Core benefits, peripheral risks: Multinational energy justice of nuclear waste siting on the Croatia–Bosnia and Herzegovina border

As nuclear energy experiences a renaissance to meet energy security goals, nuclear waste sitings raise justice questions. Existing energy justice scholarship has predominantly examined such injustices within single states, leaving multinational dynamics underexplored, particularly when states possess unequal institutional and regulatory power. This study examines how energy justice is produced and sustained through the planned siting of a low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste repository at Trgovska Gora in Croatia, a European Union member state, near the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina, a European Union candidate state. Using the multinational energy justice framework, the study integrates distributional, procedural, and recognition justice with a core-periphery account of asymmetric power relations. Employing a qualitative single-case design and document analysis spanning more than two decades, it identifies three interlocking injustices. Distributional injustice arises from a stark misalignment – long-term radiological and socio-economic risks are concentrated in Bosnia and Herzegovina's border communities, while Croatia retains the benefits of nuclear electricity and waste compliance. Procedural injustice is produced through Croatia's strategic regulatory ambiguity and minimalist compliance with the Espoo and Aarhus conventions, formally acknowledging Bosnia and Herzegovina's concerns while denying its meaningful influence over the decision-making process. Recognition injustice emerges in the structural devaluation of Bosnian institutions and border publics as legitimate stakeholders. Bosnia and Herzegovina's response is further constrained by European Union accession-conditioned caution and internal constitutional fragmentation. The study specifies how core-periphery dynamics link the three tenets – a core state's regulatory control generates epistemic exclusion for the peripheral state, foreclosing recognition claims.