Low-enriched uranium to start accumulating in IAEA bank in Kazakhstan by 2017

Nuclear material for the IAEA low-enriched uranium bank being established in Kazakhstan will be supplied starting 2017, Tengrinews reports citing Interfax-Kazakhstan.

Deputy chairman of the Committee on Atomic and Energy Supervision of the Ministry of Energy of Kazakhstan Timur Zhantikin said that Kazakhstan was negotiating the logistics of nuclear material transportation.

"A transit agreement on transportation of nuclear material through the territory of the Russian Federation has been prepared. The Board of Governors of IAEA will meet in Vienna on 8 June and will consider two draft agreements. One with Kazakhstan on the institution of the bank, and the other one with the Government of the Russian Federation on transit through its territory," he said on Monday, June 1, in Astana.

The realization of the project will last for approximately two years, he added. “If the agreement is signed now, it will then go to the parliament for ratification. Then it will be finalized in terms of technical issues, meaning that it will be once again checked for compliance with the IAEA standards. And the actual arrival of the nuclear material in Kazakhstan is expected in 2017," Zhantikin said.

In 2009, Astana came forward with the initiative to place the international nuclear fuel bank on the territory of Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan negotiated the conditions on hosting the international nuclear fuel bank under the auspices of the IAEA. And the government of Kazakhstan approved the agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to establish the bank of low-enriched uranium on its territory.

The nuclear fuel bank is expected to be based on Kazakhstan’s Ulba Metallurgical Plant (UMP). UMP is a member of the National Atomic Company Kazatomprom and produces fuel pellets for nuclear power plants.

Writing by Dinara Urazova, editing by Tatyana Kuzmina