Vietnam Abandons Nuclear Power Plan

Vietnam's National Assembly voted on Tuesday to scrap plans to build two multi-billion-dollar nuclear power plants with Russia and Japan, after officials cited lower demand forecasts, rising costs and safety concerns. The vote to abandon what would have been the country's first nuclear energy project deals is a blow to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's drive to begin exporting reactors after the Fukushima disaster, Reuters reported. In November 2009 Vietnam approved plans for the two plants and awarded construction to Russia's Rosatom and a consortium of Japanese firms led by private utility Japan Atomic Power. Scrapping the project is a further setback for the nuclear industry as countries from Germany to Indonesia have decided to either pull out of nuclear energy or cancel development plans in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011, the world's worst since Chernobyl in 1986.