ISLAMABAD, Aug 14: The government has directed the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) to make long-term plans to manufacture a series of nuclear power plants in the country to meet power requirements.

The government has also directed the PAEC's top officials to gradually reduce dependence on foreign experts in all future nuclear power plants and maximise involvement of local nuclear experts, leading to complete indiginization in this field and local production of nuclear power plants.

Official sources told Dawn here on Friday that additional power capacity in the system was urgently required to meet power shortages, especially in low water months, when there was no surplus. At present there is surplus power capacity of 182-2000 MW in high water months.

The PAEC was told to develop a long-term plan to produce maximum electricity by planning a series of new nuclear power plants with the active financial and administrative support of federal and provincial governments.

Officials of the PAEC were also asked to discourage hiring of foreign experts and engineers to develop more power plants. And as a first step, they have been asked to maximise the involvement of Pakistani manpower/experts for the manufacturing of the Chashma Nuclear Power Plant-2 and minimize Chinese manpower/experts.

Under the proposed project, they have been asked to keep the involvement of the foreign manpower as low as possible and Pakistani engineers/technicians/experts be increased as much as possible even at the design stage.

Also local manufacturing and construction should be increased from the component of the foreign scope of work and that preferably this should be more than $50 million for 300MW Chashma-2.

Sources said that the PAEC had been urged to keep a check on the Chashma-2 whose cost had gone up from Rs42.6 billion to Rs51 billion which also included Rs20.1 billion foreign exchange component.

The PAEC told senior officials of the Ministry of Finance and the Planning Commission that the cost of the Chashma-2 had gone up due to various reasons. For example, the Chinese scope of the work has increased by Rs4.5 billion due to increase in the cost of the plant and equipment. Likewise, the work of the PAEC increased by more than Rs1 billion with respect to preliminary works, ware house, insurance, commodities and residential colony etc.

Also additional safety requirements as prescribed by the Pakistan Nuclear Regulatory Authority were added, increasing the cost of the project by Rs1.5 billion more, besides additional Rs910 million on account of an increase in fuel prices.

The PAEC authorities have been further directed to increase local manufacturing of nuclear power plants to about 15 to 20 per cent against an existing proposal of 2-3 per cent by increasing the indigenous manufacturing of electrical and mechanical equipment.