The Editors have pleasure in presenting a further volume in the se­ ries to our international audience. Perhaps the most significant event of the passing year has been the publication by the IAEA of its study of the prob­ lem of continuing radiation protection in the lands surrounding Chernobyl. The major international project undertaken in 1990 and reported in 1991 is worth reading, not only for its assessment of how radiation protection intervention should be applied de facto in accident conditions, but equally for its account of the modern view of the philosophy of radiation protection. Some would, however, wish to argue that the acknowledgement by Iraq of its three-pronged development of nuclear weapons in conditions of secrecy and antagonism was equally significant and indeed as much a deter­ minant of the future of peaceful nuclear power as the Chernobyl accident. But it must be clear that the developments of weapons and electricity pro­ duction are not inescapably bound together; the Iraqi weapons program was not linked to any peaceful power development.

High Energy Electron Beam Irradiation of Water, Wastewater and Sludge.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Electron Beam Technology.- 3. Aqueous Chemistry of High Energy Electrons.- 4. Disinfection of Wastewater Effluents.- 5. Irradiation of Toxic Organic Chemicals in Aqueous Solutions.- 6. Gamma Irradiation versus Electron Beam Irradiation.- 7. Conclusions.- Acknowledgements.- References.- X-Ray Photon Spectroscopy Calculations.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Relevant Aspects of Photon Interactions with Matter.- 3. Time-Independent Photon Transport Equation.- 4. Solution in a Half Space: Multiple Scattering Effects.- 5. Multiple Scattering Effects on the Characteristic Lines.- 6. Multiple Scattering of the Rayleigh and Compton Effects.- 7. Summary.- Nomenclature.- References.- Monte Carlo Methods on Advanced Computer Architectures.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Advanced Computer Architectures.- 3. Monte Carlo on Advanced Computer Architectures.- 4. Monte Carlo on Parallel Architectures.- 5. Summary and Conclusions.- Acknowledgements.- References.- The Wiener-Hermite Functional Method of Representing Random Noise and Its Application to Point Reactor Kinetics Driven by Random Reactivity Fluctuations.- I. Introduction.- II. The Wiener-Hermite Functional (WHF) Method.- III. Application to Point Reactor Kinetics Driven by Random Reactivity Fluctuations.- IV. Conclusions.- References.