December 10 (SeeNews) - Russia's state-owned company Rosatom has signed an agreement to participate in the construction of a centre for nuclear science and technology in Serbia, it said.
Rosatom has also signed an agreement to establish a joint venture with the Serbian government that will implement the project, the Russian company said in a statement on Thursday.
Under the agreements, a Nuclear Medicine Centre with a cyclotron complex and radiopharmaceuticals production facilities will be built in Serbia within the next three years, Rosatom said.
"We have signed the agreements that bring Serbia back on the map of European countries that have a base for scientific research in nuclear technology. This will help Serbia to address the challenges in healthcare, science and research; we are already receiving requests from our neighbouring countries that would like to use the capacities of the centre and our scientists," Nenad Popovic, Serbia's minister without portfolio in charge of innovation, said in the statement.
The centre will produce radioisotopes for medical and industrial purposes, doped silicon for various industries, and material composition tests of ores, minerals, and environmental samples, Rosatom said.
"We have identified the specific steps and a preliminary timeline for implementing this project, which employs Russian innovative nuclear technologies. The radiopharmaceutical complex and the nuclear medicine centre will provide Serbian citizens with high-tech medical solutions to treat, above all, oncology conditions," Rosatom's director-general Alexey Likhachev noted.
The centre for nuclear science and technology construction project is implemented within the framework of an intergovernmental agreement signed in 2019 during the visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin to Serbia.