An agreement on atomic energy signed by India and Vietnam on 8 January this year has been curtailed by Vietnam.
The Memorandum of Understanding was much-reduced by Vietnam’s Communist Party Politburo, according to an official at Vietnam’s National Institute of Nuclear Energy. What remained was a much-shortened pact committing the two countries to co-operation in training for nuclear energy applications.
Energy concerns are front and centre in Vietnam, where consumption is growing at an estimated 12% annually.
An Indian energy official, A K Anand, said the two companies were continuing co-operation that began two years ago, and he said that Vietnam may consider building a nuclear plant in the next 15 years – scientists have submitted a master plan to government for nuclear energy development that includes a nuclear power plant by 2015-2017, according to Pham Van Lan, deputy director of the Atomic Research Institute in the town of Dalat since 1962.
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