At least five countries will start work on their first nuclear reactors this year despite the jolt to international confidence caused by the Fukushima disaster, a top UN nuclear official said Friday.

"We expect that this year Vietnam, Bangladesh, United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Belarus will start building their first nuclear power plants," Kwaku Aning, deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told a forum in New York.

He said Jordan and Saudi Arabia could follow in 2013.

About 60 countries approached the international agency in the past year about starting nuclear programs, Geoffrey Shaw, the IAEA director general at the United Nations, told the same forum.

Aning said that all countries considering nuclear power asked tough questions about the March 11, 2011 Fukushima disaster, when a Japanese reactor went into meltdown after being hit by an earthquake and tsunami.

The UN agency was "working assiduously" with member countries on infrastructure safety and site selection for the reactors, he said.

The countries seeking nuclear power for the first time "are all taking lessons from what has happened in Fukushima," Aning said.

"Developing countries are very much aware that if the safety is not there, then nobody is going to send them the technology," Aning said. "But there are some countries which have no other choice."

He cited the example of Jordan, which has no fossil fuel.

Germany has decided to gradually phase out the use of nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster. Other European countries have announced new restrictions.