Ireland and the United Kingdom are since 1993 in conflict about a Mox plant at Sellafield, on the Irish Sea. This plant is designed to recycle the plutonium which is produced during the reprocessing of nuclear fuel to reclaim the uranium contained in it. Ireland has tried to contest the British decision to build and operate the Mox plant through all the legal means available. An important request of Ireland was to be more and better informed in order to better contribute to the protection of the marine environment of the Irish Sea. Ireland and the United Kingdom are Member of two important treaties addressing the issue of environmental information: the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR Convention). Ireland has sought a remedy through the procedures of dispute settlement instituted by those two treaties. The Mox Plant Case is therefore very complex, each of these procedures being conducted within the textual confines of the treaties that govern them.<br /> <br /> In July 2003 the Arbitral Tribunal constituted under the OSPAR Convention rejected Ireland&rsquo / s request to have access to more information about the Mox plant. The procedure introduced by Ireland in October 2001 before an Arbitral Tribunal constituted under the UNCLOS is still pending. In this context, waiting for the final decision of this Arbitral Tribunal, the ITLOS ordered in December 2001, as a provisional measure, that Ireland and the United Kingdom must cooperate and exchange information. In November 2003, the Arbitral Tribunal constituted under the UNCLOS has suspended the proceedings, waiting for a decision of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Indeed the European Commission, backing up the position of the United Kingdom, initiated proceedings against Ireland before the ECJ in 2003.<br /> <br /> The Mox Plant Case illustrates and addresses several predominant matters in international environmental law. Firstly it illustrates the complexity of a system where several treaties between the same parties regulate the same issues. As a consequence in this case not less than four international jurisdictions have been and are still involved in the matter, leading to procedural difficulties. Secondly the Mox Plant Case illustrates the considerable difference of opinion which exists in the area of international environmental law with respect to the meaning and nature of the notion of &lsquo / access to information&rsquo / , and its relationship to other ancillary and concomitant notions, e. g. &lsquo / collaboration&rsquo / , &lsquo / cooperation&rsquo / , &lsquo / participation&rsquo / , etc., by and amongst states. The meaning of this concept, which is the cause of the dispute, differ depending on the context of treaty within which it is used.<br /> From the analysis of the Mox Plant Case, in the context of the evolution of international law in general, and international environmental law in particular, the point is made on the strong link between the principle of cooperation and the right of access to environmental information, the first one necessarily including the latter to be effective. The other important element is the shift which is now established in international environmental law and governance from a strict application of the principle of state sovereignty, towards a more integrated vision. The interdependent nature of the environment makes necessary an interdependent governance and regulation of the issues related to it.

Fachhochschule, Diplom-Arbeit des Studiengangs Bibliothekswesen--Köln, 2005. / Literaturverz. S. 87 - 95.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 142-147). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

As the recent environmental legislation highlights the risks associated with the use of gasoline additives such as octane enhancers, hydroisomerisation of n-alkanes in the gasoline feed to their corresponding isomers emerges as a key industrial alternative. Important catalysts have previously been tested and abandoned due to a number of problems including cost and poor resistance to catalyst poisons even in trace quantities. The current research evaluated the potentials of zirconia supported molybdenum carbide catalysts as replacements. The active carbided MoO3/ZrO2, MoO3/SO42- -ZrO2 and Rh/MoO3/ZrO2 have been prepared by in situ carburisation with CH4/H2 at 650oC and characterised by N2 adsorption, X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, Diffuse Reflectance Fourier Transformed Infrared spectroscopy, and temperature programmed reduction and oxidation. The characterisation data showed the carburisation process to proceed in a stepwise manner, involving the participation of hydrogen and methane as reducing and carbiding agents, respectively. Low (0.5 wt %) Rh loading and pre-treatment cycle via reduction and reoxidation significantly reduced the carburisation temperature, with the extent of the effect been dependent on the MoO3 loading. All of the catalysts produced showed stable activity and selectivity. Over the carbided MoO3/ZrO2, the activity was generally low at 450oC, producing mainly hydrogenolysis products. However, the activity of carbided MoO3/SO42- -ZrO2 at 350-450oC showed strong dependence on the nature of the n-alkane with reaction rates being lower for the higher alkanes. n-Nonane and n-octane produced mainly hydrocracking products whereas n-hexane and n-heptane were converted to the corresponding isomers with a very high selectivity. The catalyst forms a potential material for hydroisomerisation of gasoline range light paraffins. The 10 wt% Rh/MoO3/ZrO2 catalyst was more active to hydrogenolysis than with 25 wt% Rh/MoO3/ZrO2 under similar conditions due to higher activity of Rh species. However, the hydroisomerisation selectivity was highly favoured at lower temperatures, especially with n-hexane.

No description available.

