The Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management (DOE-EM) is responsible for cleaning up radioactive waste and environmental contamination resulting from five decades of nuclear weapons production and testing. A major focus of this program involves the retrieval, processing, and immobilization of waste into stable, solid waste forms for disposal. Waste Forms Technology and Performance, a report requested by DOE-EM, examines requirements for waste form technology and performance in the cleanup program. The report provides information to DOE-EM to support improvements in methods for processing waste and selecting and fabricating waste forms. Waste Forms Technology and Performance places particular emphasis on processing technologies for high-level radioactive waste, DOE's most expensive and arguably most difficult cleanup challenge. The report's key messages are presented in ten findings and one recommendation.

Most environmental statutes passed since 1970 have endorsed a pragmatic or 'precautionary' principle under which the existence of a significant risk is enough to trigger regulation. At the same time, targets of such regulation have often argued on grounds of inefficiency that the associated costs outweigh any potential benefits. In this work, Jason Johnston unpacks and critiques the legal, economic, and scientific basis for precautionary climate policies pursued in the United States and in doing so sheds light on why the global warming policy debate has become increasingly bitter and disconnected from both climate science and economics. Johnston analyzes the most influential international climate science assessment organizations, the US electric power industry, and land management and renewable energy policies. Bridging sound economics and climate science, this pathbreaking book shows how the United States can efficiently adapt to a changing climate while radically reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The U.S. Navy is ready to execute the Nation's tasks at sea, from prompt and sustained combat operations to every-day forward-presence, diplomacy and relief efforts. We operate worldwide, in space, cyberspace, and throughout the maritime domain. The United States is and will remain a maritime nation, and our security and prosperity are inextricably linked to our ability to operate naval forces on, under and above the seas and oceans of the world. To that end, the Navy executes programs that enable our Sailors, Marines, civilians, and forces to meet existing and emerging challenges at sea with confidence. Six priorities guide today's planning, programming, and budgeting decisions: (1) maintain a credible, modern, and survivable sea based strategic deterrent; (2) sustain forward presence, distributed globally in places that matter; (3) develop the capability and capacity to win decisively; (4) focus on critical afloat and ashore readiness to ensure the Navy is adequately funded and ready; (5) enhance the Navy's asymmetric capabilities in the physical domains as well as in cyberspace and the electromagnetic spectrum; and (6) sustain a relevant industrial base, particularly in shipbuilding.