ISLAMABAD (Gulf Times) -- The Pakistan government is raising a cadre of high skilled experts for nuclear-related power generation schemes with an emphasis on learning technical Chinese and industrial training in China.

The project, Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission’s manpower development program for nuclear power, will cost the government Rs491mn with Rs166mn as foreign exchange component, official sources said yesterday.
The PAEC will be the executing agency of the capacity building project. The trained personnel under the proposed project will be adjusted against approved posts of others projects of the PAEC.
“Meeting the target of generating 8,800MW nuclear capacity by 2030 will require trained and qualified professionals to collaborate in the design and construction of almost 10 nuclear power plants,” an official said.
Practically, he said, this amounts to allowing up to 250 professionals per plant and an overhead of up to 800 centrally placed professionals to participate in the project management, design, engineering construction, and installation of the nuclear power plants. At present, the available manpower for this purpose is less than 150 persons.
In addition to meeting the urgent requirement of the manpower, the main purpose of the scheme is to provide to these individuals sufficient competency in the Chinese language to enable them to communicate with the vendors and manufacturers in China.
The other goal is to provide them some hands-on training in the Chinese nuclear industry, especially those related to manufacturing.
For this project, Pakistan plans to recruit 400 persons in the next five years at the rate of about 80 persons per year and keep them under training for a period of 20 months.
The training program will primarily consist of teaching them technical Chinese language.
According to sources, the services of the Islamabad-based National University of Modern Languages and language specialists will be used for this purpose.
These personnel will also be provided some nuclear power plant orientation and those who do well in Chinese language and in orientation courses (top two-thirds of the total) will be sent for on-the-job training in China for up to four months depending upon their areas of expertise and the availability of the training location.
The government has allocated token money of Rs15mn in the Public Sector Development Program for the fiscal 2008-09.
During construction of nuclear power plant Chashnupp unit-1 (C-1) and another similar unit (C-2) is under construction at the Chashma site, the PAEC personnel have gained some knowledge of the Chinese language.