Russia's Rosatom Ready To Construct Nuclear Power Plant In Kazakhstan - Ambassador

Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom is ready to construct a nuclear power plant (NPP) in Kazakhstan, Russian Ambassador to Nur-Sultan Alexey Borodavkin said on Wednesday

NUR-SULTAN (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 10th February, 2021) - Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom is ready to construct a nuclear power plant (NPP) in Kazakhstan, Russian Ambassador to Nur-Sultan Alexey Borodavkin said on Wednesday.

In April 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin said after the talks with his Kazakh counterpart, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, that Moscow had proposed building a nuclear power plant in the Central Asian country. Tokayev later said that the decision to build a nuclear power plant in Kazakhstan would be made taking into account the opinion of the majority of the population, while in June 2019 he told reporters that there had been no plans to build a nuclear power plant in the country yet.

"As far as I understand, taking into account a shortage of electricity, Kazakhstan will need this NPP in the near future and Russia is ready to build it .

.. Russia uses exclusively peaceful technologies in dozens of countries where Rosatom is building nuclear facilities. I hope that we will have another item on our positive agenda in this area," Borodavkin told the Kazakh Khabar 24 broadcaster.

Kazakhstan has experience in the use of nuclear energy. In 1973, the world's first power unit with a fast neutron reactor BN-350 and an installed electrical capacity of 350 megawatts was launched on the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea in the city of Shevchenko, which is currently called Aktau. Part of the thermal power of the reactor was used to generate electricity, while the rest went to desalination of seawater. This power unit operated until 1998, which was five years longer than the design period.