Public Risk Perception of Nuclear Power in Serbia: Fear of Exposure to Radiation vs. Social Benefits

Nuclear power (NP) remains one of the choices for increasing environmental and social concerns related to energy needs due to its relatively low level of emissions. At the other hand, serious problems can arise as a result of potential accidents. For example, the nuclear power plant (NPP) crisis in Fukushima Daichi (2011) has caused a great deal of concern not only for the Japanese people, but also for the world. Today, the consequences of this occasion continue in EU countries. However, Serbia does not have an NP plant on its own, it has about 15 NP stations around it. The Serbian Government, therefore, wanted to know what the majority of its people think about nuclear energy (NE) and possible consistency. The objective of this paper is to present the results of the Serbian population assessment of the NP risk perception of the trial. A series of 270 face-to-face interviews took place in the public square of Belgrade in March 2019. A logistic regression analysis was used to examine the cumulative effects of the different risk factors. As a key result, it was found that almost all respondents did not support the construction of the NP in Serbia. In addition, this research identified several important variables that have a significant impact on the perception of the public risk of NP.