Nuclear Energy in Serbia: Between Legislative Reforms and Regional Integration

Nuclear Energy as Strategic Connectivity

Nuclear energy is no longer simply a matter of energy policy, and it has become a tool of international positioning for nations. In recent years, Serbia’s renewed interest in nuclear power is framed by the broader quest for energy security and geopolitical relevance. Small states like Serbia remain relevant by pursuing “strategic connectivity”, integrating with larger networks and alliances to amplify their influence. Faced with regional energy challenges and volatile gas supplies, Serbian leaders see nuclear development as a means to anchor the country within European energy systems and transatlantic partnerships. The central thesis is that by undertaking legislative reforms and regional cooperation in nuclear energy, Serbia can strengthen ties with Western allies, elevate its global standing, and demand a high level of domestic expertise. In other words, nuclear energy should become a cornerstone of Serbia’s new strategic partnerships with neighbouring countries and Western partners, enhancing its role as a connected and reliable actor in Southeast Europe.

Legal and Institutional Framework

Serbia has recently overhauled its legal framework to pave the way for nuclear energy development. In November 2024, the National Assembly passed landmark amendments to the Energy Act, lifting a 35-year moratorium on building nuclear power plants that had been in place since 1989 (after Chernobyl). This historic reform not only repeals the ban but also introduces robust regulatory measures to ensure any future nuclear program meets the highest standards of safety and international best practice. Key provisions of the updated legislation include:

• Nuclear Safety and EU Alignment: Establishment of a comprehensive regulatory framework covering reactor safety, environmental protection, and international safeguards. Serbia’s legislation is now partially aligned with the Euratom acquis on nuclear safety and radiation protection, signaling intent to harmonize with European Union norms. The independent Directorate for Radiation and Nuclear Safety (SRBATOM) will be strengthened to meet future oversight obligations. All planning stages are to follow the methodology prescribed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), underscoring Serbia’s commitment to global safety standards.

  
  

• Institutional Capacity Building: The government will create a dedicated Directorate for Nuclear Energy Development, and is preparing a “Peaceful Nuclear Energy Development Program” in cooperation with the IAEA and European partners. This ensures that international safeguards and expert guidance are embedded from the start. The law’s implementation roadmap calls for developing human resources and regulatory institutions in line with IAEA guidelines, reflecting Serbia’s willingness to cooperate transparently with Euro-Atlantic institutions.

  
  

• Exploration of SMR Technology: The reforms explicitly position small modular reactors (SMRs) as the preferred nuclear option for Serbia’s needs. The country aims to explore deploying about 1,200 MW of SMR capacity as part of its strategic energy mix. Ongoing technical studies and feasibility assessments are being conducted with international partners, including France’s EDF, to evaluate advanced nuclear technologies. This international collaboration on studies signifies Serbia’s openness to Western technology and know-how in its nuclear ambitions.

  
  

• Energy Market Integration: In tandem with nuclear provisions, the amendments also facilitate the integration of Serbia’s electricity market with neighboring countries. By modernizing grid rules and enabling cross-border trade, Serbia is aligning itself with regional energy networks. This legal groundwork for cross-border connectivity complements the nuclear initiative, as any future reactor could feed into a regional power pool under EU standards of operation.

Crucially, these legislative reforms send a clear signal of Serbia’s intent to harmonize with Euro-Atlantic partners. By updating laws to meet EU safety norms and partnering with the IAEA on program development, Belgrade is demonstrating that its nuclear aspirations will be pursued responsibly and in lockstep with Western regulatory frameworks. “History was written today,” Serbia’s energy minister remarked after the law passed, framing it as a pivotal step for a modern, sustainable energy sector. In sum, the new legal and institutional framework not only unlocks nuclear energy as an option but also embeds Serbia in a cooperative international regime from the outset.

