This book deals with aspects of thermodynamic restrictions in modern continuum mechanics and with particular problems of the kinetic theory and statistical mechanics. It stresses the interplay between statistical and phenomenological modelling of physical phenomena including homogenization techniques for media with microstructure. Diverse approaches to either derivation or justification of macroscopic models by microscopic theories are presented. From the kinetic theory, the problem of existence of solutions to the Boltzmann equation and particular solutions to the discrete velocity models are also considered. The book includes papers concerning viscoelasticity treated within the framework of both rational and extended thermodynamics. Phenomenological theories of hyperbolic heat conduction in solids and fluids are also discussed.

Originally published in 1983, this book presents both the technical and political information necessary to evaluate the emerging threat to world security posed by recent advances in uranium enrichment technology. Uranium enrichment has played a relatively quiet but important role in the history of efforts by a number of nations to acquire nuclear weapons and by a number of others to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. For many years the uranium enrichment industry was dominated by a single method, gaseous diffusion, which was technically complex, extremely capital-intensive, and highly inefficient in its use of energy. As long as this remained true, only the richest and most technically advanced nations could afford to pursue the enrichment route to weapon acquisition. But during the 1970s this situation changed dramatically. Several new and far more accessible enrichment techniques were developed, stimulated largely by the anticipation of a rapidly growing demand for enrichment services by the world-wide nuclear power industry. This proliferation of new techniques, coupled with the subsequent contraction of the commercial market for enriched uranium, has created a situation in which uranium enrichment technology might well become the most important contributor to further nuclear weapon proliferation. Some of the issues addressed in this book are: A technical analysis of the most important enrichment techniques in a form that is relevant to analysis of proliferation risks; A detailed projection of the world demand for uranium enrichment services; A summary and critique of present institutional non-proliferation arrangements in the world enrichment industry, and An identification of the states most likely to pursue the enrichment route to acquisition of nuclear weapons.