Institute Director Forces Croatia to Alter Nuclear Waste Plan

The Croatian government this week backtracked on a controversial decision to store all of the country's low- and medium-level nuclear waste at a major research institute in the heart of its capital, Zagreb. The plan had been denounced by the director of the facility, the Ruđer Bošković Institute, and on Monday, Croatia's Ministry of Science, Education and Sport issued a statement saying the institute "was not an adequate place to store the waste permanently." But the ministry stills wants to store the nuclear waste at the Zagreb site for an indefinite period until a permanent storage site is readied.

A media campaign against storing the waste in the city started with an article in October by the business publication Poslovni Dnevnik, which revealed political pressure on Danica Ramljak, the institute's director, and her public refusal to sign a contract to accept the waste. The waste storage proposal, according to her, followed years of inaction on the issue. "Sorry, but I have no intention of putting my signature to this 'crap'... For six years no-one did anything to address this issue, and now, when the time is ticking away, I am supposed to sign so the waste can be stored at 'Ruđer'. I wouldn't dream of it," Ramljak, a medical researcher who previously worked at the U.S. National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., told Jutarnji List in an article published Monday.
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