Waste from the Krsko nuclear power plant, built jointly by Croatia and Slovenia, is about to arrive at the Cerkezovac centre for radioactive waste in central Croatia, packed in 685 cement blocks that will never be opened again and will remain in two storage facilities for the next 30 to 40 years, the Vecernji List daily reported on Monday.

At a time when Slovenia and Croatia are mulling over the construction of a second block of the Krsko Nuclear Power Plant (NEK), the Croatian fund for financing the disposal of radioactive waste from the Krsko Nuclear Power Plant stepped up the preparation for the Radioactive Waste Centre (RAO) in the former Cerkezovac army barracks on Trgovska Gora Mountain on the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina, where Croatia will store half the low and medium radioactive waste from the existing block in Krsko.

The Cerkezovac centre will also be used to store institutional radioactive waste generated in Croatia. The fund’s director, Goran Kukmanovic, explained the guardhouse will be some 500 metres away from the existing entry to the former barracks and that will create an additional buffer zone towards surrounding villages and towns.

Of the 35 facilities at the barracks, only two underground storage facilities will be used. A special facility will be built to store the waste from the Krsko plant while locally produced radioactive waste will be stored in the existing underground facilities.

One storage capacity will be used to verify the radioactive characteristics of the waste and once checked it will be stored in the second facility.

The existing and future storage facilities are four kilometres away from the entry to the centre. Tests are currently being conducted of the rain, soil, plants, animals…to verify a zero rate of radiology.

Radioactivity is always present in the environment and we need to know at what level it is currently in order to determine future levels and to monitor the situation and whether there are any deviations in radioactive levels. Our storage capacities must not have any impact on the usual radioactivity in the environment, Kukmanovic explained as carried by the Vecernji List.