The Vietnam Nuclear Energy Institute and the US’ Westinghouse Power Company last week introduced AP 1000 nuclear power technology at a workshop in Hanoi.

According to Westinghouse, the advantages of this technology are that the production cost of generating nuclear power is very competitive and it is quite a bit safer than second generation technology.

In addition, with the small size and synchronous technology, nuclear power plants applying AP 1000 are simple to run and maintain. Nearly 50% of nuclear power plants in the world are using Westinghouse’s technology.

Speaking at the workshop, Deputy Minister of Science and Technology Le Dinh Tien said that to ensure energy security, Vietnam must consider nuclear power. However, nuclear power is a very sensitive industry because it is dangerous.

Power generation is a very new industry in Vietnam so according to Tien, Vietnam’s greatest difficulty is a shortage of qualified human resources.

“Training takes a long period. To have human resources for the nuclear power industry, we have to call for the participation of overseas Vietnamese who have worked in the nuclear power industry. We also have to use retired scientists because they are very experienced,” Tien said.

Professor Pham Duy Hien, former Director of the Vietnam Power Energy Institute, said: “I’ve waited for a long time for such a workshop. Previous ones didn’t provide me with new information like this one.”

Hien said it is necessary to have some more specialised workshops for scientists to learn more about AP 1000 technology.

Faced with threats of power shortages and the increasing prices of coal and oil, the Vietnamese government agreed to speed up and double the scale of the first nuclear power plant project in Ninh Thuan province from 2,000 to 4,000 MW.

VietNamNet/VNE