Regional and International Integration

Serbia’s nuclear plans are taking shape in a regional context where several neighbors are already investing in nuclear technology. By the end of this decade, Romania and Bulgaria are expected to have new small modular reactor (SMR) projects operational, creating a nuclear revival in Southeast Europe. At a high-level Pupin forum in Washington, DC, in October 2025, US energy diplomat Geoffrey Pyatt emphasized that planned nuclear projects in Bulgaria and Romania could, in the coming years, provide Serbia with stable and affordable electricity, but only if Serbia stays engaged. As these capacities grow and regional grids interconnect, energy prices would fall and dependence on Russian gas could become “a thing of the past,” Pyatt noted. The message is clear: Serbia should not be left behind while its neighbors go nuclear. Instead, this trend is a golden opportunity for regional integration. By linking into new nuclear generation around it, Serbia can bolster its energy security and cement ties with EU member states in the region.

Indeed, Serbia is already exploring cooperative avenues with neighboring countries’ nuclear programs. President Aleksandar Vučić has formally requested Hungary’s government to consider allowing Serbia a stake of up to 5–10% in the Paks II nuclear power plant expansion. Hungary’s Paks NPP (which is doubling capacity with new reactors) could send a share of its electricity south to Serbia in the future. This co-investment strategy would give Serbia access to nuclear power without yet building a reactor on its own soil, effectively integrating Serbia into the regional nuclear network. Hungarian officials have agreed to review Serbia’s proposal, marking a potential breakthrough in cross-border energy collaboration. Such a partnership would not only diversify Serbia’s energy supply but also bind it closer to an EU country through decades-long cooperation in operating and sharing a critical facility.

Serbia’s regional integration efforts extend to Romania and Bulgaria as well. Both Romania and Bulgaria are expanding their nuclear capacity (Romania with plans for the first SMR in Europe by 2028, and Bulgaria potentially adding new units at Kozloduy) as part of the EU’s drive for carbon-neutral energy. Serbian officials have indicated interest in joint projects or power purchase agreements that tie into these developments. At the Nuclear Energy Summit in Brussels (March 2024), Serbia’s Minister of Energy noted that 26% of EU electricity is produced by nuclear plants, underscoring nuclear’s key role in meeting climate neutrality goals by 2050. She cited examples of Poland and Romania ramping up nuclear plans, implying that Serbia envisages itself joining this regional trend.

Serbia is shaping its nuclear plans by anchoring them in credible international partnerships, with the IAEA at the center. By endorsing the Atoms4NetZero initiative in Brussels and working with the Agency on capacity-building, Serbia is signaling that its entire nuclear program will be built to global standards from the outset. The government is drafting its new nuclear development strategy “in partnership with the IAEA and European institutions,” which frames the project as transparent, rules-based, and aligned with Western regulatory practice.

Western partners have already begun to move. France took an early lead, with EDF and Egis contracted by Serbia’s Ministry of Energy in October 2023 to conduct the first major technical study on introducing nuclear power. The United States, meanwhile, has placed Serbia’s energy diversification, LNG, and nuclear, including, within the context of regional stability. US officials have encouraged Serbia’s integration into “regional LNG and nuclear networks,” opening the door to future cooperation on nuclear safety, technology transfer, and fuel-supply chains.

In summary, Serbia’s place in regional and international nuclear networks is rapidly evolving. Through potential joint ventures like the Paks II stake and alignment with neighbors’ SMR deployments, Serbia is weaving itself into a Balkan nuclear renaissance. This regional integration, coupled with engagement of global institutions (IAEA) and Western partners, not only addresses Serbia’s energy needs but also reinforces its strategic orientation towards the Euro-Atlantic sphere. Nuclear energy development is thus doubling as diplomacy: knitting Serbia into regional energy security arrangements and signaling that its future lies in cooperation with Western allies and standards.

