Myanmar and Russia Sign Pact to Bolster Nuclear Power Cooperation
BANGKOK (AP) – The military-led government of Myanmar, in cooperation with Russia’s state-owned Atomic Energy Company, has inaugurated an atomic energy information center as a step towards developing nuclear power to fill energy shortages in the riot-torn Southeast Asian nation.
Myanmar’s state media reported on Tuesday that the head of the military government, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, has met with Alexey Evgenievich Likhachev, director general of the Russian State Atomic Energy Company, or Rosatom.
Officials from both sides met Monday at the newly opened Nuclear Technology Information Center in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, state-run newspaper Global New Light of Myanmar said.
Myanmar hopes to build and operate a reactor under an interim agreement between Myanmar and Rosatom signed in 2015, the newspaper said. Both sides signed memoranda of understanding on nuclear energy, education and public understanding of nuclear power in Moscow in July.
“Thanks to the cooperation with Rosatom, Myanmar needs to improve human resources related to the construction and operation of a small modular reactor in Myanmar and produce qualified experts for the respective sectors,” the newspaper quoted Min Aung Hlaing as saying.
“Both sides openly exchanged views on the effective use of nuclear energy in health and agriculture sectors, including power generation and further cooperation on peaceful uses of nuclear energy,” the newspaper said.
The development is likely to spark concerns that Myanmar’s military may want to develop a nuclear weapons capability. A decade ago there were suspicions that North Korea was supplying nuclear weapons technology to Myanmar, but there was no definitive evidence.
Russia maintains friendly ties with Myanmar, treated as a pariah state by many Western nations after its army ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021 and violently repressed the opposition, killing thousands of civilians and leading to the what some UN experts describe civil war.
The United States and other nations have imposed political and economic sanctions on ruling generals, while Russia supplies the military with weapons, including fighter jets, which are sometimes used against civilians.
Russia has promoted nuclear energy cooperation with several Southeast Asian countries, including Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines.
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