BAKU, Azerbaijan, February 18. Électricité de France (EDF) can offer relevant and intense training to the future Owner-Operator and support the implementation of its operational organization in the context of nuclear energy, a source at the EDF told Trend.
The source added that the company aims for a high standard of safety and excellence, just like in France.
The EDF representative added that several agreements were reached during President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s visit to France, including a memorandum of understanding related to nuclear human capacity building, education and training.
“This is an important step for increased cooperation. Those agreements will enable students from Kazakhstan to study in France and attend our universities and engineering schools for nuclear academic degrees with the support of the Bolashak Program [Kazakh scholarship program aiming to educate talented students in the best universities],” the company representative added.
EDF considers this initiative to pave the way for additional potential cooperation in higher education and professional or vocational trainings including dual degrees or exchange programs with Kazakhstani universities and schools to help Kazakhstan build its own human capacity supporting its nuclear program.
This type of cooperation will be instrumental, as currently, EDF is looking at all the necessary conditions to facilitate the implementation of the EPR1200 technology, which is very suitable for Kazakhstan's power system.
Earlier, it was reported that cooperation between Électricité de France and Kazakhstan was made possible as a result of discussions held between the Vice-President for International New Nuclear Development at EDF Vakis Ramany and Bulat Akchulakov, Minister of Energy of Kazakhstan, and Zhandos Nurmaganbetov, Vice-Minister of Energy of Kazakhstan.