Voters in Kazakhstan backed the construction of a nuclear power station in the Central Asian country in a referendum held on Sunday 6 October, data by the Central Election Commission has shown.
According to the commission, 71% of participants voted in favour of the project, while 26% voted against. Voter turnout in the nation of 19 million people was about 64% (63.66%), the data showed.
Kazakhstan’s government announced the exact date for the referendum in early September 2024, although a referendum proposal had been circulated for a few years.
Local media said voters were presented with a straightforward question in the referendum – "Do you agree with the construction of a nuclear power plant in Kazakhstan?” – requiring a simple yes-or-no response.
Kazakh president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said earlier this year that economic development will be impossible without a stable energy supply and he had instructed officials to begin work on plans for the construction of a nuclear power station.
The site being considered for new nuclear is near Ulken village in the Almaty Region, 330 km northwest of the city of Almaty on the shores of Lake Balkhash in southeastern Kazakhstan.
The site, however, is not final and “is subject to change”, an official at the National Nuclear Centre of Kazakhstan told NucNet last year.
Ulken was established in the 1980s to house workers for a planned hydroelectric power plant. That project was unfinished when the Soviet Union collapsed and high-rise apartments are the only completed constructions from the period.
Kazakhstan is the world’s largest uranium producer, but has no commercial nuclear power plant. It has four operational research reactors that are used for fuels and materials testing.
Plans to deploy large-scale nuclear power during the Soviet era were dropped due to the availability of other energy options, although the country operated a single fast neutron reactor at the Caspian Sea site of Aktau between 1972 and 1999.
According to the International Energy Agency, Kazakhstan is a significant producer of coal, crude oil and natural gas, and a major energy exporter. While coal dominates the country’s energy mix, renewable sources of energy are a small but growing share of Kazakhstan’s electricity generation.
In 2023, Kazakhstan’s energy minister said the country had received offers from France, China, South Korea and Russia to build its first nuclear power station.
Earlier reports have also said that Astana is looking at deploying large-scale reactor technology for its first nuclear station.