VIPOTNIK: LACK OF TRANSPARENCY AND CROATIA'S ABUSE

BANJA LUKA, JULY 16 /SRNA/ – Croatia will not voluntarily give up on building a nuclear facility on Trgovska Gora and is conducting the entire process in a non-transparent manner with abuses, Bojan Vipotnik, Minister of Spatial Planning, Construction, and Ecology of Republika Srpska, cited in his SRNA statement.

Vipotnik emphasized that the lack of involvement of other ministries in the Council of Ministers, apart from the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations, creates distrust and raises concerns that Republika Srpska and its ministry are handling this process alone. "The Ministry and the Republika Srpska Government will continue to monitor all activities in Croatia in order to activate all legal and expert mechanisms to permanently prevent the construction of the so-called Radioactive Waste Disposal Centre on Trgovska Gora," Vipotnik said. He highlighted that the Ministry has excellent cooperation with the Federal Ministry of Tourism and Environment in this process and that field research is proceeding smoothly in both entities, aiming at proving the environmental and health risks to the population of BiH, the risks which Croatia has ignored. According to him, the most suitable location for such a facility is in Vrbina, which Slovenia approved as it meets all conditions for storing radioactive waste. "It is very important to note that, during the site selection process, Croatia has consistently manipulated the terms `storage` and `disposal`. Their recent statements now reveal their ultimate intent, which we pointed to from the start, that under the pretense of temporary storage, they actually intend to construct a permanent disposal site. These are two entirely different concepts," Vipotnik pointed out. He has stressed that the Ministry is facing a major task in disputing the Environmental Impact Study and proving that the Čerkezovac site on Trgovska Gora, in the Dvor municipality, fails to meet any criteria for the construction of a radioactive and spent nuclear waste disposal site. Once Croatia submits a notification and delivers the study, Vipotnik stressed they will be ready to respond with expert and scientific arguments backed by geological, hydrological, agropedological, seismological, and all other necessary field research currently underway. "This is the result of the efforts of the Ministry of Spatial Planning, Construction and Ecology and the Government of Republika Srpska as a collective body, along with our federal partners and the Expert Team," said Vipotnik. He emphasized that without the involvement of BiH-level institutions and treating the Trgovska Gora issue as a political and security priority, efforts from Republika Srpska alone will not be sufficient. Vipotnik reminded that the Government and the Ministry he heads have included the academic community in the process of gathering evidence, and that numerous public presentations of expert and scientific papers, as well as presentations of completed field and lab research, have been held. Croatia plans to store radioactive waste from the Krško Nuclear Power Plant, along with existing institutional waste, at the Trgovska Gora site located in the municipality of Dvor, right on the border with BiH.