radiological consequences of such contamination will only be possible when the behaviour of radionuclides in the terrestrial environment is sufficiently well known. Yet radioecologists often find it difficult to study the transfer of radioactivity in agricultural land and semi-natural ecosystems, because of the complexity and diversity of such environments....

A NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) was conducted from November 6-10, 1995 in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic. This ARW was focused on the technical, institutional, and socio-economic implications of soil and groundwater remediation in central and eastern Europe. The five-day duration of the meeting provided an excellent forum for the forty-one delegates to discuss, on both formal and informal bases, the existing situations in central and eastern Europe with regard to a wide range of issues. As well, the meeting period included technical 'site visits to Chodos and Vresova, in the Czech...

Primary purpose of the Advanced Research Workshop held in Liberec, Czech Republic, in November 1995 was to present and to discuss the main goals, contents, projects, partners, and implications of a proposed non profit European Research Network, which aims at establishing research nodes at key locations in European NATO and CP countries. In papers and contributions, individual and common projects and approaches were introduced and refined. All projects are directed to solutions for the heavily polluted "Black Triangle" Bohemia, Saxony, and Silesia, which was selected as a nucleus for the...

Regional Approaches to Water Pollution in the Environment integrates knowledge and experience on pollution problems related to industrial, agricultural and municipal activities and former military sites, with special emphasis on the Black Triangle: the region situated at the borders between North Bohemia, Polish Lower Silesia and South Saxony. Here, some five million inhabitants live in an area of brown coal basins having the highest emissions of sulphuric and nitrogen emission in the whole of Europe. The large-scale damage in this region is due to obsolete technology and...

Biotechnology for Waste Management and Site Restoration covers: waste management - solid, gaseous, liquid; site restoration - radioactivity, organics, toxic metals; educational, economic, social and business aspects; and international collaboration.
International collaboration is growing apace and many concrete projects have been started. The body of knowledge is growing. Over the long term, it is envisaged that this international collaboration will result in a long-term scientific and technological strategy, new technologies and alternative solutions, and practical...

N.M. V AN STRAALEN** and D.A. KRIVOLUTSKY* **Department of Ecology and Ecotoxicology VrUe Universiteit, De Boelelaan 1087, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands *Institute of Evolutionary Animal Morphology and Ecology Russian Academy of Sciences, Leninsky Prospekt 33 117071 Moscow, Russian Federation Many industrialized and developing countries are faced with the assessment of potential risks associated with contaminated land. A variety of human activities, including municipal waste disposal, industrial emissions, military testing, and agricultural practices have left their impacts on soils in...

This volume presents the procedings of an "Advanced Research Workshop," held under the auspices of the NATO International Scientific Exchange Programme, on the Environmental and Non-environmental Determinants of the East-West Life Expectancy Gap in Europe. The workshop brought together individuals from Eastern and Western Europe and North America who had a common interest in understanding the evolution of the relative declines in life expectancy in Central and Eastern Europe, compared to the West, over the past 30 years. Between 1989 and 1993, I carried out a series of investigations into the...

The irrigated area in the Aral Sea basin totals about 7. 5 million hectare. Part of the water supplied to this area is consumed by the irrigated crop; the remainder of the supplied water drains to the groundwater basin, to downstream depressions, or back to the rivers. During its use, however, this drained part of the water accumulates salts and chemicals. The disposal of this polluted water causes a variety of (environmental) problems. If the percentage consumed water of the total water supply to an irrigated area (the so-called overall consumed ratio) can be increased, less water needs to...

Risk assessment has come to assume acute importance in the former Soviet Union since money is so scarce, yet the needs for cleanup are so huge. Other factors contribute to this situation, too: New leaders are still emerging, and governmental structures are still evolving. This creates a particular difficulty for environmentalists who attempt to become involved in the risk assessment process.
New information continues to surface on the fallout from Chernobyl and its consequences for human health. Scientists are still debating the effects of low doses of radiation delivered over a long...

Leading experts present methodologies for basinwide approaches to water quality restoration. In 15 chapters the identification of pollution sources, definition of standards and their attainability, surface and groundwater modeling, remediation of contaminated soils and sediments, development and implementation of low cost treatment technologies, basinwide water quality management and remediation, and economic and institutional issues are covered. The book focuses on the situation in central and eastern European countries; however, the topics and solutions are of general interest and have...