[Original Article]
http://news.khan.co.kr/kh_news/khan_art_view.html?artid=201708112117045&code=990304
http://cafe.daum.net/earthlifesilkroad/i6jy/67
Title : Walking pass No-Nuke Vietnam
I left Seoul in early May to start a pilgrimage and now I walked about 1400 km. A few days ago in Ninh Binh, a rich city south of Hanoi, Vietnam, I had an interesting experience while changing the shoe soles. Not long ago, when I went to Suwon Station, an elderly man handcrafted the bottom of the shoe, and the young man in the city was doing this with an electric motor. I waited for a while due to the power failure. I had two thoughts in my mind then. One is the discomfort of the world without electricity and the use of electrical machinery rather than by hand.
In Vietnam, which is the fifth country course of the New Silk Road for Life and No-Nukes, which is the pilgrimage walking 11,000km to Rome for two years during my unintentional temporary retirement period. There is something I want to find out in Vietnam. Last year, the Vietnamese Parliament decided to nullify the introduction of nuclear power plants.
This decision is a big news for the world after the announcements to close the nuclear power plants in Europe, such as Germany and Italy, and the nuclear power plants in Taiwan. I heard that Japan's public-private partnership group has lost a lot, which has invested W28bn in order to export to Vietnam. I wanted to hear stories directly from the people I meet on the Silk Road, but I could not do so. However, various contexts were identified.
One of the probable backgrounds is the sea pollution incident in the last April. Wastewater from a Taiwan steel company near Danang has killed hundreds of thousands of sea fish. Society turned upside down. It is a country where citizens do not voluntarily protest, but this problem was different. Four days of violent demonstrations took place in the capital Hanoi. It was also suspected that the controversy had been made by anti-government forces. After the Vietnam War in 1960 and the Vietnamese War with China in 1979, the Vietnamese government experienced considerable tension.
Then, in the fall, the introduction of the nuclear power plant that the Vietnamese government had decided earlier turned into a stop. The plan to build the nuclear plants in 2009 was to cope with the rapid economic growth. The Vietnamese government suddenly decided to change the direction.
According to the government's report, Le Hong Tinh, Vice President of the Science and Technology and Environment Committee, said in an interview with the Vietnamese media that the first electricity demand, which was predicted to increase by 22% annually due to the pace of economic growth, has now changed to 7-8%. The second is that the energy conservation technology is well developed and the energy supply is sufficient. Third, the burden of the national debt due to large-scale facility investment is large, so it is better to turn this into a sequential investment in other energy sectors. Fourth, energy sources will become more and more expensive. Lastly, nuclear waste cannot be solved. This is where I have found the key. The point is that it is possible to respond to electricity demand without nuclear power. Vietnam is now a clean country without nuclear waste.
There is a bigger reason which is not visible with naked eye. It is the nuclear power plant risk. Security is of utmost importance for Vietnam, which has been fighting against the great powers for half a century. Nuclear reactors are problematic even if only the power to the device that cools the spent fuel rods is turned off. If there is a war, explosion is likely to occur even if it is not directly attacked. A fatal problem with Chernobyl or Fukushima nuclear accidents is that soil is contaminated for a long time. It is a situation that I do not want to imagine as an agricultural country. 'Discomfort from having alternative' cannot go beyond the 'threat of survival'.
How about us? What is worse than some conservative media that emphasizes security and support nuclear power plants. What is conservative? Professor Park Jong-un, a nuclear engineering, raised his voice against those who shout 'cheap nuclear power plant'. "If nuclear waste disposal costs and the costs of preventing nuclear power plant accidents are reflected at the level of other countries, the cost of generating nuclear power is much higher. It is also a problem to exaggerate the nuclear industry, which has no source technology, as a growth industry.” Why don’t they see this common sense fact?
I have a recommendation to them. Come to Vietnam and learn what common sense and security are.
[Photo : A young couple got down from the motorcycle and gave me bottled water, near Hanoi.]
translated by IM Kyung-bin and PARK Jun-kyu