The environment is at risk not only from disastrous accidents, but also from the insidious contamination by lesser incidents and from events whose significance is unacknowledged or even unrecognised at the time. Major incidents attract instant public concern and demands for clean up and prevention. Historical and gradual contamination do not often make headlines but may have effects which equally require curative and preventive action. The costs of curative and preventive actions may reach considerable dimensions. These costs have to be provided by parties responsible for or related to the damage. Predominantly it is the role of the civil law to give redress to those who may have suffered as a result of environmental damage. The development of civil liability for environmental pollution has been traditionally marked by the recognition of different liability regimes. However, none of these approaches is in itself sufficient to address the problems of environmental protection; nor do they yet amount into toto to a composite system. Therefore, efforts have been made to increase the effectiveness of each approach. The regulatory system is in the process of reform both in the European Union and in the Member states, through tightening of the standards backed by criminal and civil laws and by improving and monitoring and enforcement of these standards. However, even the establishment of a no-fault regime cannot guarantee the accurate attribution of environmental responsibility, the exhaustive remediation of environmental damage and the compensation of every loss caused by environmental pollution. This thesis will reveal that civil liability is not effective in securing restoration of the damaged environment and compensation of the injured persons. Furthermore, it will give consideration to other conceptions (compensation schemes and compulsory insurance), which try to ensure that environmental restoration and compensation take place.

A wide variety of assessment techniques are presently available to quantify the environmental performance of an organisation. They are predominantly site- or area-specific, making them sensitive to differences in the environmental capacity of an area, and they exclude a number of global impacts. A more generic level-plane assessment tool, which quantifies the environmental burden, may therefore be needed to make a valid comparison between organisations. Furthermore, the generic process data used in these assessment tools, to inform policy decisions on a material or product, does not recognise the potential variation in burden of a sector. This thesis develops a corporate level-plane assessment tool using the techniques available from Life Cycle Assessment. This generic tool, the Total Environmental Potency Index (TEPI), is then compared with the Environment Agency's Integrated Environmental Index (IEI), to assess the significance of site location on compliance based site-specific indices like the IEI. The two indices are compared using realworld emission data from seven industrial collaborators in five sectors. Two of these, paper manufacture and power generation, are used to assess the potential variability among processes within the same sector. The potential use of the indices is also determined by examining the accessibility to the required data at each of the participating companies. The results show that site location significantly affects the IEI and that the TEPI can provide a useful generic impact assessment tool to compare sites from different locations or sectors. The burdens from processes within the same sector were highly variable, suggesting that process-specific data will be important if valid policy decisions are to be made in the future. The TEPI and its categories can provide a standard format for aggregating and presenting the required emission data in a way that protects its commercial sensitivity. Although the accessibility to this data was low to moderate, the potential for deriving emission data using mass balance studies was high, with a large amount of accessible input data available. The implications of these results for the use of internal and external impact assessment techniques within an organisation are discussed. A framework is provided to guide the use of process data and impact assessment techniques in the wide range of assessments made by organisations to manage and report on their environmental performance. Finally, the experiences gained from using the IEI and TEPI are used to make recommendations for their improvement, and further development by research.

Ireland and the United Kingdom are since 1993 in conflict about a Mox plant at Sellafield, on the Irish Sea. This plant is designed to recycle the plutonium which is produced during the reprocessing of nuclear fuel to reclaim the uranium contained in it. Ireland has tried to contest the British decision to build and operate the Mox plant through all the legal means available. An important request of Ireland was to be more and better informed in order to better contribute to the protection of the marine environment of the Irish Sea. Ireland and the United Kingdom are Member of two important treaties addressing the issue of environmental information: the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR Convention). Ireland has sought a remedy through the procedures of dispute settlement instituted by those two treaties. The Mox Plant Case is therefore very complex, each of these procedures being conducted within the textual confines of the treaties that govern them.<br /> <br /> In July 2003 the Arbitral Tribunal constituted under the OSPAR Convention rejected Ireland&rsquo / s request to have access to more information about the Mox plant. The procedure introduced by Ireland in October 2001 before an Arbitral Tribunal constituted under the UNCLOS is still pending. In this context, waiting for the final decision of this Arbitral Tribunal, the ITLOS ordered in December 2001, as a provisional measure, that Ireland and the United Kingdom must cooperate and exchange information. In November 2003, the Arbitral Tribunal constituted under the UNCLOS has suspended the proceedings, waiting for a decision of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Indeed the European Commission, backing up the position of the United Kingdom, initiated proceedings against Ireland before the ECJ in 2003.<br /> <br /> The Mox Plant Case illustrates and addresses several predominant matters in international environmental law. Firstly it illustrates the complexity of a system where several treaties between the same parties regulate the same issues. As a consequence in this case not less than four international jurisdictions have been and are still involved in the matter, leading to procedural difficulties. Secondly the Mox Plant Case illustrates the considerable difference of opinion which exists in the area of international environmental law with respect to the meaning and nature of the notion of &lsquo / access to information&rsquo / , and its relationship to other ancillary and concomitant notions, e. g. &lsquo / collaboration&rsquo / , &lsquo / cooperation&rsquo / , &lsquo / participation&rsquo / , etc., by and amongst states. The meaning of this concept, which is the cause of the dispute, differ depending on the context of treaty within which it is used.<br /> From the analysis of the Mox Plant Case, in the context of the evolution of international law in general, and international environmental law in particular, the point is made on the strong link between the principle of cooperation and the right of access to environmental information, the first one necessarily including the latter to be effective. The other important element is the shift which is now established in international environmental law and governance from a strict application of the principle of state sovereignty, towards a more integrated vision. The interdependent nature of the environment makes necessary an interdependent governance and regulation of the issues related to it.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of New South Wales, 1999. / Also available online.

Licentiatavhandling (sammanfattning) Stockholm : Kungliga tekniska högskolan, 2006. / Härtill 3 uppsatser.