Vietnam urges China to share information on its nuclear power plants

(VNF) - Vietnam has asked China for early cooperation in regular information sharing mechanisms regarding the nuclear projects.

Le Hai Binh, Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, said at a press briefing on October 13^th that Vietnam has asked China to build a system to provide regular updates on the three plants that went online last month in the provinces of Guangxi and Guangdong and on Hainan Island.

China's nuclear power development plan. (Photo: world-nuclear.org)

Countries building and operating their nuclear power plants need to comply with the Convention of Nuclear Safety and relevant regulations of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Binh said.

“Vietnam has asked the Chinese side to soon work together on a mechanism for regular exchanges of information on those plants,” he noted.

The plant in Guangxi is only 50 kilometers from the Vietnamese border and less than 500 kilometers from Hanoi.

The plants have put Vietnam on edge with the country still seeking funding to develop a radioactivity surveillance system in the north.

Vietnam and China are both members of the Convention on Nuclear Safety, under which a country is entitled to demand another to provide status updates on nuclear plants.

China plans to expand its nuclear power network to 170 plants with a combined capacity of 195,000 megawatts by 2050, according to the IAEA.

Vietnam plans to build its first nuclear power plants in the central province of Ninh Thuan with technical assistance from Russia and Japan.

But following the 2011 nuclear disaster in Japan, the Vietnamese government ordered relevant agencies to thoroughly review safety measures and last year announced that it would delay work on the first nuclear plant until 2020./.

( Compiled by VNF )