OREANDA-NEWS. July 25, 2011. Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy, Ltd. (Hitachi-GE) today announced that it has started an international human resource training program jointly with the Tokyo Institute of Technology (TITECH) in the field of nuclear power, energy and the environment, mainly for Southeast Asia. Under this program, Hitachi-GE and TITECH today established a course at the Electric Power University (EPU) in Vietnam to which their lecturers are dispatched.

Southeast Asian countries are planning to introduce nuclear power plants, but have insufficient human resources trained in the fields of nuclear power, energy and the environment, including at universities and other educational institutions. This makes the development of these human resources a pressing issue. At the October 31, 2010 meeting of the prime ministers of Vietnam and Japan, Japan was named as the cooperation partner for the second nuclear power plant construction project in Vietnam, which is scheduled to start commercial operation in 2021. One of the primary conditions for this project was cooperation in human resource development in the nuclear energy field. Presently, there is much interest worldwide concerning the relationship between the environment and energy. In order to operate nuclear power generation in particular more safely and avoid risk, knowledge and technologies amassed to date must be passed on, in response to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station incident. At the same time, the development of people who have undertaken specialist education and training is an imperative in the field worldwide.

Against this backdrop, Hitachi-GE has started an international human resource training program aiming to develop human resources in the field of nuclear power, energy and the environment jointly with TITECH. In April 2011, Hitachi-GE established the "International Nuclear Power Human Resource Training (Hitachi-GE) Chair Course" in the Department of Nuclear Engineering, Graduate School of Science and Engineering(DNE), TITECH. Furthermore, Hitachi-GE and TITECH are promoting human resource development activities in Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries, including establishing courses at local universities, accepting foreign students from Southeast Asian universities at DNE of TITECH who are supported by Hitachi-GE scholarships, and offering internships for DNE of TITECH students at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). As part of these activities, Hitachi-GE and TITECH today established a course at EPU, in which Hitachi-GE engineers and TITECH professors will serve as instructors to around 40 EPU undergraduates.
 Hitachi-GE and TITECH plan to implement similar initiatives in cooperation with other Southeast Asian universities as they work to actively expand the international human resource training program in the nuclear power, energy and environment fields in the region.

Hitachi-GE will focus on human resource development in the field of nuclear power, energy and the environment to ensure the stable supply of energy in Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries.