Hanoi - A French nuclear power export consortium made its
case Thursday for Vietnam to turn to France for the two nuclear power
plants it plans to build in the next decade as firms from five
countries gathered at a nuclear power trade fair in Hanoi to promote
their wares.
'In contrast to certain large countries, we have never had a major
nuclear accident with any consequences for the local population,'
said France's ambassador to Vietnam, Herve Bolot. 'That's an
extremely strong argument.'
Companies from China, France, Japan, South Korea and Russia
exhibited at the trade fair, hoping to build their corporate presence
as Vietnam takes the initial steps toward selecting a partner for its
nuclear power ambitions.
The country has declared it would build two nuclear power plants,
each featuring two 1,000-megawatt reactors, with construction slated
to begin in 2013 and power generation commencing by 2020.
Vietnam's fast-growing economy is creating demand for electricity
far in excess of current capacity. The country has total installed
power-generating capacity of about 13 gigawatts but plans to more
than double that to 33 gigawatts by 2015.
Vietnam's National Assembly is set to pass a new law on nuclear
power before the end of its current session in June, paving the way
for a call for bids. Revenues for foreign companies could be huge:
One newly constructed 1,650-megawatt nuclear plant, France's
Flamanville 3, cost 3.3 billion euros (5.1 billion dollars).
Nuclear power providers from Canada and the United States have
also expressed interest in Vietnam's plans.
At a press conference at Hanoi's French cultural centre,
representatives of the French nuclear power industry said France,
Vietnam's former colonial ruler, has a uniquely integrated approach
that treats nuclear power in the context of social, political and
environmental needs. A new government agency, the French
International Nuclear Energy Agency, sends experts to collaborate
with foreign governments on feasibility studies, safety concerns and
other issues.
'We put together the ensemble of the expertise France has built up
in recent decades for the benefit of countries who want to exploit
nuclear power,' agency deputy director Philippe Pallier said.
A country might go on to place orders from French companies like
nuclear power plant operator EDF or reactor builder AREVA, or it
might order elsewhere.
In late May, EDF plans to co-host a seminar on 'public acceptance
of nuclear power' with the Vietnamese power company EVN for the local
population in Ninh Thuan, the coastal province selected as the site
of the first Vietnamese nuclear plant.
Bolot said the French approach was 'to consult the population very
early, so that they do not get the impression that in this area,
which affects the social structure for a long time, a schema or a
consensus is being imposed on them.'
Other countries contending for Vietnam's nuclear business have
more purely technological pitches.
Tomonori Ito of Toshiba's nuclear energy division said Japan's
nuclear power industry was more privatized and less
government-organized than France's. He said the Japanese bid would
involve a consortium of private companies, including Toshiba, Hitachi
and Mitsubishi.
Tomonori said Japan's comparative advantage was that, like France,
it had continued building nuclear plants for the past 20 years while
construction in countries like the United States halted. He said
Japan could not compete on price with companies from China or Russia
but had higher quality.
In Su Yang, a senior engineer at the Korean Power Engineering Co,
said South Korea had been positioning itself by sending experts to
support Vietnam's initial feasibility studies for the plants. He,
too, said South Korea would be unable to underbid the Chinese nuclear
power company China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group, which had one of
the most impressive exhibitions at the trade fair.
The smallest booth at the fair belonged to the Russian atomic
energy company Atomstroi. The company suffers from a poor reputation
in Vietnam and elsewhere because of associations with the 1986
Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
Pallier said many Russian nuclear plants had serious safety
concerns and still used the graphite-cooled model employed at
Chernobyl rather than more modern, high-pressure, water-cooled
reactors.
But Atomstroi's Natalia Gerasimova said it now built
high-pressure, water-cooled reactors like everyone else.
'We don't built graphite reactors anymore,' Gerasimova said. 'Our
expertise is in decommissioning graphite reactors. The UK is quite
interested in that expertise.'
Gerasimova said Atomstroi's advantage lay in having built more
nuclear power plants in foreign countries for longer than any other
country.
'We've built 48 reactors outside Russia,' she said. 'The first one
was in the former East Germany, and it was built, I believe, in the
time of Jesus Christ.'
USA
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