N1SRP — broadcast
20260806 153000 UTC
440 transcript segments
Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking
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[00:00:00] However, authorities warn that this week will be critical as
[00:00:03] the heat continues. The heat
[00:00:06] warning has been extended until Friday at
[00:00:09] midnight.
[00:00:11] This is a sad and frightening phenomenon, but also a very serious warning
[00:00:15] to society that we must treat resources carefully, we must
[00:00:18] pay more attention to the environment, and I believe this
[00:00:22] is a very serious call to wake up. Well,
[00:00:25] I think things could get worse than this, so if there isn't
[00:00:28] substantial. this doesn't apply only to citizens, but
[00:00:32] truly to these large companies, then I think
[00:00:35] the situation can only get worse. Experts
[00:00:39] from the Polish Institute of Meteorology and Water
[00:00:41] Management say this is probably one of the worst droughts this
[00:00:45] country has ever seen.
[00:00:49] The next few weeks to two months will show
[00:00:53] how serious this year's drought is, but
[00:00:56] I would say it will probably be tougher than previous years.
[00:01:00] The San River in southeastern Poland dropped to a record low
[00:01:03] level last week, prompting local authorities to introduce
[00:01:07] in industry. The low water level
[00:01:10] was visible on the Vistula River. Hydrologists consider the main
[00:01:14] cause of the drought to be the lack of continuous precipitation,
[00:01:17] not just the current heat.
[00:01:20] In southern Poland, there is a severe drought, we have
[00:01:23] 71 drought warnings throughout Poland,
[00:01:27] at 320 measuring stations. the water
[00:01:30] level of rivers is very low, while at as many as 30
[00:01:34] stations, historically low water
[00:01:36] levels are recorded. Problems in Germany due to the low water level
[00:01:40] of the Rhine, which complicates river traffic. The drop in the river
[00:01:44] level in Worms revealed so-called hunger stones, which are
[00:01:47] hydrological markers placed in watercourses during dry periods to warn
[00:01:51] of drought-induced
[00:01:55] gladi izazvane
[00:01:56] This
[00:01:59] month is so extreme, that
[00:02:02] prolonged heat, it's not just a short period of
[00:02:05] like that, this heat has been
[00:02:09] going on for, I think, more than eight weeks, yes,
[00:02:12] it's frightening, of course it's
[00:02:15] frightening. The heat does not bypass Switzerland either, where
[00:02:18] savezni zavod za meteorologiju i klimatologiju predviđa da će se
[00:02:22] ova godina verovatno svrstati među najtoplije godine u
[00:02:26] istoriji. U austrijskoj prestonici u utorak je izmeren
[00:02:29] 40. 1 stepen celzijusa, čime je oboren
[00:02:32] istorijski rekord. Veoma
[00:02:35] Your morning in
[00:02:38] bi da stigne u drugom delu dana u vidu lokalnih pljuskova i
[00:02:41] grmljavine. Od petka se očekuje manji pad
[00:02:44] expected, but as early as Monday,
[00:02:47] the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Radmila Mitrović,
[00:02:51] N1.
