A nuclear power plant in Kazakhstan will be built in the village of Ulken on the shore of Lake Balkhash
Photo: Alexey Rezvykh / Shutterstock
Kazakhstan has decided on the choice of a site for the construction of a nuclear power plant in the country. The nuclear power plant will be built in the village of Ulken, located on the shore of the large lake Balkhash. The choice of the site for the construction of the nuclear power plant was announced by the head of the Samruk-Kazyna fund, Almasadam Satkaliyev, Sputnik Kazakhstan reports.
Ulken is a ghost village, many houses here have never been inhabited by residents. The settlement was founded in 1984 for the workers of the future South Kazakhstan State District Power Plant, but later plans for the construction of the enterprise were curtailed. As a result, Ulken became a small fishing village, from 1999 to 2009 its population decreased by half.
Contractors from China, Russia and France are ready to take over nuclear power plants in Kazakhstan – the corresponding proposals have already been received in the republic, Satkaliev said. Whose technologies will be chosen in Kazakhstan is still unknown. “When making decisions, the entire spectrum will be taken into account – the safety of the technologies used, the number of such best practices for operating nuclear reactors built, as well as the possibility of fuel localization in Kazakhstan,” the head of the fund explained.
The intention to build a nuclear power plant in Kazakhstan was announced earlier by the former president of the Central Asian republic, Nursultan Nazarbayev. The reason for the construction of the station is the growth of electricity consumption in the region. The deficit is observed both in Kazakhstan and in neighboring China.
Earlier in Belarus, regulatory authorities approved the physical start-up of the second power unit of the Belarusian NPP. It is planned to load fuel into the reactor in 2021, and the unit itself will be launched in 2022.
