Authority Meeting in Extended Quadrilateral Format in Slovenia

The annual meeting of the Czech, Hungarian, Slovak and Slovenian nuclear authorities took place in Portoroz, Slovenia, on 13-14 May 2025, with the participation of delegations from the Finnish and Polish partner authorities. In 2003 the four authorities with similar-sized nuclear programmes decided to institutionalise their meetings to regularly share regulatory oversight experiences and exchange views on key international and national issues related to the use of nuclear energy. The Hungarian delegation was led by Andrea Beatrix Kádár, President of the Hungarian Atomic Energy Authority.

Authorities at the meeting presented the main organisational and legislative changes over the past year. Regulators are increasing their HR capacities to ensure the oversight of new build and planned nuclear power plants and are revising existing legislation and regulatory framework.

Participants also discussed European and international issues of mutual interest – including activities of their bilateral and multilateral relations, cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency – and provided an overview of events that took place in their respective nuclear facilities and on corresponding regulatory practices.

The negotiating parties also reviewed the regulatory tasks related to the construction of new nuclear power plants and the further lifetime extension of existing units. In most of the participating countries intensive preparation is ongoing for the oversight of new nuclear power plants: the authorities are preparing for future licensing tasks, in particular for small modular reactors through competence building, consultations, pre-licensing and international cooperation.

Participants are actively involved in supporting the authorities of Ghana, Nigeria, Turkey and Jordan, thus the meeting also provided an opportunity to review the status of EU projects aimed at capacity building of nuclear safety authorities in these non-EU countries.

The next meeting will take place in 2026 in the Czech Republic.