Ninh Thuan Province has asked the government to relocate the country’s first two nuclear plants that are proposed to be built there for reasons it has declined to make public.
Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai has asked the Ministry of Industry and Trade to study the request but a spokesman for the central province, Le Van Binh, refused to reveal details.
The National Assembly last year approved construction of two plants with a capacity of more than 4,000 MW each in Thuan Nam and Ninh Hai Districts.
Work on the first, initially estimated to cost $3.4 billion, will begin in 2014, with its first unit beginning operation in 2020, according to the Electricity of Vietnam.
But Russian State Nuclear Energy Corp Rosatom, which won the bid to build it, has increased the estimate to $8 billion.
The Russian group will also set up a center for training personnel and an atomic energy research institute, Vietnam News Agency quoted Rosatom chairman Sergey Kirienko as telling President Nguyen Minh Triet at a meeting in Hanoi last Wednesday.
It will also initially train around 70 Vietnamese, Kirienko added.
Vietnam has already sent 40 technicians and experts to Russia for training while seven Vietnamese universities have started courses in the field.
By 2030 the country hopes to have eight nuclear plants to meet its skyrocketing electricity needs, according to the government website.
Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has approved a sum of VND3-trillion (US$153.9 million) to train and develop human resources for the atomic energy industry by 2020.