[00:02:59] the lack of precipitation, water levels on many European
[00:03:03] low, which is a problem not
[00:03:06] only for ships, but also for nuclear power plants, they need
[00:03:09] large quantities of water for cooling, I'm talking about this with Slobodan
[00:03:13] Bubnjović, physicist and science journalist, good day, thank you for
[00:03:16] being here, so
[00:03:19] let's address how the problem
[00:03:23] with low water levels arose, especially on the Danube, there's talk about
[00:03:27] can do very little, even at how all the nuclear
[00:03:30] power plants are threatened, how these things work, how much water
[00:03:33] is needed for these reactors, what is actually
[00:03:37] the biggest problem now? Well, here we are still talking
[00:03:41] about a kind of completely extreme
[00:03:44] events, primarily hydrological, but they are reflected and spill over
[00:03:47] into all other
[00:03:49] a traditional German product based sectors, and I think there is some irony, energy is somehow
[00:03:53] historically most responsible
[00:03:55] for the fact that we have even reached this phase of climate change
[00:03:59] and that we can solve it and now we see how actually in
[00:04:03] that whole loop energy also suffers
[00:04:06] from the indirect consequences of climate
[00:04:09] change. The water level of rivers
[00:04:12] is important primarily in terms of water flow
[00:04:16] because when it is said that nuclear power
[00:04:20] they do not consume it, they use these water basins for
[00:04:24] cooling reactors, so for in that secondary
[00:04:27] cooling circuit for water that otherwise circulates through
[00:04:31] through the system and it's very important, that's why
[00:04:34] all reactors, at least European ones, are mostly
[00:04:38] built next to large rivers, eventually lakes, where there's a possibility next to
[00:04:42] the sea, because a large amount of water is
[00:04:45] needed to extract that energy which
[00:04:48] reactors continuously must somewhere
[00:04:51] store, release it, even when they are disconnected from
[00:04:55] the grid, which we saw, for example, in the famous
[00:04:58] incident in Fukushima, where the reactors were shut down, but they still
[00:05:02] posed a danger precisely because of the fact that the heat
[00:05:06] they continuously generate cannot
[00:05:08] be dissipated, and therefore already at the first signs,
[00:05:12] that is, that there has been a dramatic drop in
[00:05:15] water levels, reactors in our region slowly began to
[00:05:19] shut down, the most endangered was the
[00:05:22] Cernavodă reactor unit one, which was shut down
[00:05:25] immediately, and after that a battle was fought to save
[00:05:29] the second unit from being shut down, because for Romanians, where that nuclear power plant
[00:05:33] is located, just when you mention that, there was
[00:05:36] information these days that for those who are not
[00:05:39] experts like me, it was completely unbelievable that... "Romanians
[00:05:43] with various explosive devices are trying to return the Danube
[00:05:47] to its former old riverbed to
[00:05:50] bring enough water for the nuclear
[00:05:53] power plant." Well, that's let's just say,
[00:05:57] first it's important to say that we're not talking about being
[00:06:01] in some kind of nuclear incident, so in Hungary
[00:06:04] where it's being shut down, we didn't mention
[00:06:07] units were shut down, practically all but one reactor that is partially
[00:06:10] operating, the other three shut down, so in the Paks
[00:06:14] power plant on the Danube, which is located in Hungary, and Cernavodă,
[00:06:18] which is located very relatively close to the
[00:06:21] mouth of the Danube into the Black Sea, we
[00:06:24] are not talking about nuclear incidents, nuclear power plants are built for
[00:06:28] different types of hazards, although these are unexpected
[00:06:31] water levels, they are still such that we are far from
[00:06:35] an incident occurring, but the normal functioning
[00:06:39] of these reactors and electricity production are dramatically threatened. Keep in mind
[00:06:43] that we are in a situation with low water levels where hydropower plants cannot
[00:06:46] provide their expected capacity, we are in the summer
[00:06:50] season, consumption is not exactly low
[00:06:54] due to these heats, so there is a kind of mild
[00:06:57] energy crisis in the whole region, then those who are
[00:07:00] the safest electricity producers, these are
[00:07:03] nuclear power plants, cannot work precisely because of the low
[00:07:06] water level,
[00:07:08] due to potential hazards, unit one in Cernavodă has been
[00:07:11] shut down. Then the question was raised
[00:07:15] what will happen with that water level that currently
[00:07:18] exists, where the flow, let's say,
[00:07:21] the water level is disputable, because the geometry of those riverbeds was
[00:07:25] changed a lot during construction, so the question arises
[00:07:28] what is a natural water level and what is not, but what is a relevant measure is
[00:07:32] the flow, so the flow is some 10 to 20 times lower on the Danube
