Kazakhstan likely to have NPP built near Lake Balkhash, no final decision yet - energy minister
NUR-SULTAN. May 24 (Interfax) - While Kazakhstan has not yet made a final decision as to the location of a future nuclear power plant to be built on its territory, it is likely to be constructed near Lake Balkhash in the southern part of the country, Kazakh Energy Minister Bolat Akchulakov said.
"We understand the plant's parameters, its capacity being about 2.4 GW. As for its location, perhaps it's Balkhash. This area has been studied for a long time, since Soviet times. There are no specific decisions yet regarding a particular location and technology," Akchulakov told journalists at the government building on Tuesday.
Akchulakov had said earlier that two possible locations being explored for building an NPP were the town of Kurchatov in the East Kazakhstan region and the community of Ulken in the Almaty region. In particular, the South Kazakhstan State Regional Power Station and Lake Balkhash are located near Ulken, and that area was under consideration as a likely NPP construction site back in Soviet times, he said.
Kazakhstan has been mulling the possible construction of an NPP for years. The discussion has become particularly active lately, as the country might see a shortage of electricity with the growth in power consumption. However unpopular such a decision might be with the people, Kazakh authorities seem to be inclined to make it soon.
The Kazakh Energy Ministry expects construction to take up to ten years, with the cost of one power unit's construction reaching $5 billion. Kazakhstan's energy balance forecast for the period up to 2035 proposes the launch of an NPP with aggregate capacity of 2.4 GW among possible options.
Kazakhstan is actively studying the technologies of six global manufacturers of nuclear reactors, i.e. NuScale Power (U.S., NuScale reactor), GE-Hitachi (U.S.-Japan, BWRX-300 reactor), Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP, South Korea, APR-1000 and APR-1400 reactors), CNNC (China, HPR-1000 and CNP-600+ reactors), Rosatom (Russia, VVER-1200 and VVER-1000 reactors), and Electricite de France (EDF, France, ATMEA1 reactor).
Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier that Russia was ready to build an NPP for Kazakhstan. Putin then stressed that this offer was not limited to just constructing an NPP. "This concerns creating a whole sector, which includes training personnel at Russian higher-educational institutions in new professions associated with use of nuclear power," he said.
The Kazakh Energy Ministry and the Russian state atomic energy corporation Rosatom concluded a memorandum on cooperation in training personnel for the civilian nuclear energy industry at the start of 2022.