Vietnam planning to crank up Russian-subsidized nuclear study center by 2025

Vietnam planning to crank up Russian-subsidized nuclear study center by 2025

Vietnam is planning to develop a nuclear science and technology center using
a $500 million loan from Russia over the next seven years.

Tran Chi Thanh, director of the Vietnam Atomic Energy Institute, said the
center will help increase Vietnam's expertise and ability to operate nuclear
power plants, local media reported.

"It will help Vietnam conduct modern studies and boost the application of
nuclear energy in socio-economic sectors," he said, as cited by the Saigon
Times.

The project will be split across two sites in Hanoi and the Central
Highlands town of Da Lat, said Thanh. The Da Lat site will include a 15
megawatt reactor, 30 times the capacity of the country's only nuclear
reactor that was built in 1963.

He said the reactor will produce radioactive isotopes for medical purposes
as the existing plant can only meet 30 percent of the country's demand.

The center is the first major nuclear project discussed publicly in Vietnam
since the country announced it was scrapping plans for its first nuclear
power plants in the central province of Ninh Thuan last November, seven
years after they were approved.

The decision was due to economic reasons, not safety or technological
issues, officials said at the time.

The power plants would have cost VND400 trillion ($17.6 billion), but the
country needs to focus on infrastructure development at the moment, they
said.

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bsidized-nuclear-study-center-by-2025-3637185.html

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John Diecker
APT Consulting Group Co., Ltd.

www.aptthailand.com