The head of the SDP parliamentary group in the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina (PABiH), Sasa Magazinovic, commented on the decision of the Croatian Parliament to urgently adopt the Law on the Construction of a Radioactive Waste Management Centre right on the border with BiH.
He stated that this is a location that is almost surrounded on three sides by the territory of BiH, and where any potential negative impact would largely affect BiH.
“What is happening here is anything but an example of good neighbourly relations. Imagine that we proposed building a nuclear and radioactive waste disposal site above Dubrovnik and explained to them, as they are explaining to us, that they have no reason to worry, that it is not harmful. What would the reaction from Croatia be? If they had planned to build the disposal site around Zagreb, I would believe what they are saying. As it is, I have no understanding for the choice of location,” Magazinovic stated.
Magazinovic, who has been fighting for years against the intention to store radioactive waste at this location, said that the practice everywhere in Europe is for disposal sites to be built at the place where the waste is generated, not only because of transport costs but also because that environment is already prepared, with infrastructure in place and the like.
“In this case, neighbouring Croatia has decided to store its radioactive waste in our backyard because it will be cheaper for them and because it was the only undefended location in the Parliament, in the sense that there are not enough politically influential people living in that area,” Magazinovic said.
He points out that this location is in the immediate vicinity of the inner core of the municipality of Novi Grad, only a few hundred metres from the Una River and from the area where water is drawn for the water supply of the population in BiH.
“What I additionally fear is that this would not be just a disposal site for waste from Krsko, waste that Croatia is obliged to store due to its use of this power plant, but that this could turn into a disposal site for European nuclear waste. In official documents in the past, wording appeared suggesting that this could be a financially viable project precisely in that direction,” Magazinovicsaid.
He called on the legal and expert team of the Council of Ministers of BiH to intensify their activities, bearing in mind that the Republic of Croatia has still not completed the environmental impact study of radioactive waste at Trgovska Gora.
The Croatian Parliament yesterday, under an urgent procedure, adopted the Law on the Construction of a Radioactive Waste Management Centre, which provides the regulatory basis for building a disposal site for waste from the Krsko Nuclear Power Plant, as well as from domestic hospitals and industry, with the preferred location being Cerkezovac on Trgovska Gora.
