The Hanoitimes - Construction of the first Ninh Thuan nuclear power plant will begin in 2014, and the station will use Russian technologies which have proved safe and effective for several decades.

Many countries have ordered nuclear power technologies from Russia, which has also generated electricity for domestic use through light water reactors, said Phan Minh Tuan, Head of the Investment Board for the Nuclear Power and Recycled Energy Project.  

The National Assembly ratified the Ninh Thuan nuclear power project in November 2009 to meet the country’s increasing demand for electricity. The project has Ninh Thuan 1 and Ninh Thuan 2 plants with a combined output of 4,000MW.

The Vietnam Atomic Energy Institute (VAET) estimates that Vietnam will be short of 50-110 billion kWh of electricity in 2020 if the country o­nly uses its current domestic resources to produce electricity. Meanwhile, the price of fuels such as coal, oil and gas has constantly risen, pushing up the cost of generating electricity. In this context, nuclear power emerges as a highly competitive option.

Experiences of France, Finland, the US and Japan have shown that the costs involved to produce nuclear power production are 10-20 percent lower than for producing electricity from fossil fuels such as gas or coal. Over the past few decades, many countries like France, Japan, the US and Russia have increasingly relied o­n nuclear electricity as they consider it a strategic and sustainable source of energy for socio-economic development.

An official from the French group EDF said that his firm now has 58 nuclear reactors located at 19 sites across France. These reactors make up 88 percent of France’s total electricity output.               

Regarding the environmental issue, the Head of VAET, Vuong Huu Tuan, said Vietnam’s partners are committed to helping the country manage and treat nuclear waste from Ninh Thuan plants and will help to draw up a national programme o­n this work. In addition, Vietnam has also signed frame agreements with several partners, including the US, o­n nuclear safety.