Denials, Time no. 1784, March 13, 2025.
Responding to my article "Radioactive monitoring" from the issue of "Vremena" 1783, the author of the denial from the Ministry of Mining and Energy (resigned) states five times that it is incorrect, twice that it is malicious, as well as that it is malicious and unprofessional, but without a single argument to refute the allegations in the published text. Most of the denials consist of information that is already verbatim in the text, except that in this case it is written in a more boring way. True, in the denial there are also a lot of quotes, and even entire language constructions from the text, which refresh and break the administrative-propaganda tone of listing both important and completely minor events organized by the Ministry during 2024 (which "Vreme" had already reported on in previous issues, but in a slightly more interesting way), but here they are completely unrelated to the topic.
In all of this, there is no denying that after the tender in which the most expensive bidder won, the Ministry engaged the French company "Egis", whose subsidiary company participated in the supervision of the canopy at the Railway Station in Novi Sad, to now work on the development plan for nuclear power plants in Serbia and that (to repeat the formal job title once again): market analysis of available technologies of small modular and conventional reactors in the world as part of the Preliminary Technical Study for consideration peacetime applications of nuclear energy in Serbia.
On the contrary. The denials not only do not dispute it anywhere, but also confirm it.
Although it does not go into whose offer was the most expensive, it can even be said that the denial confirms this basic information with additional details of no greater importance, details that I have omitted to make the text more readable, but which are correct, since the data comes from the same publicly available Decision on the award of work from 13.09. 2024, which "Vreme" also had insight into when writing the text. However, in the denial, along with a huge number of incorrectly used adjectives, unlike my text, there are also several falsehoods that could only be believed by someone who had not read the published text before the denial. The key untrue thesis is that, as the author of the text, I artificially connected the "horror" of the railway station with the work for which the company "Ežis" was hired. It is not about any connection, about allegory or metaphor, but about a real connection - the company "Ežis" does this work and the company "Ežis" participated in the work of supervising the works at the Railway Station in a six-member consortium, which the denials do not mention anywhere. And that is the point of the text, which the denier did not even try to deny. Let's repeat, without adjectives, the point, in case the scribe from the Ministry might not have noticed it - the work on the plan of the nuclear power plant is done by the company that supervised the reconstruction of the canopy in Novi Sad that killed 15 people. I used the adjective "creepy" for that. It's creepy, isn't it?
In this whole morbid case, however, the need to use this denial to raise the wishes of the person who performs the function of the President of the Republic makes me happy. Namely, the author of the denial regretfully complained (ah!) that it was "maliciously and baselessly stated" that the wishes of that person were "the only reason why the Ministry of Mining and Energy" is asking for the consideration of small modular reactors. However, the scribe from the Ministry, apart from raising money, did not make any serious effort. And he doesn't give us any real arguments here either. Forgetting that there are only TWO operational small modular reactors on the planet, he states that this technology is being considered by all the world's nuclear powers, the US, the PRC and the Russian Federation. What is that reason? Of course the nuclear powers are considering various nuclear technologies of the future. Serbia is not a nuclear power, it doesn't even have a single nuclear engineer, and the whole job entrusted to "Ežis" in cooperation with EFT is to see how Serbia can start its nuclear affairs. It will be that the project assignment took that into account because of the mentioned person.
Readers, of course, see it all themselves - if they look at the text and the denials, everything is clear, there is nothing that has been denied. However, as the author of hundreds of texts about nuclear energy, several of which are dedicated to the "nuclear renaissance" under the outgoing minister Dubravka Đedović Handanović, which is best described by the mentioned "rush to pass when the red light is turned off" (which the author of the denial, I think, really liked), I am reacting because this "denier", when he is not denying anything, is discovering something new. Namely, the scribe from the Ministry provides information that was not widely available to the public, and which directly incriminates the resigned minister Đedović Handanović.
Actually, in the history of polemics, there are not many examples of someone writing a rebuttal in which he directly accuses himself or his boss of violating the law, or even of a criminal offense, while the very article to which the rebuttal was sent stated it only as suspicious, but was left open for professionalism.
