February 28, 2023 - Residents of Dvor in Bosnia and Herzegovina fear that Croatian nuclear waste could be dumped in Trgovska Gora this year. The town is located near the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina, and while Croatia is preparing to start dumping the disputed waste at the border, legal teams from Bosnia and Herzegovina are still investigating procedural options against Croatia.

As Index / N1 Bosnia and Herzegovina write, since 1999, Croatia has designated the Cerkezovac barracks as a warehouse in its documents. It confirmed that location in 2013 as a solution for the disposal of Croatian nuclear waste from the Krsko nuclear power plant. N1 BiH questions whether BiH's reaction to Croatia's plans regarding nuclear waste is coming a little late.

"The legal team is preparing, one could say, a letter to the Aarhus Convention, so these are the directions of our action," Bojan Vipotnik, Minister of Spatial Planning, Construction, and Ecology of the Republic of Srpska, told N1 BiH.

"We are late, but we are lucky that Croatia is also late"

"Today, we are defining our joint movement; we will provide additional funds for the work of the competent institutions. How and in what way - we will analyze and initiate certain procedural possibilities of BiH in the legal protection of the interests of the RS and the Federation of BiH, considering that Croatia is clearly not giving up. And we want to seek legal protection", said the Minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations of BiH, Staaa Kosarac.

The Expert Team admits that it is quite late. "We are late, but we are lucky that Croatia is also late. If we start now with all the planned activities, I don't think we will be late regarding the professional part. To have our results when the environmental impact study is finished, so that we can compare and adequately prepare for the response to what they offer," said Emir Dizdarevic, chairman of the BiH Expert Team for Trgovska Gora, for N1 BiH.

The health of 250,000 people potentially at risk

Croatia will not change the location of nuclear waste disposal from Krsko because it has completed geological, geophysical, and geohydrological research and is waiting for an environmental permit.

In the meantime, Slovenia received an environmental permit for the Krsko nuclear power plant for the next 20 years. N1 BiH states that all this implies that half of that waste will end up in Dvor, on the border with BiH, and that the health of about 250,000 people living along the Una river basin could be endangered.

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