Strategic Partnerships with Western Allies

Belgrade’s pursuit of nuclear energy is also a deliberate vector for deeper cooperation with the United States and the European Union. Western partners view Serbia’s energy shift as a litmus test of its alignment with the values of reliability, transparency, and innovation in critical infrastructure. By investing in nuclear technology alongside the West, Serbia can demonstrate its credibility as a pragmatic and future-oriented ally in addressing common challenges like energy security and climate change. This strategic framing has not been lost on policymakers: at the 2025 Pupin Forum, panelists agreed that Serbia’s integration into Western-led energy corridors, including advanced nuclear projects, will solidify its role as a trusted partner in the transatlantic alliance.

Concrete opportunities for partnership are emerging across several domains:

• Joint Research and Innovation: Nuclear energy development opens the door for collaborative research programs between Serbian institutions and Western counterparts. Areas such as reactor safety, small modular reactor design, and nuclear materials science could see joint initiatives. Serbia’s academic community, with its strong engineering and physics tradition, can be included in EU research frameworks (like Horizon Europe) or US-sponsored innovation challenges related to advanced reactors. Such cooperation would not only transfer technology to Serbia but also enhance Western Balkan contributions to global nuclear innovation.

  
  

• Training and Education Programs: The US and EU countries can assist Serbia in training the next generation of nuclear engineers, regulators, and technicians. This might include scholarships for Serbian students to study nuclear engineering at Western universities, internships at US national laboratories or French nuclear facilities, and IAEA-sponsored courses on nuclear law and safety. For example, the IAEA has already organized training on nuclear law for Serbian and regional experts. American experts have noted that rebuilding Serbia’s nuclear expertise is a significant opportunity for US companies to provide training and education services. Western allies investing in human capital development will ensure Serbia’s nuclear program operates at the highest standards and is rooted in a pro-Western professional culture.

  
  

• Infrastructure Investment and Technology Transfer: As Serbia moves from studies to actual projects, Western firms are poised to play a key role. France’s EDF is already involved in feasibility studies, and US, British, and Japanese companies have also been in talks. By partnering with proven industry leaders (e.g., EDF, Westinghouse, Rolls-Royce SMR, or even new US SMR startups), Serbia can attract foreign direct investment into its energy sector. Serbia and France are already deepening their cooperation on nuclear energy, with Serbia committing €30 million for preliminary studies and recognising that nuclear power, as highlighted in talks between Aleksandar Vučić and Emmanuel Macron. This could mean the beginning of future Western-backed financing for reactor construction, supply of nuclear fuel under international safeguards, and joint ventures in managing nuclear waste. Such partnerships go beyond one-time projects; given a reactor’s 60+ year lifespan and decommissioning process, they amount to 100-year relationships between countries. If Serbia opts for Western reactor technology, it essentially ties its energy future to those Western suppliers for decades, a strategic interdependency that solidifies alliance bonds.

Human Capital and Expertise

Serbia understands that launching a nuclear program is not just an infrastructure project, but a long-term investment in people. That is why human capital has become a core pillar of its nuclear strategy. In July 2024, the government gathered the country’s scientific elite, 20 faculties, institutes, and energy companies, to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Mining and Energy. Bringing together the Vinča Institute and Serbia’s top physics, engineering, and medical schools signals a deliberate choice: building a domestic knowledge base instead of depending on foreign consultants.

Education and training sit at the center of this push. The draft development plan prioritizes rebuilding nuclear engineering programs, modernizing curricula, and offering scholarships to reverse decades of brain drain created by the old moratorium. The goal is straightforward. It is to create opportunities at home so young Serbian scientists don’t feel forced abroad.

The challenge, however, is significant. A functioning nuclear program requires hundreds of specialists, reactor engineers, radiation experts, inspectors, safety analysts, and waste-management professionals. To keep this talent at home, Serbia will need competitive salaries, stable career paths, and serious research funding, including through the new Nuclear Energy Directorate.

