The nationwide referendum due to be held in Slovenia on 24 November about proposed new nuclear power units has been called off and may now be staged later in the project process, in 2028, instead.
How JEK2 could look (Image: GEN energija)
The decision by Slovenia’s parliament to cancel the vote – just days after the elected members had voted for it to happen – followed challenges to the wording and allegations that it was not being properly conducted.
The question for the referendum had been due to be: “Do you support the implementation of the JEK2 project, which together with other low-carbon sources will ensure a stable supply of electricity?”
Slovenia’s JEK2 project is for a new one or two-unit nuclear power plant, with up to 2400 MW capacity, next to its existing nuclear power plant, Krško, a 696 MWe pressurised water reactor which generates about one-third of the country’s electricity and which is co-owned by neighbouring Croatia.
Prime Minister Robert Golob has committed to hold a referendum on the project before it goes ahead, with a number of key studies and documents to be published beforehand to “enable citizens to make an informed decision”. The current timetable for the project is for a final investment decision to be taken in 2028, with construction beginning in 2032.
Among a raft of reviews and documents published over the past few months, was an economic review of the estimated cost of the project which put the cost, depending on the power-generating capacity selected, at EUR9.5 billion to EUR15.4 billion (USD10.3 billion to USD16.7 billion).
The opposition Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) – which along with all other parties had been keen on the referendum because “such a large project cannot be successfully completed without broad social consensus” – said it now opposed the referendum because, they say, Energy Minister Bojan Kumer had requested, and not published, an analysis of the costs if there was no nuclear energy and up to 100% renewable energy instead.
SDS MP Zvone Černač said if media reports were true “and Minister Kumer hid the study from the public for two months, he should resign”. Černač accused the minister of using the “rhetoric of renewable energy activists” and said that in the current circumstances carrying out a referendum “would be irresponsible”.
Prime Minister Robert Golob’s Freedom Movement said that “misleading media reports” and other accusations meant “a well-founded doubt has arisen as to whether, in the new circumstances, voters can make an informed, autonomous and responsible decision on such an important issue of national importance as the supply of electricity”.
It said that the cancellation of November’s referendum does not mean the end of the JEK2 project and work would begin on a “special law for the more effective implementation of this by far the largest planned investment in the history of independent Slovenia … the cancellation of the referendum also does not mean that there will not be a referendum on JEK2 in the future. The referendum vote will be held in 2028 at the latest, when all the details for the final investment decision will be known”.
The party said the new law “will contain provisions on the establishment of a project company, define strategic decision-making procedures on the project, provisions on project control, including civil control, and provisions related to the specifics of the project” and will enable public participation.
Freedom Party MP Miha Lamut said: “We witnessed non-objective and incomplete media reporting, which created the impression in the public that all the decisions made regarding the procedures for adopting both the resolution on the long-term peaceful use of nuclear energy and the decree for the referendum were the result of arbitrary decision-making by the people’s representatives.”
The Ministry of Environment, Climate and Energy issued a statement saying it had “never hidden anything” and said the accusations about the reasons for the report not being published were “unfounded”. It added: “We reject the accusations that the current non-publication of the document, which is the author’s analysis of one energy expert and has not been peer-reviewed, could significantly improve citizens’ information about the JEK2 project, since it was not even fundamentally intended for that.”
The ministry, which has now published the report and the original letter commissioning it, said it was now going to launch a public procurement process to obtain new expert analyses which would be published in 2025.