Natural Radioactivity and the Evaluation of Related Radiological Risks in Concrete Used in Prizren District, Kosovo

This study aims to investigate the natural radioactivity levels in concrete made of Portland cement and used in Prizren district, Republic of Kosovo. The activity concentrations of 40K, 226Ra and 232Th were determined by gamma-ray spectroscopy technique with High Purity Germanium (HPGe) detector. The activity concentrations of 40K, 226Ra, and 232Th were found to be 15.4-28.4 Bq kg-1, 4.3-5.9 Bq kg-1 and 2.0-4.1 Bq kg-1, respectively. These results were used to calculate the activity concentration index as recommended by the Basic Safety Standard of Council Directive 2013/59/EURATOM for the safe use of building material. Kosovo must comply with this recommendation in the framework of legislative harmonization with the European Union. The activity concentration index was found to be lower than the reference level of unity (I=0.05), corresponding to an annual effective dose rate of AED=0.05 mSv y-1. The concentration of radionuclides and radiological hazard parameters for concrete investigated in this study were compared with respective results found in literature from different countries. These results show very low activity concentrations, indicating that concrete used in Prizren, Kosovo, does not pose any significant risk due to its use as building material

Potential of Wind Energy in Albania and Kosovo: Equity Payback and GHG Reduction of Wind Turbine Installation

The energy generation in Albania is completely from the hydropower plants. In terms of GHG emissions this is 100% green. In Kosovo 97% of energy is generated from lignite fired power plants. Apart the energy generation, the combustion process emits around 8000 ktCO2/yr and 1.5 Mt of ash in the form of fly and bottom ash. In both countries there is no MWh power generated from wind energy, i.e. this energy source is not utilized. Here, a proposed project for five locations in Albania and Kosovo has been analyzed in detail with the aim of installing a 1kW wind turbine off-grid. The method of study is based on the application of RETScreen International program software. This proposed model is intended to replace a base case- a diesel generator with installed capacity 7kW. The locations are selected three in Albania: Vlora, Korça and Elbasan, and two in Kosovo: Prishtina and Prizren. All are in different altitudes. By the calculation of RETScreen program, it has been analyzed the feasibility of the proposed projects by installing a wind turbine at hub's height 20m. The climate data for each location were retrieved by the RETScreen program from NASA. Generally, the calculation of financial parameters for the investments came out to be positive, the impact of GHG reduction very significant. A 5500 USD investment for the implementation of proposed case showed an equity payback time of 2-3 yrs and GHG reduction of 2.2 tCO2/yr. The electricity delivery to load only from this 1 KW wind turbine resulted to be between 1.6-17 MWh/yr