Environment and Security: Transforming risks into cooperation

Eastern Caspian

53

Environment and Security

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3 000 kilos of plutonium, 10 000 kilos of high- ly enriched uranium (both could be used to produce weapons of mass destruction and are consequently a high priority for non-pro- liferation activities) and over 10 000 tonnes of other radioactive waste with a total activity of 14 466 Curie is being stored onsite. By 2010 the station’s nuclear waste will have been transported for long-term storage at the Baikal-1 facility, Semipalatinsk. Operations will cost about US$300 million (NTI 2007). On the other hand, increasing demand for energy and water in the booming eastern Caspian region of Kazakhstan coupled with the rising cost of fossil fuel-based energy generation and water desalinization are driv- ing the search for alternative ways of meet- ing growing demand. To this end, a special session of the interagency governmental commission of Kazakhstan headed by the Prime Minister K. Masimov in the late 2007

gave the go-ahead to build a new nuclear power plant at Aktau, possibly using Rus- sian-built reactors. The feasibility study is underway and should be completed in 2009. Construction should start in 2011 with the first unit commissioned in 2016 (Australian Uranium Association 2007; Kazakhstan- skaya Pravda Newspaper Jan 2008 56 ). World uranium prices have increased steep- ly (sevenfold) since 2001. In this context, Kazakh uranium production facilities are now in demand and once more operating at full capacity. Also the empty uranium mines around Aktau are being considered as po- tential storage areas for radioactive waste of local and foreign origin. One of the priority tasks should be to secure the safety of the Koshkar-Ata tailing pond. At present 51.79 million tonnes of uranium- mining waste (containing uranium-238, ra-