Serbia wants to enter the atomic age with SMRs
Serbia is interested in acquiring at least four small modular reactors (SMRs) to increase its energy capacities in the future, President Aleksandar Vucic said.
SMRs are advanced nuclear reactors that have a capacity of up to 300 MW, which is about a third of the generating capacity of traditional nuclear reactors. SMRs can be prefabricated and shipped to site.
“We are very interested in getting at least four SMRs that can replace 1,200 MW, but we don't know how to finance them because they cost […] up to 8.0 billion euros ($8.7 billion),” Vucic said at the first Energy Summit. 'Nuclear Energy, organized by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Belgium in Brussels on 20-21 March. A video of his speech was uploaded to the website of the Tanjug news agency.
Serbia currently does not possess nuclear plants and, according to IAEA reports, it did not even intend to build any, precisely due to the high cost of this type of plant, as well as historical events that are not too distant. Now it seems that the government, in the wake of enthusiasm for nuclear energy, has changed its mind.
“In any case, we will be ready to participate significantly [in the financing], but we need to get some kind of support from the leading states of the European Union,” Vucic said.
He stressed that, in addition to the funding gap, Serbia faces a lack of expertise in the use of nuclear energy. So his speech seems, more than anything, an appeal to the international community and the EU to open their wallets and finance, at least partially.
Vucic also underlined the need to change public perception in Serbia to support nuclear energy and called for changes to the country's legislative framework to facilitate the development of these projects.
Furthermore, it was not specified whether the investment will be in SMRs with traditional technology or in the most advanced AMRs , i.e. with liquid metal or thorium cooling systems. It seems more like it's a general announcement, also because no time frame was given nor any possible location was indicated.
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The article Serbia wants to enter the atomic age with SMRs comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/la-serbia-vuole-entrare-nellera-atomica-con-gli-smr/ on Sat, 23 Mar 2024 09:00:27 +0000.