Serbia was, of course, not the only country that had a significant task of acquiring nuclear energy, and thus, here are some historic examples of countries that are similar size to Serbia, on how they managed to build nuclear infrastructure and human capital to use it effectively.

Hungary

Hungary’s nuclear story started under the Soviet umbrella, but it was far from just plug-and-play. The Paks Nuclear Power Plant was built between 1982 and 1987, under a 1966 bilateral agreement with the USSR. But Hungary had already laid the groundwork: the first training programs kicked off in the 1950s, and by the early ‘80s, the country had its own nuclear research reactor and academic pipeline. A great majority of operating staff at Paks were Hungarian from the start, many trained in Novovoronezh and other Soviet centers. Local universities (like the Budapest University of Technology) also had nuclear tracks. On the other hand, post-1990s Hungary leaned hard into Western support: Westinghouse and others helped modernize safety systems, and Hungary joined EURATOM in 2004. Today, the plant is run entirely by Hungarian personnel through MVM, and while Rosatom is lined up to build two new blocks, the local know-how is firmly in place.

Slovenia

Slovenia’s Krško plant (shared with Croatia) is unique in the region; it’s a full-Westinghouse PWR, not Soviet. Construction began in 1975, and the plant went commercial in 1983. Although Westinghouse provided the core technology and supervision, a significant portion of the physical construction and systems integration was done by Yugoslav companies. Local engineering institutes like Jožef Stefan in Ljubljana and Vinča in Belgrade were included in the training initiatives, while operators also trained directly with the vendor in the US and on simulators. Slovenia has maintained strong relationships with Western suppliers ever since, including regular upgrades and safety audits by US and EU bodies. Today, the crew is fully local, and they invest around 9% of employee time annually into continuous nuclear training.

Slovakia

Slovakia inherited its nuclear program from Czechoslovakia; the first power reactor, Bohunice A1, had issues and was shut down in 1977. That’s when the shift to Soviet VVER-440s began in earnest. Bohunice V1 and V2 came online from 1978 to 1985, with core systems from the USSR. But by the 1980s, Slovakia had its own full training ecosystem, including the VUJE training center in Trnava. After independence in the ‘90s, Slovakia brought in Western partners: Siemens, Framatome, and the EU helped retrofit safety systems, and the EBRD funded safety upgrades. Today, Slovakia runs four active VVER units, producing over 50% of its electricity, with operations fully in domestic hands. The country is also diversifying its fuel supply. Westinghouse began deliveries in 2023.

Belgium

Belgium’s nuclear sector has always been Western-built and highly localized. The country started early; BR-3, a US-built test PWR reactor, went live in 1962 and served as Belgium’s operator school. The first full-scale commercial reactors (Doel 1-2 and Tihange 1) came online in the mid-1970s, using Westinghouse and Framatome tech, but up to 80% of the engineering and systems integration was handled by Belgian firms. The country’s national training system (BNEN) and SCK•CEN institute have pumped out nuclear engineers for decades.

Security and Risk Management

Pursuing nuclear energy offers Serbia a major strategic opportunity, but it also demands absolute responsibility. Every stage of the exploratory process has been designed in line with IAEA guidelines, ensuring that global safety standards are integrated directly into Serbia’s plan. For a first-time nuclear state, this reliance on IAEA expertise is essential: it minimizes early-stage risks, strengthens safety culture, and anchors Serbia’s nuclear ambitions in the same operational norms used across advanced nuclear countries.

A credible regulatory system is the backbone of any safe nuclear program. Serbia’s regulator, SRBATOM, will require more autonomy, more people, and significantly more technical capacity to handle the oversight of future reactors. The EU’s 2024 progress report already flagged that Serbia’s framework is only partly aligned with Euratom standards, underscoring the need for more inspectors, updated legislation that covers full-scale nuclear installations, and closer integration with international conventions on safety, waste, and emergency response.

