DHAKA, (PNA/Xinhua) — Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina inaugurated the construction work of the country’s first nuclear power plant Wednesday.
The Bangladeshi government has already approved a 265 million U. S. dollars tender for the plant’s design and a Russian firm won the bid.
Officials say construction of the plant’s core structure will start after design finalization.
“We’ve asked Russia to attach utmost priority to safety issue,” Hasina said after laying the foundation stone of the first phase of work for the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant in the country’s Pabna district, some 216 km west of Dhaka.
Sergey Kirienko, director general of State Atomic Energy Corporation “ROSATOMS” of Russia, among others, was present at the inauguration ceremony.
Regarding the design of the plant, Hasina said Bangladesh has followed safety guidelines of the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA).
During her Moscow visit earlier this year, Dhaka signed a 500 million U.S. dollars “credit deal” with Russia for the primary work to install two-units of the power plant, each of 1,000 megawatts.