ISLAMABAD, June 11: Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) Chairman Parvez Butt on Saturday said Pakistan would build 10 to 12 more nuclear power plants to achieve future energy needs of 8,800 MW by 2025. “New power plants would be constructed along the sea coast and river Indus for which necessary manpower is being trained to build and run these units indigenously,” PAEC chairman told reporters at the end of a prize distribution ceremony of the National Engineering Robotic Contest-2005.

Robotic contest in the area of fire fighting was jointly organized by Higher Education Commission (HEC) Stem Careers Project, the College of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering and the National University of Science and Technology (Nust).

Eighty teams representing 21 top most institutions of the country, including GIK Institute of Applied Engineering, Comsats, Lahore University of Management Sciences, NED University, University of Engineering and Technology (UET) Lahore, Nust and Aitcheson College participated.

Winner shield with cash prize of Rs50,000 was awarded to Air University, runner up shield with cash prize of Rs30,000, best technical design award with cash prize of Rs20,000 and best artistic design award with cash prize of Rs20,000 were all bagged by Nust.

“In the present day competitive era, each nation has to carve out its own destiny from available resources and PAEC followed this self-reliance path to evolve successes in the domain of national security, agriculture, cancer treatment, nuclear energy and industrial support services,” Parvez Butt said.

The PAEC is operating Chasnupp-I (Chashma Nuclear Power-I) entirely by its own engineers with capacity factor higher than 95 per cent, one of the highest and safest experience in the world, Parvez Butt said. A Rs51 billion CHASNUPP-II is also being build to generate 340 MW by 2011.

Following the withdrawal of support by vendor countries for Kanupp after 1974 nuclear explosion by India, the PAEC operated the power plant with its own manpower and technical resources through innovative working, he observed, adding that the commission manufactured nuclear fuel for this plant and it had now been renovated to extend its life by other 15 years employing local resources.