Jan 13 - BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific

The first turnkey nuclear electric power plant will be built in Vietnam in 2015 and will be put into operation by the year 2020.

This is one of the key projects of Vietnam's strategy on nuclear energy utilization, which has just been approved by the Government. In its "strategy on nuclear energy utilization for peaceful purposes till the year 2020", Vietnam has planned to increase the nuclear electric power capacity to 11 per cent of the total national electric grids in 2025, and to 25-30 per cent by the years 2040- 2050.

It is reported that currently usage of nuclear power energy accounted for more than 16 per cent of the total electric power capacity in the world. Worthy of note is that profit derived from using of radiating energy is seven-fold larger than the volume of money invested in such project. In some areas the profit is about 40- fold more than the investment volume. In addition to the nuclear- electric power, nuclear energy is also widely used in other areas of the daily life such as in the public health, agricultural, geological, and mineral ore exploration domains.

In Vietnam, the public health sector uses almost 90 per cent of the nation's radiating energy capacity, while the rest is used by the industrial and other sectors. As a result, in its strategy on nuclear energy usage, Vietnam has planned to produce 50 per cent of the volume of radioactive isotopes and radioactivity required by provinces and cities having nuclear medicine and radioactivity treatment facilities by the year 2010, and up to 100 per cent by 2020.