[00:07:35] than is needed for reactors to function normally, to
[00:07:39] transfer enough heat to the water that
[00:07:42] is in the Danube itself. Then
[00:07:46] it's literally about a battle that
[00:07:48] involves a hydrological forecast, the expectation that
[00:07:52] in the next few days the Danube will slowly begin to return to its riverbed
[00:07:56] to slowly rise so that a few days are gained
[00:08:00] in that game of time, enough so that
[00:08:03] unit two does not have to be shut down, the Romanian army
[00:08:07] mined a rock in the middle of the Danube and its
[00:08:10] mining was... according to hydrology, it should
[00:08:14] have allowed the water level to rise by a few centimeters
[00:08:17] at the location of the nuclear
[00:08:20] power plant itself, this turned out not to be so simple, they had to
[00:08:24] mine it twice, then they even came up with a very strange idea,
[00:08:28] this, but like in the movies, to fill barges with stones from
[00:08:31] that mining to then create a natural
[00:08:35] dam in one part of the Danube where the water flows out to be
[00:08:38] redirected towards the nuclear power plant itself, so it somewhat looks like
[00:08:42] some kind of apocalyptic movie where you have rescuers saving
[00:08:45] the nuclear power plant, and they succeeded according to today's morning
[00:08:49] data in raising the water level by two to 3
[00:08:52] cm, which is not what they need, they need 10 to
[00:08:56] 15 to be able to keep that unit in working
[00:09:00] condition long enough until the Danube naturally
[00:09:04] rises to what is expected according to the forecast,
[00:09:07] now how long can that last and what
[00:09:11] happens when these reactors are shut down,
[00:09:15] how long does it take for them to return to
[00:09:18] operation, it depends, it simply depends on
[00:09:22] circumstances and the circumstances under which I ask this because
[00:09:25] the Danube, as experts say, is usually lowest in
[00:09:29] August, for now there are no announcements
[00:09:32] of precipitation, there are announcements, however, that the water level could
[00:09:36] rise by a few centimeters, but something that would perhaps permanently
[00:09:39] solve it. The hydrological forecast is not quite
[00:09:43] like the meteorological one, where something happens today or tomorrow, so it
[00:09:47] in order for there to be water in the Danube, there should have been snow and
[00:09:51] water for months, I mean a longer period back
[00:09:54] and it is known and there is an expectation that the water level
[00:09:58] will improve, so because what we are seeing now are not the consequences
[00:10:01] of the current heat but of some previous processes that
[00:10:05] are really interesting, but when we talk about
[00:10:08] nuclear power plants, they have, especially these
[00:10:12] European ones, here we are actually talking about, although they are completely
[00:10:15] of the CANDU type reactors in
[00:10:18] Romania, VVER reactors with pressurized
[00:10:22] water in Hungary, so they have
[00:10:26] safety systems and alternative cooling methods, so simply ways
[00:10:29] to pump water so that they can safely
[00:10:33] be in this state for a very long time, not producing
[00:10:36] electricity, what are actually the concrete
[00:10:40] dangers if such measures are not taken is, for example, that
[00:10:43] the water pumps are exposed to
[00:10:47] remaining without Danube water, in that case,
[00:10:50] the power plants would have to go into overhaul, problems would
[00:10:54] arise. So, a special safety
[00:10:57] procedure would have to be used, that would cost
[00:11:00] millions and would prevent them from quickly returning
[00:11:04] to the grid, so everything has been done here to actually
[00:11:07] minimize the period of reactors returning to the grid, because
[00:11:11] look, in Hungary you have a situation where, we are talking about
[00:11:14] water level, that these four reactors that are currently
[00:11:18] were built with
[00:11:21] the idea of what a hundred-year minimum
[00:11:25] water level is, so in 100 years what was the lowest
[00:11:28] water level? Well, according to that, the pipes
[00:11:31] of those water pumps that extract Danube water into some special channels
[00:11:35] for cooling were lowered to a certain height so that they are
[00:11:38] below that minimum hundred-year limit,
[00:11:42] it turned out that the Danube is now 1.3
[00:11:45] meters below that minimum hundred-year limit, it's that
[00:11:49] low, so although in history, to be precise, about
[00:11:52] ten years ago it happened that... "it was once a little lower
[00:11:56] than that limit, but the point is that if this was not taken
[00:11:59] care of, these instruments, this
[00:12:03] equipment would be damaged due to such a low water
[00:12:07] level, which could then perhaps introduce some kind of
[00:12:10] hazard, so at this moment there is no nuclear
[00:12:13] hazard, but there is no electricity, right? Now that we're already
[00:12:17] at, before we talk about what Serbia is doing, let's just address this
[00:12:21] again, it has been said for quite some time in Serbia."
