Vietnam wants to relaunch its nuclear program to meet its growing energy needs, the government announced on Tuesday, after abandoning two nuclear power plant projects deemed too costly in 2016.
Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh told the National Assembly in Hanoi on Tuesday that his government had requested the relaunch of the nuclear program to meet energy needs for “rapid and sustainable socio-economic development in the long term.” .
“If we aim to build a double-digit economic growth scenario, energy needs will increase” by 150%, he argued.
Rapidly industrializing and with 100 million inhabitants, Vietnam’s economy depends mainly on coal and hydroelectricity to fuel its growth.
Despite this dependence on fossil fuels, the country has committed to achieving net carbon neutrality by 2050, with the support of the Fair Energy Transition Partnership, under which rich countries help developing countries transition more quickly to energies considered clean.
At the end of 2016, Vietnam abandoned two nuclear power plant projects estimated at the time to cost several billion dollars, citing environmental and financial reasons.
These two sites were to be the first in Southeast Asia, but were stopped after cost estimates doubled to $18 billion.
These two power plant projects planned in the central province of Ninh Thuan, and with a combined capacity of 4,000 megawatts, were to be developed with the help of the Russian state company Rosatom and the Japanese consortium JINED.
“The project was suspended not for technological reasons, but due to the current economic situation in the country,” the government said at the time.
