having them moved away from that nuclear power plant is a big relief for Vietnamese people already. This is still a huge leap, I would say. Basically, they are just following what China is doing (slowly) so if renewable energy could make a huge impact in China, they might accelerate the program.

> having them moved away from that nuclear power plant is a big relief for Vietnamese people already.

Why so exactly? It would have massively reduced emissions to have that nuclear power plant, now instead you have a vague promise they put on 2050, purposely far enough that it does not bind the government to anything.

Vietnam doesn't have a good track record on public infrastructure projects. Due to corruption and cronyism they have a hard time even building roads to spec. The prospect of running a nuclear reactor in that environment is horrifying.

I'm a Vietnamese and your 2 words "corruption" and "cronyism" are 100% correct for Viet Nam.

People are terrified of high visibility catastrophic risk (ie nuclear meltdown) in a way that they cannot get concerned about fossil fuel pollution. It may cause millions of deaths, but they'll mostly go unattributed and certainly not sensationally reported

.. assuming the nuclear plant got built on time and on budget.

Exactly, considering the nuclear power plants where a vague promise from 2007 to have a nuclear power plant at all. A promise that has now been revoked.

Now let's see if solar can meet it's promises.

Well it all really depends on how government in Vietnam take actions to that, as far as I know, Vietnam is also one of the most corrupted Government in SEA. I think that supports your case.

I would be surprised if they changed their mind, 3% in 12 years is already not much so that's definitely achievable.

Also we shouldn't forget we're talking about Vietnam. A country that is expected to follow slower (because it's not technologically advanced like some European countries or North America). Them having any kind of goal is a good sign, even though it might not be very ambitious in our understanding. Goals can be adjusted.

Actually I'd expect developing nations to be the first in adopting a clean energy grid. They have massively rising demand, so they're building new power plants all the time and don't have vested interests trying to milk every penny out of old coal plants. They also benefit from technological advances that countries with aging power infrastructure can't take advantage of. It's not like they're forced to re-live the industrial revolution like it happened in Europe. It's perfectly possible to leapfrog to carbon neutral solutions.

Developing nations are generally poor compared to developed countries (duh). So they might not be able to afford energy sources with high upfront costs like nuclear, solar, or wind.

If you ignore externalities, coal is likely the cheapest, unfortunately.

This is exactly what DIDN'T happen with, say, telecom networks. Developing countries skipped directly to mobile telecom, allowing them to save a lot of money by avoiding the upfront cost of building a wired telecom infrastructure.

I agree with you that poorer developing nations will want to generally avoid high upfront costs to new energy (if they can). Doesn't building new coal plants present high upfront cost just the same?

Yes. A modern, efficient coal power plant has to be large and takes a while to build. Solar and wind can be built incrementally.

The upfront costs of wind or solar are about the same as building a coal or gas turbine power plant and have far less ongoing costs.

Really not sure why people parrot these falsehoods that are easily proven wrong.

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/generatorcosts/#total1

That's an interesting point. It's rather like the leapfrog to cellphones without intermediate steps.

No matter what tech is used, it'll be obsolete at some point.

This could be kind of like how a lot of developing countries have excellent cellular phone networks, having mostly skipped the expensive commitment to wire.

You're absolutely correct, I didn't really think about that.

I wonder how the math works out in terms of mass photovolatics and some sort of night power solution (sufficent wind, pumped storage, or other) vs an expensive nuclear plant at this point.

All nuclear plants are expensive at this point. Until you get modularized reactors that don't face political/public backlash, you'll not see many nuclear facilities built outside of China. Even the nuclear plants we have built in the USA, they are expensive to maintain but provide carbon-free energy, so some true climate hawks are for subsidizing them. As far as new-builds go, look at the absolutely terrible debacle in South Carolina, where the project will costs billions extra and all of the extra comes from the rate payers, not from those who ignorantly assumed they'd be able to pull off a cost-effective nuclear plant today.

Not totally carbon free. Mining uranium still emits carbon, so too the rest if the fuel cycle. It certainly is very low carbon.

What I meant with my comment is I suspect they don't consider solar seriously either, it might just be a PR issue. 3% in 12 years is seriously not much.