Environment and Environmental Studies

Beginning with the Manhattan Project and continuing through the Cold War, the United States government constructed and operated a massive industrial complex to produce and test nuclear weapons and related technologies.  When the Cold War...

The Army's ability to meet public and congressional demands to destroy expeditiously all of the U.S. declared chemical weapons would be enhanced by the selection and acquisition of appropriate explosive destruction technologies (EDTs) to augment...

This publication features papers presented at the Workshop on Cleaning Up Sites Contaminated with Radioactive Materials, held in Moscow in June 2007. This activity was organized by the National Academies in cooperation with the Russian Academy of...

By the end of 2009, more than 60 percent of the global chemical weapons stockpile declared by signatories to the Chemical Weapons Convention will have been destroyed, and of the 184 signatories, only three countries will possess chemical weapons...

For the last two decades, the United States has been destroying its entire stockpile of chemical agents. At the facilities where these agents are being destroyed, effluent gas streams pass through large activated carbon filters before venting to...

The U.S. Army Program Manager for Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives (PMACWA) is charged with disposing of chemical weapons as stored at two sites: Pueblo, Colorado, and Blue Grass, Kentucky. In accordance with congressional mandates,...

In May 2003, the Russian Academy of Sciences and the National Academies organized an international workshop in Moscow on the scientific issues relevant to the establishment and operation of an international spent nuclear fuel storage facility in...

Marine debris from ships and other ocean-based sources-including trash and lost fishing gear-contributes to the spoiling of beaches, fouling of surface waters and the seafloor, and harm to marine animals, among other effects. Unfortunately,...

The rapid conversion of land to urban and suburban areas has profoundly altered how water flows during and following storm events, putting higher volumes of water and more pollutants into the nation's rivers, lakes, and estuaries. These changes...