Nuclear waste and spent fuel management will pose another major test. Even SMRs generate long-lived radioactive material, and Serbia will need a robust plan, likely a combination of domestic interim storage under IAEA safeguards and international cooperation for long-term disposal. Public communication will matter as much as the technical solution. Given the lingering psychological impact of Chernobyl and the legacy of the 1989 moratorium, public trust depends on open dialogue, clear explanations of modern reactor safety, and visible environmental safeguards.

Finally, Serbia must navigate the geopolitical risks of choosing a nuclear vendor. A reactor relationship effectively lasts a century, which makes vendor selection a strategic decision, not a procurement choice. Western technology aligns with Serbia’s broader Euro-Atlantic ambitions and comes with stricter safety and non-proliferation rules—but choosing Western partners could complicate relations with Russia or China, both active nuclear exporters. Serbia will need to balance these pressures by emphasizing that its decisions are driven by safety, technology, and long-term reliability, while remaining open to peaceful cooperation with all partners.

While Russia and China do represent significant vendors for nuclear technology, choosing them would pose a significant geopolitical risk, given the fact that Serbia is diversifying its energy mix because of its overdependence on Russia in the first place. On the other hand, while China comes as a flexible partner who does not ask questions, issues arise for the potential geopolitical price, with little spillover and a positive effect on the Serbian state.

With that in mind, here are some reliable vendors for this type of technology:

• France (EDF and Egis): France offers advanced Generation III+ reactors and modular small-reactor technology. Serbia has already contracted EDF and Egis to perform a preliminary technical study for introducing nuclear energy.

  
  

• United States (Westinghouse, Bechtel, and allied firms): The US offers reactors such as the AP1000 and extensive experience in construction, regulation, and fuel supply. Partnering with the US aligns Serbia closely with Euro-Atlantic standards and non-proliferation norms.

  
  

• South Korea (KHNP / KEPCO): Korea’s KHNP has already signed a memorandum of understanding with Serbia on nuclear energy and hydrogen cooperation, including training and technology exchange.

Serbia’s International Positioning

Serbia’s turn toward nuclear energy is not just an energy-sector decision – it is a strategic repositioning. As Belgrade diversifies away from Russian gas and builds a more resilient energy mix, it is simultaneously reducing a major lever of Russian influence. A nuclear plant or a network of SMRs would give Serbia dependable baseload power and sharply reduce the country’s vulnerability to gas disruptions. In effect, energy diversification becomes geopolitical diversification: Serbia gains room to maneuver and aligns itself more closely with European efforts to limit Moscow’s leverage in the region.

Choosing Western partners for nuclear development also strengthens Serbia’s standing as a credible, pragmatic actor. For years, Serbia has tried to balance between East and West. But its moves toward Western energy architectures, from cooperation with EDF to growing engagement with US and UK companies, send a clear signal. Western officials increasingly describe Serbia as a contributor to regional security, not a fence-sitter. Nuclear projects, by their nature, are high-tech and high-visibility, reinforcing this message: Serbia is capable, modern, and ready to shoulder responsibility in a sensitive strategic sector. That also matters for EU accession: by adopting Western safety and non-proliferation norms early, Serbia strengthens its credibility in chapters related to energy, environment, and regulatory alignment.

At the same time, Serbia still signals openness to engage broadly, including with non-Western nuclear players, allowing it to maintain diplomatic flexibility. But the trajectory of the past year is clear: the operational, regulatory, and geopolitical incentives all favor Western partnerships. This tilt can be leveraged in other domains too, from economic support to political dialogue with Brussels and Washington.

Ultimately, Serbia’s nuclear push fits into a larger story of national transformation. A move into advanced, low-carbon energy places Serbia among countries preparing for the 21st-century economy, rather than clinging to aging coal plants and old geopolitical habits. It complements Serbia’s ambitions around Expo 2027, digital innovation, and regional leadership. As framed at the Pupin Forum, Serbia’s future rests on “openness, confidence, and partnership.”