CONSULTING

original plan. 105 “The national electricity development plan, approved by the government in
March 2016, envisioned the “first nuclear power plant put into operation in 2028”. 106
Rosatom has confirmed that Russia’s Ministry of Finance is prepared to finance at least 85 percent
of this first plant, and that Russia will supply the new fuel and take back spent fuel for the life of
the plant. An agreement for up to US$9 billion finance was signed in November 2011 with the
Russian government’s state export credit bureau, and a second US$0.5 billion agreement covered
the establishment of a nuclear science and technology center.
Like Turkey, Vietnam has also signed an intergovernmental agreement with Japan for the
construction of a second nuclear power plant, with two reactors projected to come on line in
2024–25. The agreement calls for assistance in conducting feasibility studies for the project, lowinterest
and preferential loans, technology transfer and training of human resources, and
cooperation in the waste treatment and stable supply of materials for the whole life of the project.
The delay in the ordering of the new nuclear units is not of concern due to a slower than expected
increase in electricity demand, according to the Director General of the Atomic Energy Agency.
However, other analysts have suggested that the slowdown in demand has given Vietnam a reason
to abandon its nuclear development program altogether. Nguyen Khac Nhan, who formerly taught
nuclear engineering at the Grenoble Institute of Technology in France and who has advised French
state utility EDF for three decades, stated in 2015: “The nuclear power projects will most certainly
be stopped.” 107
“Committed Plans”
In Egypt, the government’s Nuclear Power Plants Authority was established in the mid-1970s, and
plans were developed for 10 reactors by the end of the century. Despite discussions with Chinese,
French, German, and Russian suppliers, little development occurred for several decades. In
October 2006, the Minister for Energy announced that a 1000 MW reactor would be built, but this
was later expanded to four reactors by 2025, with the first one coming on line in 2019. In early
2010, a legal framework was adopted to regulate and establish nuclear facilities; however, an
international bidding process for the construction was postponed in February 2011 due to the
political situation. Since then, there have been various attempts and reports that a tender process
would be restarted, all of which have come to nothing. But Russia’s Rosatom determinedly
pursued its strategy of pushing “through a series of bilateral agreements, with each one more
detailed than the previous” so that “a commercial contract is ultimately inevitable”. 108 As a result,
in February 2015, Rosatom and Egypt’s Nuclear Power Plant Authority signed an agreement that
could lead to the construction and financing of two reactors and possibly two additional ones.
105 NIW, “Vietnam”, 11 December 2015.
106 VietNamNet, “Vietnam needs US$148 billion to develop national electricity until 2030”, 20 March 2016
see http://english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/society/152739/vietnam-needs-us-148-billion-to-develop-nationalelectricity-until-2030.html,
accessed 7 June 2016.
107 Beyond Nuclear, “Nguyen Khac Nhan: ‘the Vietnamese person who is most well-informed about nuclear
energy and most vehemently opposed to it’”, 28 April 2015, see http://www.beyondnuclear.org/otherregion/2015/4/28/nguyen-khac-nhan-the-vietnamese-person-who-is-most-well-info.html,
accessed 1 July 2016.
108 NIW, “Egypt: Moscow’s Push to Lock In Nuclear Contract”, 16 October 2015.
Mycle Schneider, Antony Froggatt et al. 49 World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2016