March 22 (SeeNews) - Serbia is interested in getting at least four small modular reactors (SMRs) in order to boost 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 power reactors. SMRs can be prefabricated and shipped to the site.
"We are very much interested in getting at least four SMRs that can replace 1,200 MW but we don't know how to finance it because it costs [...] up to 8.0 billion euro ($8.7 billion)," Vucic told the first Nuclear Energy Summit, organised by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Belgium in Brussels on March 20-21. A video with his speech was uploaded on the website of news agency Tanjug.
"Anyway, we'll be ready to participate significantly [in the financing] but we need to get some sort of support from the leading states of the European Union," Vucic said.
He pointed out that, aside from the financing shortfall, Serbia faces a lack of expertise in the use of nuclear energy.
Vucic also emphasized the necessity of shifting public perception in Serbia to support nuclear energy and advocated for adjustments to the country's legislative framework to make the development of such projects easier.
($ = 0.917 euro)