Denanti does not dispute, as stated in the article, that the decision on the disputed work of creating technical documentation was made in September 2024. Likewise, he does not dispute, but rather confirms, that the Law on the Prohibition of the Construction of Nuclear Power Plants, known as the Moratorium, was "repealed at the end of 2024", so it is clear that the decision was against the current Law. And now, on top of that, the denial gives us data from the interpretation of the law that the Ministry apparently obtained, which they say was prohibited by the Law: "making investment decisions, creating investment programs and technical documentation for the construction of nuclear power plants, nuclear fuel production facilities and spent fuel processing facilities for nuclear power plants".
Lawyers would say that what is written here is a "deed" in itself. There is nothing to prove, the "deed" is already on paper, which, as a denial, was issued only by the resigned Ministry. According to Article 267 of the Criminal Code, anyone who violates the law and regulations in the construction of nuclear facilities faces a prison sentence of six months to five years. It is unpleasant for the resigning minister, who was publicly accused by her colleagues in this letter, although the Moratorium has since been lifted (in a controversial way), is that it will be difficult to refer to the decriminalization of the act, because she is not prosecuted by the Moratorium, but by the Criminal Code, which - has not been amended.
It is not clear why the persons dealing with the media in the Ministry accuse their own minister in this way, who personally signed the mentioned Decision, and want to potentially send her to prison, perhaps by mistake, in a hurry before that "red light". Nevertheless, the resigned minister was charged. And that in his own reaction.
Sometimes, especially when you have failed to hide something from the public, it is not wise to write a denial.
Less than two days of blockade - that's how long it took to see how weak and powerless the public media service is, both from the outside and from the inside. At the moment of writing this text, it is the eighth day of the blockade, and the sixth that RTS is not broadcasting its program. They also seem to be facing a strike inside the house. And the essence of blocking RTS is not in what it publishes, but in what it keeps silent
In the months after the fall of the canopy in Novi Sad, the flames of rebellion spread throughout Serbia. The first protests started in Novi Sad right after the tragedy. The authorities responded with arrests, police cordons and intimidation, but instead of calming down the protesters, new protests followed.
The rector of the University of Belgrade, Vladan Đokić, has been the target of top state officials and regime tabloids for months, who label him as an insidious instigator of student protests, an opportunist, "the face of evil" and "the leader of the criminal octopus." How and why a rector became "state enemy number one"
"I'm standing in the cordon, and my daughter is shouting at me 'aw, aw, killers'. What should I do? If they ordered me - I would throw down my baton and bulletproof vest and stand on the side of my child," a police officer from the south of Serbia, who works as needed in the Belgrade Police Brigade, told "Vreme"
The recent formation of the Đura Macuta government is part of the regime's revenge and cynicism. This can be seen most in the "black troika" of new ministers appointed to deal with the parts of society that are the leaders and symbols of the big rebellion that lasted for several months, the cause of which was the fall of the canopy in Novi Sad, which claimed 16 human lives. Education, universities, unsolicited media and parts of the judiciary that refuse to listen to orders, either publicly, with announcements, or hiding behind legal procedures, should be dismantled. Those who will have no problem doing everything they are told, even reinforcing the orders with their own inventions, are chosen for this.
Who mentions the extraordinary elections when the rating of the party in power is falling, and according to all surveys, Vučić is not the most important political factor in the country, but the students?
The brutal beating of students and citizens in Novi Sad shows that the regime is not only ready to take revenge - it is actually carrying it out
If in reality the principle of balance is violated - the way the incompetent regime violated the relationship between the concrete elements at the Novi Sad Railway Station - reality will behave like a canopy: it will fail to obey
The archive of the weekly Vreme includes all our digital editions, since the very beginning of our work. All issues can be downloaded in PDF format, by purchasing the digital edition, or you can read all available texts from the selected issue.
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"Radioactive surveillance", Vreme no. 1783, March 6, 2025.
The minister who accused herself, "Time" no. 1785, March 20, 2025.
