Bangladesh & United States Sign Landmark Agreement To Expand Cooperation In Peaceful Nuclear Energy

Dhaka: Bangladesh and the United States have signed an agreement on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, the BNP media cell said on Saturday.

"The agreement was signed by Rehan Asad, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Science and Technology, on behalf of Bangladesh, and Jacob Helberg, Secretary, on behalf of the United States", the BNP media cell said in a post on Facebook.

"It is worth noting that the initiative for cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy was first undertaken in 1981 during the regime of the martyred President Ziaur Rahman. Today's agreement between Bangladesh and the United States was signed as a continuation of that effort", it added, without elaborating.

However, for Bangladesh's nuclear power plant, the Uranium fuel for Unit 2 of the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant was supposed to arrive Thursday. But it hasn’t arrived yet because the airspace is not clear.

"We had completed all the preparations at the airport and were waiting, but the liaison officer from Rosatom told us that the airspace was not clear. So we couldn’t send it. It may need to be rescheduled", Sheikh Mohammed Tauhidul Islam, Joint Secretary to the Bangladesh Science and Technology Ministry, told ANI over the phone.

Officials were not able to say which country had blocked the airspace.

The nuclear power plant is being built with support from Russia's Rosatom. To ascertain the reason behind the delay, ANI sent an email to a Rosatom representative. However, there has been no response so far.

The Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant, Bangladesh’s first nuclear power facility, is being constructed in Rooppur village, located along the banks of the Padma River in Pakshi Union, Ishwardi Upazila, Pabna District, with technical assistance from the Russian Federation’s State Atomic Energy Corporation (Rosatom) and under the oversight of the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission.

The project involves the construction of two third-generation VVER-1200 reactor units, which will collectively generate 2,400 megawatts of baseload electricity.

Bangladesh officially ushered in the nuclear age as the initial shipment of low-enriched uranium fuel for Unit 1 of the 2,400 MW Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant (RNPP) arrived safely from Russia. Manufactured by Rosatom's Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrates Plant, the 164 fresh fuel assemblies were flown directly from Russia into Dhaka’s Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport aboard a heavy-lift Russian cargo aircraft under strict international safeguards.

From the capital, the radiation-shielded containers were transported along a heavily fortified, 300-kilometre "green corridor" guarded by the Bangladesh Army and law enforcement agencies to the plant site in Ishwardi, Pabna, where an official handover ceremony was held in October 2023. 

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