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Eastern Caspian
53
Environment and Security
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
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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-