engleski

Restoration of radioactively contaminated sites in the Republic of Croatia

In March 1993 Croatia has joined to the IAEA Technical Co-operation Project on Environmental Restoration in Central and Eastern Europe. The proposed project structure was fully accepted, i.e. the project implementation in Croatia is supposed to be carried out through there stages : (1) identification and characterization of radioactively contaminated sites ; (2) preparation for restoration, and (3) restoring radioactively contaminated sites. The Hazardous Waste Management Agency from Zagreb has been appointed to be the project co-ordinator in Croatia. Through contacts with experts from the IAEA who are responsible for the international project implementation, it was deimed the general structure of the project performance in Croatia in respect to specific situation in our country i.e. regarding the types of radioactively contaminated sites. There are four groups of radioactively contaminated sites in Croatia: (1) sites containing coal slaglash piles ; (2) sites containing phosphates and phospho-gypsum from fertilizers industry ; (3) geothermal springs and gasloil drillings ; and (4) sites containing natural radioactive materials. The highest priorities in the clean-up action should be given to the INA-VINIL plant in Kaštel Sućurac and the coal-fired power plant PLOMIN (group 1), as well as the fertilizers factory INA-PETROKEMIJA in Kutina (group 2). The project performance is controlled by the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Civil Engineering and Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Economy - Department of Energy . Main co-ordinating institutions in the project implementation are the institute "Ruder Bošković" , the Institute for Medical Researches and Occupational Medicine, and "ECOTEC" - the company dealing with ecological engineering and ionizing radiation protection. Unfortunately, there are few considerable obstacles aggravating the regular project performance. Firstly, there are some difficulties referring to institutional and capacity building, as well as the infrastructure set up in Croatia as a newly independent country. Nevertheless, the problems connected with war running in some parts of our country, lack of financial means, repulsiveness of the public to issues close to radioactive waste, and -iinally - the absence of convenient temporary storage capacities or final repository for radioactive materials which should be restored through the project implementation, deserve a special attention in order the project to be regularly realized.

radioactively comtaminated; remediation

IAEA = International Atomic Energy Agency ; TECDOC = Technical Document