BELGRADE: The energy crisis brought on by reduced deliveries of Russian gas have led to a new debate on building nuclear power plants. The biggest of the countries of former Yugoslavia, Croatia and Serbia, have growing energy demands due to their increasing industrial and household consumption, but they also have strong anti-nuclear lobbies. Most people also oppose nuclear power, fearing accidents and environmental damage, whatever the possible benefits and lower electricity prices.

But Croatia plans to build at least one nuclear power plant by 2015. “It is the Kyoto Protocol on reducing damaging transmission into the atmosphere that obliges us to close down the old (thermal) plants, but also the strategy of the European Union (EU) that stimulates alternative electricity production,” head of the Croatian Energy Institute Goran Granic told local media. Croatia is expected to join the EU by the end of the decade.

One proposed site is on the banks of the Danube in Erdut in eastern Croatia, where the river marks the natural border with Serbia.

Another is a site between Ivanic Grad and Dugo Selo on the river Sava, only 30 km east of capital Zagreb. Both locations were mentioned 20 years ago as possible sites when Yugoslavia was still a single country. It had then one nuclear power plant at Krsko, at the border of Slovenia and Croatia, and planned to build several more. Krsko became operational in the early 1980s, with American equipment.

But plans to build nuclear plants at these sites were never carried out because of problems at Krsko, where reactors were closed from time to time due to technical problems. Fears grew further after the nuclear accident at the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine 20 years ago.

Now new opposition has arisen. “Nuclear power plants destroy eco-systems, demand large amounts of water, and cause pollution,” Ljiljanka Mitos, an activist from Osijek town close to the Erdut site told IPS. The Danube, one of the longest and most important European rivers, winds through Croatia and Serbia on way to the Black Sea in Romania.—Dawn/IPS News Service