Top Uranium Miner Votes on Returning to Nuclear Power

(Bloomberg) — Voters in Kazakhstan will decide on Sunday whether to allow construction of a nuclear power plant amid worries over the environmental impact as well as the potential reliance on the Central Asian nation’s two giant neighbors — China and Russia — for technology.
While the country is the world’s largest uranium miner, it hasn’t used nuclear generation since 1999 and last year faced a power deficit stemming in part from emergency shutdowns at old plants and a jump in energy intensive crypto mining. The shortfall has led to temporary declines in oil output and constraints on industrial development. 
President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev called the referendum with the aim of demonstrating public support for nuclear power generation. The government has been wary of any hint of unrest after deadly riots roiled the nation in early 2022. That spurred him to hold the only other national referendum since he was handed the presidency by Kazakhstan’s long-time ruler Nursultan Nazarbayev in 2019, which was largely seen as dismantling parts of his predecessor’s legacy.
“Holding this referendum is a way for the Tokayev administration to legitimize a decision to build it seems to have already taken,” said George Voloshin, a Paris-based analyst at ACAMS, an anti-financial crime body. 
The project has stoked fears among some voters that it could increase dependence on Russia or China, which both build reactors and cooperate with Kazakhstan on other nuclear projects. Concerns about the potential impact of corruption on construction standards and the risk of environmental damage down the road have also resonated in the world’s largest landlocked country, which was the site for nuclear bomb tests during the Soviet era. 
Kazakhstan is seeking to expand power generation by 26.5 gigawatts before 2035, including with 2.4 gigawatts from nuclear sources, according to emailed data from the Energy Ministry. The nation of about 20 million people had a power capacity of 20.4 gigawatts as of Jan. 1, the ministry said.
Tokayev urged support for the project, which he said would be the largest in the country since the Soviet Union, in a speech to regional lawmakers on Thursday. “It will ensure sustainable progress for our country for decades to come,” he said.
China National Nuclear Corp, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co., Russia’s Rosatom Corp and Electricite de France SA were on a list of possible builders, according to a presentation from the Energy Ministry.
The referendum allows the authorities to “transfer responsibility for the decision to the people,” said Dosym Satpayev, director of the Almaty-based Risk Assessment Group. There’s a big fear of protests, he said.
The nation had a 1.5 gigawatt power deficit last fall and winter, according to the Energy Ministry. Kazakhstan covers the shortfall by buying electricity from Russia.
“With or without the nuclear plant, the problem of looming energy deficits as well as rapidly aging energy infrastructure, most of which was built in Soviet times, will just not go away,” Voloshin said.
(Corrects the amount of new power generation in the sixth paragraph of a story initially published on Oct. 5)
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