Croatia's Deputy Prime Minister and Health Minister Darko Milinovic on Friday dismissed as insinuations reports that nuclear waste was being stored at Zagreb's Rudjer Boskovic Institute (RBI).
"It's not radioactive, dangerous waste, it's lightning conductors," Milinovic told reporters before a government session.
RBI director Danica Ramljak has opposed, at the cost of her resignation, the request to turn the RBI's facility for the temporary storage of radioactive waste into a central storage facility for the entire country, because the institute is located in a densely populated downtown Zagreb area.
Milinovic, as well as Environmental Protection Minister Marina Matulovic Dropulic and Science and Education Minister Radovan Fuchs, stressed in their statements for the press that the waste in question was not nuclear waste, but low or medium-activity radioactive waste (lighting conductors, fire alarms) which the RBI had been storing for years and which, if stored appropriately, could be located in an urban area.
"This is only about using EU funds to improve the IRB's storage facility in terms of infrastructure for the storage of that kind of waste," Milinovic said.
