Mr. Marc Ponchet, AFNI Deputy Director said, during a meeting between Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and Prime Minister of France at the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit in 3/2012, the two sides agreed to strengthen two countries relation in the atomic energy field with two priorities on training and safety. The purpose of this mission is working with the relevant ministries, agencies to learn training needs and develop a comprehensive program of training needs of VN. Mr. Marc Ponchet also proposed support training teachers and building training facilities in VN in the nuclear field.

Minister Nguyen Quan expressed his thanks to the support of France for VN in training and technical support for nuclear energy field in the last time. He stressed, in the context that VN is preparing activities to begin construction of the first nuclear power plant (NPP) in Ninh Thuan, training especially training experts on nuclear safety, and building legal documents are top priorities today. He hoped that, with the support of countries with developed nuclear power industry, such as France, VN will have a team of good experts and a fairly complete legal system to ensure safety for NPP.

He also expected, in addition to support training and developing legal documents, France will share the experience with VN on information, communication of nuclear power.

On the same day, the French experts came to work with the Vietnam Agency for Radiation and Nuclear Safety (VARANS) about training needs and plan of VARANS as well as cooperation plan between the two agencies.

At the meeting, Deputy Director General Le Chi Dung said, the current needs of VARANS are training experts involved in safety evaluation and in building the legal documents for NPP with 3 levels: short-term training (basic training) to provide the necessary basic knowledge of the nuclear regulatory body, medium-term training (on-the-job training) focus on a specific job and long-term training for Master, Ph.D degrees. He also emphasized that VARANS  needs not only to train management staff but also technical support staff for the regulatory body.