Russia willing to build nuclear power plant in Vietnam: diplomat

Russia stands ready to construct a nuclear power plant in Vietnam if requested by the Vietnamese government after an eight-year pause, says a Russian diplomat.

Russia is a leading nuclear power country, possessing sufficient capacities and expertise to carry out a nuclear power project in Vietnam, said Ivan Sergeevich Nesterov, Chargé d'affaires of the Russian Federation in Vietnam, in response to The Investor’s queries at a press briefing in Hanoi on Thursday.

Russia cooperated with Vietnam in preparing for the construction of the Ninh Thuan 1 nuclear power plant in the central province of Ninh Thuan before it was halted in 2016.

The Vietnamese government on Wednesday asked for the parliament’s go-ahead to reactivate the Ninh Thuan nuclear power plant project, which was paused in 2016.

The move came two days after the Party Central Committee agreed to resume the project and continue to study a national nuclear energy program to ensure energy security.

“We are always ready to join the deployment of such a crucial high-tech project if the Vietnamese side asks us to,” Nesterov noted.

Adding on to Nesterov, Evgeny Alexandrovich Primakov, director of the Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States, Compatriots Living Abroad and International Humanitarian Cooperation, known as Rossotrudnichestvo, said nuclear power is among clean energies, despite the existence of ungrounded concerns.

He added that his agency actively cooperates with state-owned Rosatom to train high-tech and green energy experts.

A large number of Vietnamese students are pursuing high-quality energy studies in Russia. They are poised to get rewarding jobs in the green and clean energy field in Vietnam after graduating in Russia, he said.