Why Kazakhstan has chosen to focus on nuclear power right now

Kazakhstan, tormented by atomic tests in the Soviet era, chose with a referendum to rely on nuclear power.However, the outcome of the vote is not convincing

The Kazakhstan decided to build one nuclear power plant.On 6 October 2024, citizens were called to express their opinion through a referendum, where yes prevailed with 71.12 percent of the votes.The plant should be built in the coming years on the southern shore of the lake Balkash, in the south-eastern region of the country.However, the project has raised criticism, not only for the risks associated with the construction of a nuclear power plant, but also for the ways in which the information campaign was managed before the vote in this country already tormented in the past by Soviet nuclear tests.

Soviet nuclear tests in Kazakhstan

August 29, 1949 is a black date in the history of the country.That day, in response to the new and destructive weapon dropped in 1945 by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet Union tested the first atomic bomb Soviet right among them steppes of Kazakhstan.Since then that land has been tormented by hundreds of nuclear explosions:in forty years, in the town of Semipalantinsk, now Semej, just 70 kilometers from a town, the Soviet Union conducted more than 450 nuclear tests.

The experiments went on for decades in absolute silence.People began to get cancer, women began to give birth to severely deformed children, and doctors were not allowed to publicize their diagnoses.It was only with the last president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, father of perestroika and glasnost, that the first information about what was happening began to leak out.

The Semipalatinsk nuclear range was closed on August 29, 1989.This is why every year, on 29 August, the International Day against Nuclear Tests is celebrated, promoted by the United Nations.

Because Kazakhstan now wants nuclear power

The Kazakhstan is one of the largest manufacturers of uranium:contributes to about 40 percent of global production and in 2021 has extracted 22,800 tons, consolidating its leadership in the market.

Currently all mined uranium is exported abroad, mainly to China, France, Russia and Canada.But sitting on a gold mine, Kazakhstan sees the development of a nuclear power plant as an investment for the future, as well as a way to reduce its dependence on nuclear power. fossil fuels.

Today, in fact, 70 percent of production The country's electricity is powered by coal.

Kazakhstan is among the top ten countries in the world for coal reserves and last year produced more than 112 million tons (1 percent less than in 2022).But in addition to being highly polluting, coal is still not enough to meet domestic needs electricity.In fact, Kazakhstan suffers from frequent power outages, and its power plants are unable to make up for this lack.

Hence the need to identify alternative sources of energy, a goal that Kazakhstan has set itself to achieve by 2050 to replace at least half of its current energy sources.

With the referendum on 6 October, the population chose to rely on nuclear power.But many experts say they are skeptical about the real reliability of the vote result.

A referendum on nuclear power with an unconvincing outcome

Kazakhstan is a country where the independence of the press and freedom of expression are strongly held limited.The international non-governmental organization Freedom House classified it as a “not free” country and Human Rights Watch writes that in Kazakhstan “freedom of speech and the right to peaceful protest are suppressed”.

In this context, the information campaign before the vote was dominated almost exclusively by the advantages deriving from the construction of a nuclear power plant, the cost of which is estimated at around 10-12 billion dollars.“Journalists who tried to conduct independent polls before the vote were silenced and fined – commented the Kazakh political scientist Dosym Satpaev —.There are no real indicators that allow us to really understand what the population's opinion is regarding the construction of a nuclear power plant.Let's only see the official figures.But they may not be true."

In addition to this, observers reported irregularities in some of the ten thousand polling stations set up for the referendum, and two days before the vote the authorities arrested at least 26 activists who expressed their opposition to the project.

Environmental risks 

The project also raises doubts due to its possible environmental consequences:the future power plant will in fact be built on the shores of the lake Balkash, the largest lake in all of Central Asia which is dangerously retreating.Human activity linked to intensive irrigation of fields combined with climate change is heavily reducing the supply of water, putting at risk, among other things, the livelihood of the three million inhabitants of the area who live mainly from fishing. It is estimated that Balkash could suffer a water shortage of around 2 billion cubic meters in 2030.

The construction of a nuclear power plant and the consequent need to use lake water to cool the reactors could weigh on theecosystem of Balkash, which has already been tried from pollution from industrial, agricultural and mining activities.

Moreover, according to some experts the risk of corruption linked to a project of this scale, the regulatory deficiencies that would compromise the safety of the plant, the excessive foreign debt that Kazakhstan could contract and the dependence on other countries for the management of the infrastructure are worrying.

Who is competing for the project

The president of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev he defined the power plant as the "largest project in the history of independent Kazakhstan", and added that the construction will be handled by "an international consortium made up of global companies equipped with cutting-edge technologies".

In reality, they are already in the running for construction Russia, China, France And South Korea.And there are those who are ready to bet that in the end the works will be entrusted to the Russian energy giant Rosatom, which among other things still controls a large share of Kazakhstan's uranium reserves.

If this were the case, the construction of the new nuclear power plant could further expand Moscow's influence on Kazakhstan, offering the Kremlin new economic resources which, in theory, could also be used to finance the war in Ukraine.