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ENVIRONMENT-KAZAKHSTAN: Planned Nuke Plant Generates Worries

Marina Kozlova - Asia Water Wire*

BALKASH, Nov 5 2006 (IPS) - Residents taking a stroll along this town’s sandy beach, strewn with broken bottles and discarded tyres, often talk about the prospect of a nuclear power plant being built a few hundred km from here.

In fact, concern over this nuclear plant has, at least for now, overshadowed fears much closer to local folk – the pollution of Balkhash lake from heavy metals and sulphides caused by the operations of the industrial association Balkhashtsvetmet.

Authorities in this Central Asian, one of the largest uranium producers in the world, are intent on building a nuclear power plant and developing the nuclear energy industry here.

But local officials, along with some residents, oppose the plan to construct a nuclear plant, at an estimated cost of two billion US dollars.

”The town doesn’t lack power. The question of building the plant is settled at the national level,” Kazhymurat Tokushev, the mayor of Balkhash, told Asia Water Wire.

By end-2006, a special work group in the government must decide if the plant will be built on Lake Balkhash in the country’s south- east or in other region, according to Kairat Kadyrzhanov, general director of Kazakhstan’s National Nuclear Centre. The final decision will depend on many factors, including the sentiments of local residents toward the project, he says.

But members of the Movement for the Revival of the Balkhash Region, a non-governmental organisation based in Balkhash, are confident that the plant will be built on the site of an unfinished thermal power station near the lake.

In 1997, the St Petersburg-based research and design institute Atomenergoproject undertook a feasibility study on the construction of a nuclear plant there. The work was done in accordance with an agreement between Kazakhstan’s National Joint-Stock Company of Atomic Energy and Industry and the Russian institute.

“Despite the fact that it was built as a thermal power station, there was talk that it will become a nuclear power plant in the end,” Daut Shishov, deputy head of the Movement for the Revival of the Balkhash Region, said in an interview. “It is not hard to transform a thermal power station into a nuclear power plant. And what is more, the area around it is rather deserted.”

The plant is envisioned to have three ‘VVER-640′ type reactors with a total capacity of 1,900 Mw. VVER-640 is a new design with improved safety features, but like any technology its absolute safety is not guaranteed, according to the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy.

Shishov, one of the few vocal supporters of the nuclear plant project on Lake Balkhash, says that technical progress – in the form of new energy through nuclear power – cannot be stopped. Moreover, the region could use the revenue it generates from selling electricity to meet its other needs such as breeding sturgeon, he adds.

But if Shishov thinks ways can be found for the nuclear plant to be safe, the movement’s head, Kadylkhan Tokshymanov, thinks otherwise, and says corruption is likely to rear its head.

“Nuclear power plants can be built in rich countries where everything is done according to projects and people do not steal,” Tokshymanov said in an interview.

He continued: “Up to half the money allocated for building in poor countries is usually embezzled, which reduces the safety of construction (work).” Also, “Kazakhstan is a rather poor country.”

In October, Kazakhstan and Russia signed documents to set up three nuclear joint ventures, with equal shares in their authorised capital. The joint ventures will extract Kazakh uranium ore, enrich uranium in Russia’s Irkutsk region and develop projects involving plants with small and medium-power reactors to be sold in Kazakhstan, Russia and other countries

Tokshymanov added, “There is lack of electric power in the areas to the south of Lake Balkhash.” He explained the nuclear plant plans thus: “Russia (which manufactures and sells reactors) has lobbyists in Kazakhstan’s government.”

The plant will use water from Balkhash, which will push down the lake’s water levels. At the international ecological forum Balkhash-2000 held in Almaty in 2000, ecologists warned that its construction and operation can lead to air and water pollution.

“I am unambiguously against nuclear power plants, especially in Kazakhstan that has lots of energy resources, including abundant reserves of oil, natural gas and coal,” Mels Eleusizov, the head of Kazakhstan’s Tabigat environmental movement and a former presidential candidate, told AWW. “The country is well endowed with sun and wind (which are also energy resources.)”

Moreover, he said, “We will not allow building the plant on Balkhash – if necessary, we will address the country and press the state into holding a referendum.”

Lake Balkhash, the 15th largest lake in the world, is the second largest in Central Asia. It covers over 16,000 sq km with a length of 600 kilometres and a width that varies from five to 70 kilometres. The lake’s average depth is 5.8 metres, but its maximum depth reaches 25.6 metres.

“Of course I am against the nuclear power plant,” a young woman who introduced herself as Lena said, walking along the shore with a six month-old baby in her arms. “As thing are, we have bad ecology here because of Balkhashtsvetmet (a gigantic enterprise producing copper, zinc, silver and gold.) The plant would make the ecology worse.”

(*The Asia Water Wire, coordinated by IPS Asia-Pacific, is a series of features around water and development in the region.)