Bangladesh’s pursuit of nuclear energy generation will be a part of its broader energy security agenda, where it will continue to search for other viable energy sources with added urgency.
“We shall continue to vigorously pursue sub-regional cooperation to tap into the vast energy generation potentials,” said Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali at a seminar.
The two-day seminar on “Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy and Nuclear Non-Proliferation” was jointly organised by Bangladesh and Japan in the capital.
The minister said the cooperation with Japan should be a pre-cursor to more such cooperation with other development partners and countries with demonstrable expertise in nuclear power generation.
“It will be one of our foreign policy priorities to explore and cement such bilateral cooperation with other interested countries, and we look forward to continuing work with our Ministry of Science and Technology to this effect,” he said.
Science and Technology State Minister Yeafesh Osman said because of a lack of indigenous energy resources, Bangladesh had resorted to generating power from nuclear energy.
“Just three significant accidents, including the Fukushima accident, in the history of nuclear power are not an attestation of nuclear energy being unsafe or unreliable,” he said.
Foreign Secretary Md Shahidul Haque said the two nuclear power generators at Rooppur would hopefully add 2,000MW of electricity to the national grid starting from 2020–21.
“The prime minister [Sheikh Hasina] has invited Japan to explore the possibility of cooperating with us on a nuclear power plant project in future,” he said.
