Kazakhstan to host official ceremony to launch international nuclear fuel bank August 27

The official ceremony to launch the nuclear fuel bank to be hosted in Kazakhstan will be held August 27, 2015, Russia’s RIA Novosti reports, citing Kazakhstan’s Foreign Minister Yerlan Idrissov as saying.

Yukiya Amano, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), representatives of the six nations involved in talks to negotiate the Iranian nuclear program, including Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry will be among those in attendance. “August 27 Yukiya Amano, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is to come to Kazakhstan to sign the country agreement to launch the nuclear fuel bank. We have also invited representatives of the Six: Russia, the USA, France, Great Britain, China, Germany), Mr. Idrissov said in Geneva.

According to him, the nuclear fuel bank will enable Iran to send its low-enriched uranium to Kazakhstan: “it’s part of the agreement reached by the Six and Iran July 14 in Vienna”.

He elaborated that the level of participants in attendance will depend on the schedule of heads of Foreign Ministries of the Six.

A nuclear fuel bank is a proposed approach to provide countries access to enriched nuclear fuel, without the need for them to possess enrichment technology. The basic concept is that countries who do have enrichment technology would donate enriched fuel to a "bank", from which countries not possessing enrichment technology would obtain fuel for their power reactors.

Back in 2009 Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev suggested hosting an international nuclear fuel bank in the Kazakh territory. The idea was approved of by the IAEA in 2011.

The Kazakh Agency for Nuclear Power was launched May 7, 2012.

The IAEA is the world's center of cooperation in the nuclear field. It was set up in 1957 as the world's "Atoms for Peace" organization within the United Nations family. The Agency works with its Member States and multiple partners worldwide to promote safe, secure and peaceful nuclear technologies.