This press release is summarized from a post dated 21.07.2021: The Minister of Infrastructure exceeded his authority and issued an energy permit for JEK2 without legal and professional basis
LJUBLJANA, July 21, 2021 – The signatories of the joint statement note that the Minister of Infrastructure has exceeded his powers with the current energy permit for the JEK2 project, and issued the permit without a legal and professional basis. With the aforementioned permission, the ministry opens the way for the implementation of administrative procedures and the preparation of documentation for investment decision-making on JEK2. The fact is that the Republic of Slovenia has not made a final decision on the optimal energy scenario for a future low-carbon Slovenia, so the minister’s action is premature and even harmful.
The foundations on which the Ministry of Infrastructure is based – the Long-term Climate Strategy of Slovenia and the Comprehensive National Energy and Climate Plan – NEPN – do not give the minister a mandate to issue an energy permit for the JEK2 project. In particular, NEPN does not support the construction of JEK2, but among the key challenges it writes about “the preparation of guidelines for the decision on the future use of nuclear energy and the possible construction of a new nuclear power plant”. The preparation of guidelines does not mean that a decision has been made, regardless of the fact that the current government makes political decisions without professional opinions and often planned without public discussion. At the same time, the current guidelines of the European Union regarding the suitability of nuclear energy in Europe are more inclined to abandon nuclear energy, as it is not sustainable. However, in the case of nuclear energy, the powerlessness of the EU to prevent irresponsible politicians and countries from putting themselves and others at risk at the EU level is clearly demonstrated by countries that are against the continued use of nuclear energy, even though they themselves have already reasonably renounced it.
A permanent obstacle to nuclear energy is its material and thermal emissions, which are even higher than the emissions of fossil energy sources. Slovenia is also one of the few nuclear countries that does not have a regulated final disposal for any type of radioactive waste and is still preparing documentation for the construction of a NSRAO repository. The problem of disposing of the VRAO, like many other political decisions, wants to leave it to the next generations. Moreover, it also wants to store and dispose of Croatian nuclear waste on the territory of Slovenia.
All this said, there remains a key problem with the existing nuclear power plant facility and any potential new facilities – the seismic hazard of the site – which no interest group can eliminate, despite lavishly supported efforts.
The signatories warn the Slovenian public that a possible investment in JEK2 would stop all other investments in renewable energy sources for a number of years and would plunge the country into non-competitiveness, as nuclear energy is significantly more expensive and less reliable than distributed renewable energy sources. The price of a kilowatt-hour of electricity from the imaginary JEK2 would be 3-4x more expensive than the price of a kilowatt-hour from solar panels and wind or geothermal energy. As has already been pointed out to the public, the JEK2 project is an extensive lobbying project, which will significantly exceed the biggest energy affair of Slovenian politics to date – TEŠ6 – as the price of the project’s implementation would by no means be an imaginary EUR 5 billion, which is misleading the current policy, but most likely 10 and more billion EUR. We are concerned that all the political parties represented in the National Assembly joined the project, which was completely exposed to corruption from the very beginning. The reason for the latter is intensive subsidization of propaganda for the nuclear power plant and imaginary construction projects for nuclear waste.
Since the vast majority of European countries have decided to abandon nuclear energy, large investors have not yet deviated from the latter, as they sense good earnings if they invest in politically errant countries such as Slovenia and the Czech Republic, members of the EU, which guarantees them the return of their investments in failed nuclear power plants. projects. As a result, the above means that Slovenia will be forced to take over stranded nuclear investments and pay from the pockets of its citizens for their financial, economic, health and ecological disaster. Since nuclear energy is unreliable and threatens all forms of life, countries using this energy must bear the risks and costs. Therefore, immoral investors are not afraid of financial ruin.
Already thirty years ago, Janez Janša refused to sign for the closure of JEK 1 within a reasonable time as a member of the National Assembly. His party president at the time, Jože Pučnik, signed and endorsed this document. Today, Janša pragmatically refuses to show himself as a firm supporter of the construction of JEK 2 and prefers to leave the latter to the obedient and guided coalition partners and ministers of his government.
Signatories:
dr. Leo Šešerko
Matjaž Valenčič, independent energy expert
Karel Lipič, Association of Ecological Movements of Slovenia-ZEG
M.Sc. Gregor Kos, Movement For a healthy society
