Dalibor Arbutina, director of PE Nuclear facilities of Serbia: In the next five years, we can lay the foundations of nuclear power in Serbia

Dalibor Arbutina has been running the Public Enterprise Nuclear Facilities of Serbia for more than ten years. For the next five years, he believes, it is crucial to establish a legal framework, strengthen the regulatory body and develop study programs that will ensure the continuous development of staff.

Arbutina points out that the future of nuclear energy in Serbia depends on the strategic decisions of the state, investment in education and retention of experts.

- The program for the introduction of nuclear energy is not only based on knowledge of reactor technology, but is a synergy of several technical areas on which the safety of nuclear facilities depends. In relation to classic thermal power plants, for whose work we have both experts and experience, nuclear power plants differ only in the part that generates heat, which generates steam that drives the turbines, i.e. in that nuclear part.

- Several times in the past, and even these days, the public could hear about the negative side effects of the passing of the Law on the Prohibition of the Construction of Nuclear Power Plants in the SFRY. A large number of experts active at the time, in the best years of their careers, left the country in the nineties. Young people`s interest in studying relevant programs has also decreased to a negligible level, so faculties that had dedicated study programs, such as the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering in Belgrade, have closed such programs. In the meantime, those experts who left the country then retired. We know from the meetings we have had, and from publicly available publications, that there is a certain smaller number of younger people who had personal interests in this field and chose to study abroad and stay in the field working there. Several associates from our company also decided to improve their skills at jobs abroad.

- That time frame will depend on the selected strategy for the introduction of nuclear power in Serbia. The public can still hear arguments for various options: from participation in a nuclear power plant in the area, through small modular power plants to the construction of one or more large, standard nuclear power plants. It is self-evident that those time frames can be significantly different, and the longest would be for the construction of a large power plant.

The deadlines for the construction of large power plants are getting shorter and shorter, so today it can be seen that they range from 7 to 15 years, depending on the model, type, supplier and available resources. Every investor today, including the state, has an interest in returning invested funds as quickly as possible. This will certainly be one of the criteria for the selection of the supplier.

- In the period when the SFRY was planning the construction of the Krško NPP and called for a tender for a number of new power plants, certain tests of suitable locations in the SFRY were carried out, several of which were in the Republic of Serbia. It remains to be seen how favorable they would be today in the new circumstances. The International Atomic Energy Agency has issued a series of publications on the criteria for site evaluation for a nuclear power plant. Those criteria have a focus on safety, environmental impact and economy, and the availability of significant amounts of cooling water sources, low population density, geological stability, seismic integrity, simple transport solutions and accessibility, connection to the electricity grid and public acceptance are set as conditions. The requirements should meet the balance of the reliability of project solutions in relation to external natural risks and social needs.

- Several technical solutions make small modular power plants the optimal solution for certain situations. The state has not yet chosen the optimal path for the Republic of Serbia to introduce nuclear energy into the energy mix. The choice will depend on many factors, such as financial solutions, implementation deadlines and current energy needs.

The output of small modular reactors can range up to 300 MW(s) per unit, which is about 1/3 the production capacity of standard nuclear reactors. Which models would be acceptable for Serbia, will depend on the characteristics of the location and the energy needs of the defined priority to be solved at that moment.

- Currently, the largest exporters of nuclear power plants and nuclear technologies are Russia, China, the USA, South Korea and France, (not necessarily in this order, depending on which element of technology we are talking about). Today, the USA is mainly focused on new generations of small modular reactors.

- The construction costs will also depend on the type of power plant that Serbia decides on. If we are talking about small modular power plants, it is to be expected that in that case there will be no breach of the planned deadlines and costs, because the finished product is delivered. When it comes to large reactors, many circumstances can lead, and have led in the known past, to breaking the deadlines and thus the construction costs. Although it is known that nuclear power plants are not experimental plants, where it is not known what can happen during construction, but facilities with multiple tested and implemented technical solutions, deadlines are occasionally missed. The causes are mostly local in nature, from political and financial, to locational - new findings that require additional work or to new technical solutions that have been reached in the meantime, and which are safer and still chosen despite the delay they cause.

The best solution to avoid cost overruns would be not to overrun the deadlines, which means that all preparatory work would have to be completed in detail and completely, up to the level that is foreseen for that phase.

Whether there will be work for our construction industry will depend on the type of power plant chosen. But a nuclear power plant is not only a reactor building, but also a series of accompanying functional facilities and systems in the environment of the power plant, for the realization of which there could be room in principle, as long as it is oriented and prepared for such tasks.

- Public perception of the risks of nuclear technologies was primarily a consequence of the seen effects that nuclear energy can have on the population and the environment (the first military application of nuclear energy in 1945 on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as accidents at nuclear power plants with global effects, more Chernobyl than Fukushima). Although nuclear accidents are rare events, because they cause serious damage, they generate a strong signal about the unusually high risk of nuclear power plants, which contributes to forming its negative perception.

Research has shown that even in countries with a large number of nuclear power plants and a stable exploitation history without accidents, the consequences of major accidents, regardless of the distance of those facilities, have contributed to a decrease in public confidence in nuclear energy. However, on the other hand, accidents contribute to improving safety requirements and standards. For each accident at nuclear facilities, and especially for those with the greatest consequences (Three Mile Island 1979, Chernobyl 1986, Fukushima 2011), a detailed analysis of the cause, flow, measures taken and their effectiveness and consequences is carried out, and based on these so-called "lessons learned", the technical, organizational and personnel requirements regarding the safety of nuclear facilities are significantly improved, which, on the other hand, also affects the increase of public trust.

- The most important steps would refer to the establishment of a legal and institutional framework for the introduction of nuclear energy, strengthening of the regulatory body, and establishment of study programs at the relevant faculties. In addition, it is necessary to recognize the necessary institutional infrastructure for responding in the event of an accident and to work on raising those elements and linking them. And in the process, at some point reopen the site review and microsite testing for the nuclear power plant.