Sunday 4 May 2008

Vietnam progresses down the nuclear path


In regional news, Vietnam is looking to install several nuclear plants in the coming decades. An investment plan is being developed for submission later this year. Construction of Vietnam's first nuclear plant is planned for 2012-14 with operation to commence prior to 2020 in the central Ninh Thuan province. In parallel the government is working on legislation to create legal foundation for the construction of the plant.

The national electricity body, EVN is planning to construct 3 nuclear power plants with a total capacity of approximately 4,000 MWe. In addition to the 3 nukes, 25 other large plants are planned by EVN to add a total of 33,200 MWe.

Vietnam is already in the midst of an energy expansion program. 45 power stations are currently under construction around the country. The output of these stations, all to be operational by decade's end, is 14.6 MWe.

More information may be found here.

3 comments:

  1. You wrote: "The output of these stations, all to be operational by decade's end, is 14.6 MWe."

    Did you mean 14.6 GWe?

    14.6 MWe is not very much power for 25 stations.

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  2. Hi Rod,

    Yes, it made me look twice as well, but if you follow the link at the bottom of the post you'll see the reported numbers are correct.

    And it's not 25, it's 45. Probably a collection of small diesels that they are taking credit for.

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  3. So the total is 33GWs per the article. They also have a lot of hydro potential which I hope is exploited somehow, especially regionally in an all-Indochina scheme of some sort.

    I'm hoping that if in 5 years the 4GW of nuclear is succesfull, they will think about tripling it or more. The idea is that the first plant with be for training operators and engineers, along with, I'm sure, requent trips to China.

    Nuclear could be kind of/sort of integrated with the S. Chinese grid if the Vietnamese play their cards right and develop more nuclear in the north of the country. I hope so.

    David

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