Scarred by Soviet-era nuclear testing, Kazakhstan is poised to embrace atomic energy — with help from Russia

Story by Diana Kruzman for The Beet. Edited by Eilish Hart.

This story first appeared in The Beet, a weekly email dispatch from Meduza covering Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Sign up here to get the next issue delivered directly to your inbox.

Last August, a minivan carrying a group of environmentalists, journalists, and civil society activists arrived in Ulken, a village on the shores of Kazakhstan’s Lake Balkhash. They had driven all night from Almaty, the country’s largest city about 330 kilometers (205 miles) to the southeast, to speak out against what they saw as an existential threat to the lake and the communities living along it. The government had announced plans to make Ulken the site of independent Kazakhstan’s first nuclear power plant — and at a public discussion that day, the activists wanted to warn residents of the possible consequences.

Upon arriving at the meeting, however, the organizers blocked the group from entering the building. “Locals were yelling at us,” Anar Akkozy, a journalist and anti-nuclear activist who attended, told The Beet. When they were finally able to enter, the organizers refused to yield the floor to an ecologist and an energy expert who opposed the plant’s construction plans. The meeting devolved into shouting and shoving as the activists demanded a microphone and were physically restrained by police officers.

Akkozy believes the meeting’s goal was not to hold an objective discussion on the merits and drawbacks of nuclear power, but for President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s government to garner support for its plans to construct the plant in Ulken.“They’re advertising the NPP as if it’s clean, like it’s some little treat we all really need,” Akkozy said. “But the people are against it,” she added.

In the year since, further “listening sessions” around the country have attempted to dispel concerns about the risks of nuclear power and educate residents about nuclear safety, in preparation for a nationwide referendum on the plant’s construction slated for October 6. Further repressions have continued in parallel. In August, authorities detained anti-nuclear activist Meiirkhan Abdimanapov in Almaty, pulling him off of a bus headed for a town hall meeting in the capital, Astana. In September, another activist, Abzal Dostiyarov, was fined for questioning the planned referendum in a YouTube video, which the government deemed an illegal poll.

Nuclear stigma

The proposal to construct the nuclear power plant has divided opinion in Kazakhstan, where fears of nuclear accidents and their health and environmental consequences run deep. Nevertheless, the government-affiliated Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies found in an August poll that more than half of respondents support the construction of a nuclear power plant, believing it would help solve the country’s chronic energy shortages; 32.5 percent were opposed, while 14.4 percent were undecided.

Though this could be the first nuclear plant in Central Asia since Soviet times, atomic energy isn’t entirely new in Kazakhstan; the country had a nuclear-powered desalination plant operating in the western city of Aktau until 1999, and it still operates three research reactors in the northern town of Kurchatov, where the Soviet Union based its nuclear weapons testing program until widespread protests shut it down in 1991. Kazakhstan’s first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, proposed building a nuclear power plant to supply electricity more than 20 years ago, but stepped down in 2019 without bringing it to fruition. His successor, Tokayev, then began pushing the idea forward in earnest, announcing plans for a national referendum on the issue last year.

Kazakhstan is rich in the elements needed to generate nuclear power, holding 12 percent of the world’s uranium resources. Tokayev hopes to harness the power of this “peaceful atom” to develop the country’s economy and reduce reliance on fuel imports from its neighbors. The country faces severe energy shortages, leading to blackouts during periods of high demand, while climate change makes steady access to hydropower resources more uncertain.

Although fossil fuels power Kazakhstan’s energy grid almost entirely, Tokayev has acknowledged that meeting the country’s obligations to reduce emissions under the Paris Agreement will require stepping away from coal, oil, and natural gas. The government aims to draw five percent of the nation’s electricity from nuclear power by 2035. “Given the growing global energy deficit, we are in dire need of reliable and environmentally friendly energy sources,” Tokayev told parliament on September 2, announcing the referendum date. Nuclear power, he said, “is capable of largely satisfying the rapidly growing needs of our economy.”

The plan has many supporters. “For Kazakhstan, nuclear energy isn’t something new and unfamiliar,” political scientist Daniyar Ashimbaev wrote on his Telegram channel in August. “This is a working sector that can and should benefit the national economy.”

Nuclear power critics, meanwhile, argue that the country should focus on revamping its electric infrastructure — which loses up to 15 percent of its power due to leakage — while building out significantly more renewable energy such as wind and solar. Cooling reactors also requires large amounts of water, raising concerns about the impact on fragile wetlands and the already shrinking Lake Balkhash. Moreover, officials have yet to present any plans for disposing of future radioactive waste. Opponents also point to the dangers of nuclear meltdowns, such as the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan and the 1986 Chernobyl explosion in Ukraine.

