Sunday 5 December 2010

Regional Update - Vietnam

The December 2010 issue of Nuclear Engineering International [NEI] includes a brief update on nuclear energy infrastructure developments in Vietnam. In May and June 2008, I blogged about Vietnam's nuclear ambitions and legislative activities [an early prerequisite to the introduction of nuclear energy within any country]. These posts included some early timeline forecasts and capacity projects for the related projects. Well, what's happened in the past two and one-half years?

Quite a bit.

According to NEI, Vietnam has penned agreements with Atomstroyexport of Russia and a Japanese consortium. Atomstroyexport has been awarded a four-unit, 4,000 MWe site - Ninh Thuan 1. Reactors there are planned to commence operation in 2020, 2021, 2023, and 2024. The Japan won Ninh Thuan 2, similarly four units totalling 4,000 MWe to commence operation in 2021, 2022, 2024 and 2025.

Also reported by NEI is the use of the Vietnam project as a test case within a feasibility study of a new Vietnam-Japan, bi-lateral carbon credit system for nuclear power plants. Nuclear energy projects are not currently recognised for inclusion within the Kyoto Protocol Clean Development Mechanism.

1 comment:

  1. I don't believe in carbon credits but the Greens do. I think we should start on the presumption that nobody is entitled to emit any industrial CO2 therefore using less doesn't confer a credit. I wonder how the Greens would feel about Australian coal burners buying Vietnamese nuclear carbon credits.

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