The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

The government, struggling to meet rising power demand, is moving seriously with the nuclear power plant project targeting to set up at least a 1000 MW plant in the country within a decade, informed sources said.

To this effect a Russian technical expert team will be arriving at Dhaka tomorrow to discuss with the concerned authorities the proposed power plant issues.

At present the Government has three initial proposals from three countries - Russia, China and South Korea on setting up nuclear power plant.

But the Russian proposal tops the list, as the nuclear-rich country has been keen to move ahead with the Bangladesh project under a state-to-state bilateral agreement. However, some experts termed Russian technology very old and said that accident occurs from their nuclear reactors frequently. They talked about Chernobyl as an example.

The Russian Ambassador in Dhaka recently met with State Minister for Science and ICT Yeafesh Osman to discuss the project related issues.

It is believed that after the visit of the Russian technical team, a full-fledged proposal will come from the nuclear rich country.

Science and ICT Ministry officials hinted that Bangladesh might have to move for an unsolicited offer-based project to implement the nuclear power plant project.

In that case, the present public procurement regulation (PPR) may need certain changes.

But the main problem to deal with the project will be mobilising fund in the present perspective of global financial economic meltdown. Because, a 1000 MW nuclear power plant will need a US$ 1.2-1.5 billion investment, sources said.

The move for installing a nuclear power plant was originally initiated during the previous BNP regime. Later, the caretaker government had expedited the process and obtained a clearance certificate from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to go ahead with a nuclear power plant project.

The caretaker government also launched a site preparation project at Ruppur with technical and financial support of the IAEA to make the site suitable for a power plant. The IAEA provided US$ 366,000 for the project. Ruppur is a very old site, which was first undertaken by the then East Pakistan government for the same purpose.

"The site preparatory project is going on in full swing and by the end of the year it would be completed," said a top official of the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission (BAEC), which has been implementing the project.

He also mentioned that an IAEA technical team also visited the site in November last to have a physical inspection before giving its necessary nod to Bangladesh.

"Simultaneously, a safeguard document and a model agreement document are now at the final stage of preparation. After completion, we've to place it to the IAEA," the BAEC official said.

Science and ICT Ministry officials said that the nuclear power plant operation is a very sensitive work and it needs highly skilled manpower.

But Bangladesh does not have such manpower available at present. So, from now on a strong move should be made to develop skilled manpower to run a future project, a senior official at the Science and ICT Ministry said.

He also mentioned that the government had approached the IAEA to provide technical support to create such trained and skilled manpower.

According to another top official of BAEC, at present world's 23 per cent electricity comes from nuclear plants.