The Vietnamese government has decided to cancel the Ninh Thuan Nuclear Power Plant project as the country will not face a power shortage as previously predicted, while the plant would face difficulties competing with other power sources, an official said on November 9, 2016.
Talking with the media, Chairman of the Electricity of Vietnam, Duong Quang Thanh, said that the government will propose the cancellation of the project to the National Assembly on November 10, 2016.
No nuclear power plant has been included the new power plan which runs until 2030 which has just been approved by the prime minister, Thanh confirmed.
The price of nuclear power is now much more expensive than that of other sources such as coal or oil so a nuclear power plant will not be able to compete with other options, Thanh explained.
He said that the power growth rate in a recent survey is much lower than when done in 2009 when the project was proposed.
The latest survey predicted that power growth rate will be at 11% in the 2016-2020 period and fall to 7-8% in the 2021-2030 period. So there will be no power shortage in the country in the near future, he confirmed.
Ninh Thuan Nuclear Power Plant project was approved in late 2009 with estimated investment of USD 10 billion, including two plants with a combined capacity of 4,000 megawatts, meeting 3-4 percent of the country’s total electricity demand.
Construction on the first plant was originally planned to start in 2014 with technical assistance from Russia’s state nuclear firm Rosatom. A Japanese consortium was also picked to develop the second plant.
But following the nuclear disaster in Japan’s Fukushima in 2011, the government ordered agencies to thoroughly review safety measures and last year announced that it would delay work on the first plant until 2020.
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