Construction of building for low enriched uranium bank starts in Kazakhstan
ASTANA. Aug 26 (Interfax) - The construction of a building for the low enriched uranium (LEU) bank has started on the premises of the Ulba Metallurgical Plant in Ust-Kamenogorsk, Deputy Chairman of the Atomic and Energy Supervision and Control Committee of Kazakhstan's Energy Ministry Timur Zhantikin said.
On Thursday, the first brick was laid down, the building will be radiation-proof, Zhantikin said.
Zhantikin noted that the bank security personnel will be fully provided by the Kazakh side and no foreign guards will be hired.
For his part, Kazakhstan'd Ambassador to Austria and Slovenia Kairat Sarybai confirmed to journalists that the bank will start functioning in September 2017.
Zhantikin also said that an agreement on the establishment of the LEU Bank in Kazakhstan is to be ratified later this year or early next year. This year Kazakhstan signed another technical agreement with the IAEA for the construction of the new building, a government decree on submission of the agreement for ratification to the country's parliament was issued, according to him.
Zhantikin reminded that the agreement on LEU transit to the LEU Bank with Russia was signed, and currently, the negotiations on the signing of a similar agreement with China are ongoing. But this is the remit of the IAEA, and Kazakhstan is not involved in these talks, he added.
It was reported earlier that Kazakhstan and the IAEA sealed the agreement on establishment of the IAEA LEU Bank in Kazakhstan on August 27 of last year.
The bank will be built on the premises of the Ulba Metallurgical Plant in Ust-Kamenogorsk with a physical stock of up to 90 tonnes of LEU - enough to run a light water reactor with capacity of 1000 MW.
The bank is financed fully by volunteer contributions and does not affect the IAEA budget. Donor contributions amount to around $150 million, enough to run the bank for at least a decade. The donors are the Nuclear Threat Initiative ($50 million), the United States ($49.54 million), the United Arab Emirates ($10 million), Kuwait ($10 million), Norway ($5 million) and the European Union (up to 25 million euros).
Kazakhstan proposed hosting an international nuclear fuel bank under the IAEA aegis in 2009.
The Ulba Metallurgical Plant, part of the national atomic company Kazatomprom, makes pellet fuels for nuclear power plants.