TORONTO - Power utility giant Manila Electric Company (Meralco) is targeting to cement a partnership agreement with Canada’s OntarioTech University for a scholarship program geared toward enhancing the know-how and expertise of Filipino talents on the nuclear power development space.

Meralco First Vice President and Head of Networks Froilan J. Savet indicated that a team from their company will travel again to Canada by July this year to formalize the propounded scholarship tie-up with OntarioTech.

“We are scheduled to finalize our agreement with them by the second half of this year – hopefully by July. By this time, we are still working on the details of the scholarship program that we will be pursuing with OntarioTech,” he said.

Savet hinted that at least five Filipino scholars will be initially selected to pursue further studies on nuclear engineering and related fields with the offshore partner-universities that Meralco will be signing up with.

Currently in Meralco’s roll as prospective nuclear scholars will be three professionals from the utility firm; then to be complemented by one scholar from its subsidiary Meralco PowerGen; while the other slot will be allotted to the government - primarily a scholar that may be recommended by the Department of Energy.

On the plan to tap a scholar from the DOE, it was emphasized that the proposal has yet to be discussed with the agency.

The scholars will be sent overseas to elevate their knowledge and sharpen their expertise on nuclear development disciplines – primarily for Masters Degree in Nuclear Engineering. By far, Ontario Tech is among the partners eyed by Meralco, along with the University of Illinois in the United States.

The nuclear scholarship program of Meralco, patently dubbed as Filipino Scholars and Interns on Nuclear Engineering (FISSION), was formally launched in September last year and it is planning to enlist its first batch of scholars in the forthcoming academic year.

In a presentation to the Philippine Nuclear Energy Mission to Canada, Professor Kirk Atkinson, director of the Centre of Small Modular Reactors at OntarioTech, conveyed that the major academic programs they have been offering range from Bachelor of Science to Masters Degree as well as Graduate Diplomas on Nuclear Engineering, Bachelor of Science in Health Physics and Radiation Science, Master of Applied Science as well as research programs.

He highlighted that OntarioTech is unique in its offered academic programs because it is home to Canada’s only accredited undergraduate Nuclear Engineering programs.

When asked if nuclear engineering and related sciences have their allure on the younger generation, Atkinson asserted that these degrees are actually enticing proposition to students because of high-value employment prospects awaiting them once they graduate.

On the nuclear industry’s journey toward digitalization and growing leaning on internet of things (IoT), he acknowledged that while OntarioTech is still not specifically offering degrees or programs that will capacitate or train students to become ‘AI brain’ to nuclear industry-related applications and operating systems, there are already subjects integrated in their courses -- primarily on assessing and deeply understanding the IT-enabled embedded sensors and cybersecurity protocols in nuclear reactors; as well as iterative learning on AI algorithms that can generate multitudes of data sets that will then aid in optimizing the performance of the reactors; and can also identify patterns, detect anomalies and potential hazards in the operating conditions of the nuclear plants.

If the future league of workers at nuclear facilities can gainfully leverage on AI or IoT systems, nuclear power operators can somehow employ predictive maintenance activities – and one major advantage of that is having the ability to forecast equipment failure before they would even occur, thus, they would be able to minimize downtime or even prevent catastrophic incidents in the facility.

Further technology advancements within the 2040-2050 timeframe, such as ‘nuclear fusion’ is also on the radar of OntarioTech, although no particular academic programs, research activities or project-experiments are being carried out yet on that sphere.