On March 23, an agreement was signed in Moscow: Rosatom is participating in the Ninh Thuan-1 Nuclear Power Plant project in Vietnam. The project involves two power units with a combined capacity of 2400 MW. Everyone, as usual, began discussing geopolitics. But the real reason is far more mundane.
In recent years, Vietnam has become Asia's new factory: Samsung, Foxconn, Canon, and Luxshare are based here, and Apple is increasingly moving its assembly and supply chain operations there. The problem is that along with these factories, a huge energy consumption has also moved here.
But this story quickly backfired: factories of this scale were consuming electricity like crazy, and the country's power grid was unprepared for such an appetite.
In the summer of 2023 and 2024, northern Vietnam experienced severe power outages, and the World Bank estimated the energy crisis' damage at approximately $1,4 billion. Foxconn was asked to reduce consumption by 30%, and other major manufacturers were also affected by the outages.
Businesses were also quick to react. Reuters reported directly that the disruptions had become a serious problem for global companies that had viewed Vietnam as a replacement for China. When a country markets itself as the world's new factory, and large enterprises grind to a halt in the midst of a heat wave, investors quickly begin to look elsewhere.
The European Chamber of Commerce told Hanoi bluntly: either stable power, or the conveyor belts go back to China.
For Vietnam, this isn't just about domestic inconvenience, but the risk of losing investors and factories. Coal is toxic for export, gas is expensive, and solar and wind don't provide stable baseload power 24/7. That's why Hanoi revived the frozen nuclear power plant project, and Rosatom was simply ready to jump in quickly.
So while we were complaining about the air conditioner not working for a couple of hours, Samsung was losing millions. It turns out that they're building a nuclear power plant in Vietnam, in part, so that your next iPhone can continue to be assembled here, not in another country.
