According to the data of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), currently, there are a total of 926 sealed radioactive radiation sources and devices containing sealed radiation sources in BiH, of which 131 are currently in use.
This information was requested from the Council of Ministers by the Member of the House of Representatives of the BiH Parliament, Sasa Magazinovic, who initiated a question to the procedure related to the exact locations of radioactive sources in BiH, Klix.ba writes.
As it was noted in the response of the State Register of Ionizing Radiation Sources, data from a total of 926 sources of radioactive radiation are currently available, but this number does not include radioactive smoke detectors, for which no records are being held. According to estimates, tens of thousands of such devices have been installed in BiH in the past.
Regarding the total number of radioactive sources, it should be pointed out that 131 of them are currently being actively used. Their use is mainly related to medicine and is used for radiotherapy and other treatments.
Besides medical purposes, radioactive sources can be found in many companies in BiH, which use the sources for industrial purposes, including devices for measuring humidity, density, and other similar devices.
Also, according to the data, 270 lightning rods with an embedded radioactive sources are currently in use at various facilities throughout BiH. As stated in the Strategy for Radioactive Waste Management in BiH, the installation of these devices on the territory of BiH is prohibited, and their origin was from the period of Yugoslavia. What is worrying is the fact that when it comes to radioactive lightning rods, similar numbers are repeated every year, which clearly shows that the removal of these devices is still slow.
“Radioactive lightning rods, installed in the period up to 1990, make up the largest group of sealed radiation sources. The practice of installing radioactive lightning rods has been suspended and they were not installed for a long time. Remaining radioactive lightning rods should be disassembled, moved to the central storage and then conditioned and stored, all that with the consent of the owner, ” it is stated in the Strategy of the State Regulatory Agency for Radiation and Nuclear Safety.
On the other hand, in BiH, according to official data, there is a much larger number of radioactive sources that are not being used. There are a total of 525 radioactive sources in temporary storage of radioactive sources, of which 187 are lightning rods. Also, in the storage of radioactive materials, there are about 6.000 ionizing smoke detectors, which, according to official data, have been disassembled and stored.
As for locations containing radioactive sources that are no longer in use, there are currently a total of 26 such facilities in BiH.
Out of this number, 9 locations currently contain more than five radioactive sources that are no longer in use.
Besides the temporary central storages in Canton Sarajevo, as well as the one in Banja Luka, which is not in operation, the list also includes the Mining Institute Tuzla, Arcellor Mittal in Zenica and Prijedor, Kakanj Cement Factory, Birac Zvornik Alumina Factory, the Sarajevo University Clinical Center, as well as the Institute for materials and quality within the company Energoinvest.
