Vietnam will send 70 students to Russia for nuclear energy training this year in preparation for its nuclear power plants to be built in a province in the central region, an official from the Ministry of Science and Technology said last week.

They will learn Russian for one year, after which they are expected to spend up to 6 years to earn a bachelor’s or master’s degree in nuclear.

Pham Quang Trung, vice director of the Vietnam Atomic Energy Agency under the ministry, said that the training is to provide personnel for the operations of the plants to be constructed in Ninh Thuan Province under a national power program.

Rosatom, a state-owned Russian energy corporation, is in charge of training engineers and experts for the first plant expected to be on stream by 2020, Trung said.

Ninety nine Vietnamese students are now enrolled in nuclear energy courses in the European country under this program.

Russian partners will build the first power plant while Japanese technology will be used in the construction of the other.

Nuclear power is a big issue in Vietnam, especially after the meltdown of two reactors in Japan following a double earthquake-tsunami disaster last year.

Experts have repeatedly voiced concerns over nuclear risks but the government has been very insistent on carrying out its nuclear program, citing national energy security as one of the reasons.