Serbia and Montenegro

Country Profile 4: Serbia and Montenegro

FirstWatch International (FWI)

Overview

Serbia and Montenegro, (formerly Yugoslavia) has no active nuclear weapons programme.

From the early 1950s through the mid-1980s, Yugoslavia intermittently pursued both a nuclear energy and weapons programme. Part of the Yugoslav nuclear infrastructure was located in what are today the independent states of Croatia and Slovenia.

The regime of Josip Broz Tito initiated the programme in the late 1940s. Belgrade collaborated with Norway—which had an advanced nuclear research programme—and the Soviet Union until Tito deemphasised the weapons programme in the 1960s. Yugoslavia restarted its weapons programme after 1974 when India, its rival for leadership of the non-aligned movement, carried out a nuclear test. Limited financial resources and indifference among the nuclear scientists working on the programme brought it to an end in 1987 without ever producing a functioning weapon. By some accounts the programme did not progress further than the research stages. In August 2002, 48 kilograms of highly enriched uranium (HEU) was removed from the Vinca Institute of Nuclear Sciences outside Belgrade and transferred to a processing plant in Dmitrovgrad, Russia.

Past nuclear policies

Return to country profile index

Return to top

Any reproduction of text and data is authorized only by permission, SIPRI July 2004.