Development of the utilisation of renewable energy sources and energy efficiency represents the main policy for sustainable development. The overall target of the European Union Directive on the promotion of the use of energy from renewables (RES) is to achieve at least a 20% share of energy from renewables in the gross final energy consumption in 2020. The mandatory national target for Slovenia is a 25% share of energy from RES in the gross final consumption. The share of RES in the gross final energy consumption in Slovenia was 18.8% in 2011 and the share of electricity production from RES was 30.8% in the gross electricity consumption. Electricity production from photovoltaics (PV) and biogas plants in agriculture has been growing fast after the adoption of the new supportive decree for electricity from RES in 2009. The very fast growth of PV plants has caused a problem for financing electricity from RES. Similar effects have been also recorded in the biogas sector, which represents a threat to food production. The state of the art, targets and challenges of electricity production from RES in Slovenia are described in the paper.
COBISS.SI-ID: 28197415
The uranium mine and mill at Žirovski vrh, Slovenia, operated from 1982 to 1990. After processing, the uranium mill tailings were deposited onto the Boršt waste pile lying close to the mine. Radioecological studies focused on assessing the mobility and bioavailability of deposited radionuclides were initiated some five years ago. The mobility of 238U, 234U, 230Th and 226Ra in soil was studied by applying sequential extraction protocols. The highest activity concentrations were found at the bottom of the waste pile. Uranium isotopes were the most mobile, followed by 226Ra whose mobility appeared to be suppressed by high sulphate concentrations and 230Th. The wetland plants grown in soils contaminated with seepage waters from the tailings contained higher levels of 238U, 226Ra and 230Th compared to plants from a control site. The activity concentration of 226Ra was the highest in all studied plant species. The radiological risk to wildlife around the mine area as assessed by the ERICA Tool was negligible. Activity concentrations in bovine milk from the area of Žirovski vrh were comparable to the reference location, except for uranium where the content was higher. The combined annual effective dose for adults consuming milk from the Žirovski vrh area is 13.0 1.7 Sv a1.
COBISS.SI-ID: 27172647
New data on the concentrations of the main gamma-emitting radionuclides, minor and trace elements, and isotopes of uranium (with Ra-226 as a daughter product of U-238) and thorium in soils and sediments of the Shu valley (from the river Chon-Kemin to the river Kuragatty downstream the river Shu) are presented, determined by high-resolution gamma-spectrometry, k0-instrumental neutron activation analysis and alphaspectrometry with appropriate radiochemical separations of the samples, respectively. The results obtained showed an aquatic migration pathway of most of the trace elements and radionuclides and predicted water pollution downstream the river Shu. The scandium method showed pollution by As, Br, Ca, Cr, Zr of the Tasotkel dam impoundment and by Ca and Cr of the river Shu below its confluence with the river Kuragatty. According to the disequilibrium isotopic method for uranium (using the isotopic ratio U-234/U-238), areas with accumulation and leaching processes were estimated for soils and sediments of the river Shu and its main inflows.
COBISS.SI-ID: 27601703
A comparison of different dissolution techniques for determination of uranium in soil samples was made. Conventional wet dissolution with mixtures of HNO3, HClO4 and HF acids, microwave dissolution using HNO3 and HF, and alkaline fusion with Na2CO3 and Na2O2 were evaluated. For testing the effectiveness of the dissolution procedures, two reference materials and six soil samples from the surroundings of a former uranium mine were investigated. It was observed that the content of uranium in the residues determined by INAA represents a significant contribution to its total concentration in the sample, especially in the case of microwave dissolution.
COBISS.SI-ID: 27495207
The evacuation of people located in different safety zones of an LNG terminal is a complex problem considering that the accidents involving LNG are very hazardous and post the biggest threat to the safety of the people located near the LNG leakage. The safety risk criteria define the parameters which one LNG terminal should meet in terms of safety. Those criteria also contain an evacuation as an evasive action with the objective to mitigate the influence of the LNG accident on the people at risk. Till date, not a lot of attention has been paid to technologically advanced evacuations intended for LNG terminals. Creating the technologically advanced evacuation influences directly on the decrease of the probability of fatalities, thus influencing the calculation of the individual risk as well as the societal risk which results in the positioning of the F-N curve in the acceptable part of the ALARP (as low as reasonably practicable) zone. With this paper, we aim to present the difference between the safety analyses in cases when conservative data for probability of fatalities is being used while calculating the risk, and in cases when real data is used.
COBISS.SI-ID: 2529635