[00:12:25] in some European countries that
[00:12:28] nuclear energy could
[00:12:32] compensate for what will be lacking
[00:12:36] in fossil fuels or, I don't know, if coal
[00:12:39] runs out and so on, does this still show that not even
[00:12:43] nuclear energy is
[00:12:46] resistant to
[00:12:49] be a solution? Well, in my personal opinion,
[00:12:52] nothing in the world is
[00:12:56] resistant to climate change, so we are,
[00:12:59] although it's ungrateful to say, not you, me, or the viewers, so simply
[00:13:03] this is something that has been done for generations, so since industrial development, starting from
[00:13:07] the richest countries and coming towards us, we
[00:13:11] have behaved very arrogantly towards resources on Earth
[00:13:13] until we created a problem that
[00:13:17] now gradually, from generation to generation, is becoming more serious
[00:13:21] for all possible sectors, so among other things, for
[00:13:23] energy, whether it's about, let's
[00:13:27] say, the one that uses fossil fuels, because we see, for example,
[00:13:30] oil barges cannot sail, you have these situations up
[00:13:34] to nuclear power plants, however, here it is about engineering problems,
[00:13:38] about whether you will lower the pipe for extracting water
[00:13:41] from the Danube a little lower or higher, when
[00:13:45] we talk about other energy sources, they, above all,
[00:13:49] those that contribute to the very process
[00:13:52] of climate change, this is not an engineering question, but primarily
[00:13:56] a political question whether we will continue on this path or
[00:14:00] recognize in such events, such overly hot
[00:14:04] summers, prolonged heatwaves, recognize
[00:14:07] actually a kind of urgency, and when it is said this will be one of the warmest
[00:14:11] years, we are, yes, that is a journalistic phrase, but we
[00:14:14] have long passed the situation where we can even say one of the top, every
[00:14:18] year is the warmest of all those that
[00:14:21] preceded it, and the concrete effects now
[00:14:25] we see precisely in such an event, for example, it is very interesting how
[00:14:28] it is explained why such a low
[00:14:32] water level occurred then these reasons are divided, so
[00:14:36] you have, well, one thing is due to too long, too high
[00:14:40] temperatures, there is a lot of water evaporation, so since the atmosphere
[00:14:43] which is hot can absorb much more heat, it remains
[00:14:47] trapped in the atmosphere, that's one reason, the other reasons are
[00:14:50] related to the fact that the
[00:14:54] temperature during winter is such that
[00:14:57] there is snow for a shorter period
[00:15:00] of winter, the coverage is smaller, research even shows that
[00:15:03] Europe loses about one to two percent of its snow
[00:15:07] cover every year, snow is
[00:15:10] actually a reservoir, so that watershed in the Alps that
[00:15:14] provides water to all these rivers of ours, including
[00:15:18] the Danube, so when there is less snow in the Alps, then the water level on
[00:15:21] the Danube during July and August is lower.
[00:15:25] It turns out that 1% is perhaps small, but year after
[00:15:29] year, decade after decade, as decades pass, we have
[00:15:32] come to have such terrible
[00:15:35] episodes in that sense. "That kind of pressure will lead all
[00:15:39] European countries to actually seek
[00:15:42] energy sources that are not based on fossil
[00:15:46] fuels, I even think that this will become more
[00:15:50] important at some point in the 21st century when the consequences become
[00:15:53] more expensive, so we can still avoid their
[00:15:57] direct financial damages which will become more
[00:16:00] dramatic, at some point it will become
[00:16:03] a first-class political issue and for us among others, those who do not..."