Even more salient for most Kazakhs are memories of the more than 450 nuclear tests carried out at the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site, which spread radioactive fallout across 18,500 square kilometers (7,140 square miles) and resulted in elevated rates of cancer, congenital disabilities, and other health issues that persist to this day.

According to proponents of nuclear power, such as Dinara Ermakova, an engineer and expert in nuclear waste management from Kazakhstan who now works in the United States, these fears have spread in a vacuum of information about nuclear safety. Ermakova understands the emotional response to any mention of atomic power, even when it’s not used for weapons testing; she herself grew up hearing the phrase “nuclear is bad,” but eventually realized that its “civil purpose” could be separated from its “defense purpose,” she said.

“Nuclear holds a stigma for the older generation, who lived through the Cold War and have negative perceptions of the nuclear industry,” Ermakova told The Beet. The nuclear tests at Semipalatinsk, she added, are “a deep wound that was never truly addressed.”

But the fears about nuclear waste disposal and power plant accidents are overblown, she said, as a lack of accurate information about the atomic industry leaves room for alarmism. Current nuclear waste storage protocols are secure enough to withstand natural disasters and prevent the release of radioactive materials, Ermakova explained, while safety standards at nuclear power plants have vastly improved since the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters. The International Atomic Energy Agency would also oversee the plant, conducting inspections to ensure it’s constructed and operated properly.

Bending the levers of power

Further problems may arise depending on who is selected to build the plant. Four companies are under consideration: China’s CNNC, South Korea’s KHNP, France’s EDF, and Russia’s Rosatom — all majority or wholly state-owned nuclear energy corporations. Members of the European Parliament have called for sanctions against the most likely contender, Rosatom, over Russia’s war against Ukraine, which would prevent Kazakhstan from importing the Russian parts it needs to build the plant.

Despite the possibility of sanctions, Rosatom has already signaled that it intends to build small-capacity nuclear power plants in nearby Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. In May, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev announced that Rosatom would construct up to six nuclear reactors with a total generating capacity of 330 MW near Lake Tuzkan in the central Jizzakh region. These small modular reactors, which are faster and cheaper to build than large nuclear power plants, will mainly supply thermal power for industrial purposes like metallurgy, rather than electricity. (Although Uzbekistan’s government announced a similar deal to build a much larger 2.4 GW facility in 2018, the project has since stalled.)

“Nearly all the world’s leading countries ensure their energy security and sustainable development with the help of nuclear energy,” Mirziyoyev said during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in May.

The project’s location — just 55 kilometers (34 miles) from the border with Kazakhstan’s densely populated Turkestan region — has drawn concern from some of the same environmental and anti-nuclear activists protesting the push for nuclear power in Kazakhstan, who say that they too would suffer if an accident were to take place at the Jizzakh site. Citing the risk of earthquakes, which frequently hit the Jizzakh region, they’ve called for a transnational movement opposing nuclear energy in Central Asia, though such a coalition has been slow to emerge in Uzbekistan’s more repressive political environment.

Rosatom’s ambitions are not limited to Central Asia. The company has made inroads in countries like Bangladesh, Mongolia, and Ghana, announcing deals or memorandums of understanding to construct both small and large nuclear power plants. In doing so, it’s helping Russia practice “nuclear diplomacy,” strengthening Moscow’s foreign relationships by offering expertise in building out nuclear energy capacity around the world, said Dimitris Symeonidis, an energy policy and geopolitical risk analyst based in the Netherlands.

“It’s a continuation and perpetuation of the energy dependence of these countries — not so much in terms of resources, but in terms of infrastructure,” Symeonidis explained. Despite being able to provide its own fuel, Kazakhstan, for example, would rely on Russia for the technology and expertise needed to operate the plant. Not to mention the $10 to $12 billion the government is expected to allocate for its construction.

Activists who oppose the plant, like Akkozy, say that this increased dependence will be all the more problematic as Russia continues to wage war on Ukraine and attempts to pull Central Asian countries closer into its orbit. “It will be a way for them to control us,” Akkozy told The Beet.

In theory, all of these issues should be aired in the lead-up to the October 6 referendum, but Akkozy believes the general public hasn’t had a chance to hear critical opinions about the nuclear power plant. Akkozy also said she was blocked from posting petitions against the plant’s construction on the government’s online petition platform, while other activists who attempted to speak out at town hall meetings have been silenced or prevented from attending.

“Frankly speaking, we do not believe that the referendum will be fair,” Akkozy said. “They hold all the levers of power, and they are already bending them against us.”

Hello, I’m Eilish Hart, the editor of The Beet. Thanks for taking the time to read our work! Our newsletter delivers underreported stories like this one to subscribers every Thursday. Like all of Meduza’s reporting, it’s free to read, but relies on support from readers like you. Please consider donating to our crowdfunding campaign.

Story by Diana Kruzman for The Beet

Edited by Eilish Hart