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Kyiv, November 26 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers has approved a draft agreement with the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan about the joint participation in the International uranium enrichment center in Angarsk, Irkutsk region, Russia.
The Cabinet of Ministers passed a respective resolution on November 19 2008. (more…)
ALMATY. Nov 6 (Interfax) – Kazakhstan’s national nuclear corporation, Kazatomprom, will be involved in the construction of new nuclear power plants in China, Kazatomprom chief Mukhtar Dzhakishev told a press conference.
“Kazatomprom is embarking on a new line of business, which is helping to build nuclear power plants – in this case in China,” Dzhakishev said. (more…)
ALMATY, Kazakstan, September 18, 2008 (ENS) – Kazakstan’s nuclear test zone has lain deserted for the last 20 years largely forgotten by the outside world, but experts say radiation will continue to be a health risk until the huge site is cleaned up thoroughly.
The testing ground was closed for use in 1991. This month, the international Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization is running a series of trials at the Semipalatinsk site to test equipment that can identify and give the location of nuclear explosions. (more…)
MAILUU-SUU, 10 September 2008 (IRIN) – “I carry clean [drinking] water with my truck to the villages upstream almost on a daily basis. I was born here and I remember that in the past the road on this side of the river was closed to traffic. They say that was because of some mines and radioactive waste tailings,” Bakyt told IRIN in Kairygach, about 10-15 minutes’ drive from Mailuu-Suu.
There are some signs warning about radioactivity – meaning there are waste dumps located not far from the road and the river. Actual waste dumps are natural or artificial holes filled with the toxic waste and covered with soil as a protective cover. (more…)
A little before dawn on a recent summer morning, a convoy of three large blue lorries, a handful of police cars and a bus rumbled along the dual carriageway heading north out of the Bulgarian capital, Sofia. Even if it had not been so early, the motorcade would probably not have drawn much attention. The lorries were unmarked, the bus carrying a few sleepy policemen was old and scruffy, while the lumbering shipment was big and slow enough to explain the escort and its flashing blue lights. (more…)
As the nuclear industry enjoys a global revival, Kazatomprom is positioning itself to overtake Cameco as the world’s largest producer of uranium. It said in July that it expects to achieve this as early as next year, rather than in 2010 as originally planned.
The progress of Kazakhstan’s national atomic company is to a large degree due to the vision of its charismatic president Mukhtar Dzhakishev, helped by the country’s substantial uranium reserves and the Soviet technical legacy. (more…)
Kazakhstan may have relinquished its arsenal of nuclear weapons after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but it is seeking to expand its role in a variety of atomic energy-related fields. The country hopes to outstrip rivals Canada and Australia next year to become the world’s biggest uranium producer. (more…)
300 tons of spent fuel in Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan’s military forces this summer held a training exercise to thwart a fake terrorist assault on a Soviet-built nuclear facility near Almaty, the country’s former capital located on its southeastern border.
In the exercise, a reactor was the simulated target of terrorists trying to steal some of the deadliest nuclear material ever made. It came, by no coincidence, as U.S. and Kazakh officials put the finishing touches on a plan to move 300 tons of used nuclear fuel from a decommissioned Soviet nuclear reactor near the port city of Aktau on the Caspian Sea not far from Iran. (more…)
KAMENOGORSK, Kazakhstan — The flame-licked doors of a hydrogen furnace clattered open at a Cold War-era bomb factory in Kazakhstan’s Ural Mountains, spilling a tray of baked metal capsules into the pale winter light. Each enriched-uranium pellet the size of a Brazil nut packs almost as much energy as a ton of coal. (more…)
RUSSIANS say nuclear power is a smart hat for stupid people, says the Dutch photographer Robert Knoth. His exhibition Certificate No. 000358/ at the Australian Centre for Photography documents the effects of nuclear pollution – from weapons testing, fuel production to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster – on the stoic citizens of the former Soviet Union. (more…)
