Vietnam and Russia yesterday signed an settlement to extend cooperation on nuclear energy technology, marking a doubtlessly essential growth in Hanoi’s reborn nuclear power ambitions.
As per the Associated Press, the settlement was signed between Russia’s state-owned nuclear power firm Rosatom and Vietnam’s state-owned energy utility EVN throughout a go to to Hanoi by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.
Mishustin additionally held bilateral talks along with his counterpart Pham Minh Chinh and met To Lam, the chief of the Communist Occasion of Vietnam, and Tran Thanh Man, the chairman of Vietnam’s Nationwide Meeting. The 2 sides have also signed a series of agreements pledging cooperation within the digital economic system and wi-fi communications. Moscow additionally agreed to switch a maritime analysis vessel to Vietnam underneath a deal signed by Vietnam’s Ministry of Nationwide Protection and Russia’s Ministry of Science and Larger Schooling.
“Vietnam is a crucial companion of Russia in Southeast Asia,” Mishustin mentioned, the AP reported. “Right this moment we plan to debate with you a complete plan for cooperation between Russia and Vietnam, which runs till 2030.”
Whereas Vietnam and Russia solely have interaction in restricted commerce and financial intercourse – bilateral commerce got here to only $3.6 billion in 2023, far in need of the $171 billion in commerce that happened with China and the $111 billion with america – the international locations stay shut companions on protection and power points.
Vietnam has thought-about establishing nuclear energy technology since 1995, and agency proposals surfaced in 2006, for the development of two nuclear power plants in Ninh Thuan province within the nation’s south, with a combined capacity of 4,000 megawatts. In 2016, these plans have been canceled as a result of various considerations, together with security dangers and “financial situations.”
Nonetheless, the elevated power wants of Vietnam’s crash industrialization has prompted the federal government to rethink the nuclear choice, so as to marinating financial progress and obtain net-zero emissions by 2050. In November, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh announced that the federal government had put ahead a proposal to the Politburo of the Communist Occasion of Vietnam (CPV) to restart its nuclear power venture.
In line with authorities estimates, energy consumption is about to extend by 12-13 p.c this yr, and attain 1,200 billion kWh by 2045, considerably larger than the 1,000 billion kWh projected within the 8th National Power Development Plan, which was launched in 2023. A yr previous to that, Minister of Business and Commerce Nguyen Hong Dien instructed the Nationwide Meeting that whereas the federal government was dedicated to boosting renewable power capability, it lacked a “steady power supply” that might overcome the intermittency of photo voltaic, hydropower, and wind energy. Because of this, he mentioned, “creating nuclear energy is an ongoing inevitable pattern on the earth.”
Because the AFP information company reported, no particulars in regards to the settlement have been instantly accessible, however Vietnam’s Ministry of Science and Expertise mentioned that Rosatom director Alexei Likhachev was “very ” in cooperating with the nation on the aborted Ninh Thuan nuclear energy venture.
Earlier than its cancelation in 2016, the Ninh Thuan venture was initially to be developed with assist from Rosatom and the Japanese consortium JINED. The one nuclear reactor in Vietnam is a 500-kilowatt analysis reactor in Dalat, which was constructed with Rosatom’s help within the early Eighties.
Is Vietnam able to make the bounce to nuclear? In November, Dr. Richard Ramsawak, a lecturer at RMIT College Vietnam, argued there have been three main obstacles for the nation to beat. The primary is value. Whereas the nation’s economic system has grown significantly since 2016 – GDP has grown from $251.7 billion in 2016 to $429.8 billion in 2023 – nuclear energy crops require a punishing preliminary funding that the nation should think about rigorously. The second is the query of security and the general public’s perceptions thereof, which stay coloured by the 2011 Fukushima catastrophe. The third is creating the workforce “important for nuclear power growth.”
The latter aim may conceivably be addressed in collaboration with Russia – a number of hundred Vietnamese college students and engineers have been already learning and coaching in Russia previous to the cancelation of the final nuclear power program in 2016 – however in any case, involving Russia, there’s additionally the query of geopolitical frictions.
In recent times, the U.S. authorities has imposed sanctions on dozens of Rosatom officers, most just lately as a part of the “sweeping sanctions” imposed on the Russian power sector on January 10. How and to what extent this may impede the event of a civilian nuclear power program in Vietnam stays to be seen.
