Serbia Mulls Scrapping Ban on Nuclear Power Production
Aleksandar Vucic during the speech at the Nuclear Energy Summit in Brussels, Belgium, March 21 2024. Photo: Instagram/@buducnostsrbijeav
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said his country will change decades-old legislation banning the building of nuclear power plants in Serbia.
In his speech to the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, at its first nuclear energy summit in Brussels on Thursday, Vucic said Serbia does not have much to offer when it comes to increasing production of nuclear power but is willing to participate in future projects.
Vucic, however, pointed out that Serbia has “three problems”, one of which is a lack of know-how on the use of nuclear energy and the second is money.
“And number three … is we will always need to get a change of mindset in our people, which is not easy, but we are ready to do it, which means we will not only adjust but will have to change the overall legislative framework, and we will do it,” Vucic said.
Communist Yugoslavia banned construction of nuclear power plants in 1989 after the Chernobyl catastrophe, and following the break-up of Yugoslavia Serbia continued this policy.
Leaders at the summit adopted a Declaration on Nuclear Energy. Among other things they pledged to “work to fully unlock the potential of nuclear energy by taking measures such as enabling conditions to support and competitively finance the lifetime extension of existing nuclear reactors, the construction of new nuclear power plants and the early deployment of advanced reactors, including small modular reactors worldwide while maintaining the highest levels of safety and security”.
Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said that, “over the years we have invested more than 350 million euros in strengthening nuclear security and essential prerequisites for extending” the nuclear power plant at Krsko’s lifespan, in Slovenia, jointly owned by two countries.
“Regarding nuclear energy for the future beyond 2050, we are very much interested in the development of small modular reactors. This is why we welcomed the initiative to launch the European industrial Alliance on small modular reactors. It is important for this technology [that it is] led by European industry,” Plenkovic said.
Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic (first row, first left), Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic (first row, third left) and other participants in the Nuclear Energy Summit in front of the Atomium in Brussels, 21 March 2024. Photo: EPA-EFE/OLIVIER HOSLET
Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan announced that, “once it is fully operational”, the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant will meet 10 per cent of its electricity demand. “Our objective is to raise this level by building additional conventional plants as well as small modular reactors,” Fidan said.
Officials from Romania and Bulgaria also spoke at the summit.
The Brussels summit is not the first time Vucic has said he is in favour of Serbia’s participation in production of nuclear energy.
On a TV show during the election campaign in 2022 he said: “Everyone around us lives thanks to nuclear plants … everyone [every country] has enough electricity thanks to nuclear plants; only we were convinced to be the stupidest in Europe and to sign a moratorium on nuclear plants”.
“Now there are these small nuclear modular power plants that are phenomenal but even that takes you four, five, six years to build”, Vucic told Pink television.
During the energy crisis in 2021 Vucic said Serbia was interested in cooperation with the Hungarian nuclear power plant at Paks. “I already spoke with [Hungarian Prime Minister] Viktor Orbán about the construction of their nuclear plant in Paks, where I once again express our desire to be minority co-owners of that nuclear power plant, and we are ready to give money for it…”, Vucic told the media.
