Vietnam Nuclear Power Plan: NGOs Question Cost Estimates
Media Release
NGOs Question Cost Estimate for Vietnam's Nuclear Power Plan
Tokyo, January 6, 2010:
NGOs from Japan, the USA and Europe today sent a letter to Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung questioning the price estimate on which the Vietnamese National Assembly's approval of government plans to build four nuclear power reactors was based.
Vietnam's National Assembly approved the plan on November 25, 2009. According to media reports the nuclear power plants were estimated to cost around 200 trillion Vietnamese dong, or US$11.3 billion. This works out to a cost of $2,825 per kilowatt.
Hideyuki Ban of Tokyo-based Citizens' Nuclear Information Center (CNIC), Michael Mariotte, of US-based Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) and Peer de Rijk of Amsterdam-based World Information Service on Energy (WISE) said, "Even if low labor costs in Vietnam are taken into account, we doubt very much whether Vietnam could build a nuclear power plant so cheaply."
Recent estimates for the overnight cost of constructing nuclear power plants are in the order of US$4,000 per kilowatt. In recent months some countries and power companies that intended to order new nuclear power plants suspended their plans when they discovered how much they would cost (for example, Turkey and Canada).
The letter provided a selection of recent cost estimates for various types of power plant in a range of countries. The estimates illustrate clearly that the cost anticipated by the Vietnamese National Assembly is very low.
In view of the discrepancy between the reported cost estimate for Vietnam's planned nuclear power plants and international cost estimates, the NGOs recommended that, before committing themselves any further, the Vietnamese government and National Assembly should thoroughly review recent literature relating to the cost of constructing nuclear power plants.
Click here for a copy of the letter.
Contacts
Philip White, International Liaison Officer, Citizens' Nuclear Information Center (CNIC)
Hideyuki Ban, Co-Director, Citizens' Nuclear Information Center (CNIC)
T: +81-3-3357-3800 F: +81-3-3357-3801
Michael Mariotte, Executive Director, Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS)
T: +1 301-270-6477 F: +1 301-270-4291
Peer de Rijk, Executive Director, World Information Service on Energy (WISE)
T: +31 20 6126368 F: +31 20 6892179