[00:16:07] have an answer to that question will actually be in the biggest problem, we
[00:16:11] are very skilled at always finding ourselves to be the ones in the biggest
[00:16:14] problem, and what do you think of the way
[00:16:17] Serbia currently treats this
[00:16:20] ecological, energy crisis, just now we
[00:16:24] quoted Minister Dubravka Handanović who says every
[00:16:28] drop on the Danube is used for electricity
[00:16:31] production, how do I feel about how Serbia behaves
[00:16:34] towards energy and how before, well, I think
[00:16:38] I'd rather not have to think about it or look at it in any
[00:16:42] way, which citizens probably also feel, like why did this country happen
[00:16:46] to me, people probably think that, but it's our country, we have to care and
[00:16:50] think and see what the government, which is incompetent and
[00:16:53] in some way hasty and
[00:16:56] only thinks about some other of its
[00:16:59] political goals, does wrong in various
[00:17:03] sectors, including energy, the biggest
[00:17:06] problem of our current energy sector is complete
[00:17:09] non-transparency, so we have very little
[00:17:12] information about what will be done, for example, when
[00:17:16] we talk about nuclear energy, a lot of contradictory
[00:17:19] data and very little will
[00:17:23] to explain what the plan actually is, what is actually being done, whether
[00:17:27] our agreement with the French is still active,
[00:17:30] whether we will really consider after the lifting of the moratorium on the construction
[00:17:34] of nuclear power plants, the construction of that reactor in
[00:17:38] the future, where is the campaign that was so
[00:17:41] talked about, well, I wrote, many attacked, so how
[00:17:45] easy it is to do, where is that story
[00:17:47] about
[00:17:49] the initiative to have new staff in this area,
[00:17:53] which we supposedly can do in a few months, it turns out that
[00:17:56] nothing is happening in that regard, in some way
[00:18:00] it may be that something is happening, but the first problem we have
[00:18:04] in this area is a problem that we should not even have with
[00:18:07] nuclear energy, it is non-transparency, that citizens do not
[00:18:11] know what is happening there, after all, even for those who
[00:18:15] have a positive attitude or even some economic
[00:18:19] gain for such projects to come to life
[00:18:23] or are in a position of decision-makers and want to do it, that
[00:18:26] non-transparency will eventually lead to the population becoming
[00:18:30] very antagonized towards
[00:18:34] it because they will lose all possible trust they otherwise have in the government. So
[00:18:37] in that sense, we can talk about concrete
[00:18:41] announcements, but if I look at the last two and a half years in the nuclear
[00:18:45] sector, practically none of them can be taken entirely
[00:18:48] seriously, and currently the attitude towards this
[00:18:51] current
[00:18:53] crisis,
[00:18:56] in this crisis we have a crisis staff that, well,
[00:19:00] issues crisis statements, we
[00:19:05] the level of what we saw in Romania, where a rock
[00:19:09] is mined, and the army can't do it in one day, it has to do it twice, and
[00:19:12] so on, you can't fix a system like the basin of a river
[00:19:16] like the Danube with a crisis staff, and you
[00:19:20] can't, regardless of whether you are the European
[00:19:23] Union, not just the Republic of Serbia, so that's a problem
[00:19:27] that has been created
[00:19:29] over decades, which is actually solved
[00:19:33] over decades and centuries, so when I'm actually talking about the Danube-Tisza-
[00:19:36] Danube
[00:19:46] is very clear, many of the problems are
[00:19:49] not at all within the scope of the Republic of Serbia, so some of these, for
[00:19:53] starters, snow is in the Alps, we cannot greatly influence
[00:19:57] what the water levels will ultimately be, what
[00:20:00] we can do is to
[00:20:03] improve and maintain a system that has been built for more than
[00:20:07] 100 years in our territory, above all I mean the Danube-Tisza-Danube,
[00:20:11] to actually take
[00:20:13] care of that, right, about the capacity, such
[00:20:17] as our hydropower plant at Đerdap, in some
[00:20:21] ways it's a very big question to open a debate
[00:20:24] very openly about the reversible
