Electricity-hungry Vietnam looks to join nuclear club

Channel NewsAsia 17 Nov 09;

HANOI : Vietnam is expected to take a key step towards meeting its burgeoning appetite for electricity by paving the way for its first nuclear power plant, but debate is still raging over the controversial project.

Parliament in the fast-growing communist state is set to vote at the end of November on the project -- which lawmakers have been mulling for more than a decade -- after legalising the use of nuclear power in 2008.

Vietnam's atomic energy commission estimates that nuclear power could meet as much as 30 percent of the nation's energy needs by the middle of the century, compared with less than five percent initially.

But environmental and security concerns have prompted some experts to ask if the government is already moving too fast.

"You can't look at nuclear power plants as you would at cars and just buy them as soon as possible," said Pham Duy Hien, chairman of the scientific council at Vietnam's Agency for Nuclear Safety.

The plan on the table is for the construction of reactors on two sites with a total capacity of 4,000 megawatts, at a cost estimated by experts at between 11 billion to 18 billion dollars.

Construction in the southern province of Ninh Thuan could start from around 2014, with at least one reactor coming on line in 2020.

The nuclear legislation -- the subject of heated debate in parliament -- also has experts alarmed as it lacks provisions to regulate the disposal of potentially hazardous nuclear waste.

"The quantity of radioactivity in the waste products after 10 years will be enormous," if the government sticks to its timetable for the power plant construction, said Hien.

As with any nuclear programme, even a peaceful one, there is always a risk sensitive material could fall into the wrong hands, he added, particularly taking into account endemic corruption in Vietnam.

The Vietnamese Union of Science and Technology Associations has urged the government to be flexible about the 2020 deadline, saying it should start with just one power plant.

But even before lawmakers have endorsed the first phase, the government is already planning to double the initial capacity by 2025, experts say.

In Ninh Thuan, local officials have voiced concerns about the project's environmental impact, particularly on the area's fishing communities.

Lawmaker Nguyen Minh Thuyet has called for Vietnam to take a step-by-step approach to joining the nuclear energy club, but said the project had broad backing.

"Lots of people support the project because they think Vietnam is going to suffer a severe energy shortage," he said.

Demand is rising about 15 percent a year as Vietnam enjoys an economic boom, and heavy industries such as the construction sector are big energy-consumers.

The country has significant hydrocarbon reserves, but only one operational refinery. It is considering exploiting new coal reserves but this would require sacrificing large swathes of rice paddy fields.

Hydro-electric dams have environmental costs and often adversely affect the local population. Additionally, most of Vietnam's rivers flow from China and have already been dammed.

"But a peaceful nuclear power industry is very complicated technology, and requires disciplined management," said Hien, urging the goverment to consider how to improve its overall energy efficiency.

"In Vietnam, we have only just started the process of industrialisation."

Despite the domestic debates, a number of foreign nations have long expressed interest in a role in the project including former colonial power France, as well as Japan, Russia, China and to a lesser extent South Korea and the United States.

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon and his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Tan Dung last week signed a nuclear cooperation pact but Dung declined to say whether which nation would be selected as Vietnam's main nuclear partner.

"The project is still being examined by the National Assembly. At the moment, we have no official decision... I do not want to anticipate what concrete actions will be taken ahead of the decision," Dung said.

- AFP/vm