Home Economy Pakistan to end reliance on foreign nuclear fuel supplies: media report

Pakistan to end reliance on foreign nuclear fuel supplies: media report

By NNN-PTI

Islamabad : Pakistan plans to end its reliance on foreign nuclear fuel supplies to run its atomic reactors by setting up a Rs 2200-crore complex to enrich fuel from indigenous nuclear plants, a media report said Monday.

The new Pakistan Nuclear Power Complex (PNPC), to be set up in Faisalabad, will also enrich the fuel from atomic reactors that the country plans to set up by 2030 to generate 8,800 MW of nuclear power.

Establishing the Nuclear Power Complex is a “basic step towards this very strategically important goal”, an unnamed senior official was quoted as saying by the Pakistan Observer newspaper.

The Executive Committee of the National Economic Council, scheduled to meet Monday with Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz in the chair, would approve the project to establish the PNPC, the report said.

The PNPC will provide “tested nuclear fuel” for the reliable operation of nuclear plants and help the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) in attaining 100 per cent capability in “technology needed to manufacture pressurized water reactor nuclear fuels”.

It will also act as a roadmap for “ultimately achieving the capability of fulfilling the requirement of one-third of fuel needed for nuclear power plants to be constructed by 2030”, the report.

Pakistan has been working to establish a nuclear fuel reprocessing facility since the early 1970s. The country has limited uranium deposits and has often depended on its strategic ally China for fuel supply.