[00:20:27] power plant Đerdap 3, which is actually simultaneously
[00:20:31] one of the solutions related to
[00:20:35] our energy situation. I
[00:20:38] will remind viewers that reversible power plants
[00:20:41] can practically
[00:20:44] very simply, technically, I mean a simple concept, that is, a very
[00:20:48] sophisticated machine but a simple concept, that
[00:20:51] they can somehow store energy when it's available, and
[00:20:55] consume it when it's not, by simply pumping
[00:20:58] water when there's enough, you can create a kind of
[00:21:02] accumulation that will then store energy. Now with this great
[00:21:06] tension which unfortunately even
[00:21:10] here goes in the wrong direction with the destruction of forests, I mean
[00:21:13] the tension to build wind farms, to open
[00:21:16] renewable sources, but corruption here turns it into
[00:21:20] a "circus, unfortunately a tragedy, so with
[00:21:23] the construction of all these sustainable capacities,
[00:21:27] we have energy that is generated when it's available,
[00:21:31] not when we need it, and that's why things like Gerlab 3
[00:21:35] are of enormous importance, precisely for situations like this, so that when
[00:21:38] we reach a state where there is not enough energy because
[00:21:42] nuclear power plants are working, we will have to shut down
[00:21:45] thermal power plants or whatever happens, that then we can
[00:21:48] draw at least part of the consumption from such
[00:21:52] reversible sources, that is one of the things, but I think the
[00:21:56] biggest question for us is how we will
[00:21:59] actually address what is the biggest problem, the elephant in
[00:22:02] the room, those are thermal power plants,
[00:22:05] what will we do with them, do we have an idea
[00:22:08] of how we will replace them by the middle of the century, will
[00:22:12] we shut them down, which we will have to, then
[00:22:15] the topic of nuclear capacities naturally opens up, thank you
[00:22:19] very much for this conversation and analysis from physicist and science journalist
[00:22:23] Slobodan Bubnjović, we are going for a short break, you stay with
[00:22:26] us.
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[00:28:46] at the end of July, when it was indicated that
[00:28:50] Water Management would send a request to cities and municipalities
[00:28:53] to urgently submit data on the largest
[00:28:56] ragweed hotspots and take measures for its destruction,
[00:29:00] the relevant minister Dragan Glamočić said that ragweed is not
[00:29:03] just a weed in neglected areas, but a serious
[00:29:07] agricultural, communal and public health problem. On
[00:29:10] one such location is our reporter Veljko
[00:29:13] Pajović. Veljko, Veljko, has anything been
[00:29:17] done at the place where you are located to curb
[00:29:20] ragweed?
[00:29:25] God forbid anything was done, it wouldn't look
[00:29:28] like this. I purposely hid a little here in
[00:29:31] these bushes. Honestly, everything is weeds, and as one of
[00:29:35] the local residents said, feel free to tell
[00:29:38] the citizens that this is a botanical garden of
[00:29:41] weeds. I am not sufficiently knowledgeable to determine what kind
[00:29:45] of plants we are talking about,
[00:29:48] that is, weeds, but there is certainly ragweed here, or perhaps
[00:29:52] the better question is what all is not here,
[00:29:55] how I will feel after some time when we finish the story and whether
[00:29:59] I will start sneezing, that is now a different question. In the
[00:30:03] end, in our country, everyone sooner or later
[00:30:06] sneezes, usually the one who is not
[00:30:09] responsible for anything. With us is Rodoljub Todorović from
[00:30:20] step into this weed, this botanical garden,
[00:30:24] so we don't, let's say, botanical garden of weeds, so we don't
[00:30:27] give the wrong association for the real botanical
[00:30:31] garden in the city center. Yes, Rodoljube, we heard
[00:30:34] in the announcement the call from the ministry
[00:30:38] somewhere at the end of July to map, that is, mark
[00:30:42] points like this one, you are a councilor
[00:30:45] in the assembly of the city municipality of Novi
[00:30:48] Beograd, have you dealt with this
[00:30:52] topic?
[00:30:54] Of course, I must say that what the
[00:30:57] ministry did, it was late.