One of the locations is the village of Ulken on the shores of Lake Balkash in the southeastern Almaty region of Kazakhstan.
The second is the town of Kurchatov on the Irtysh River in the East Kazakhstan province.
Kazakhstan has not confirmed plans for new nuclear and reports on the topic have been conflicting.
A ‘Green Economy Concept’ adopted in 2013 set the ambitious target of 50% electricity generation from sources other than coal or oil, including gas, nuclear and renewable energy, by 2050.
In September 2020, president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said “the time has come to consider” nuclear power for Kazakshtan in detail and promised the commissioning of a feasibility study.
Russia has for years been broaching the topic of nuclear reactors in discussions on energy with Kazakhstan. Tass said that in April 2019 Russian president Vladimir Putin proposed expanding cooperation in the energy sector and potentially building a nuclear power plant in Kazakhstan using Russian technology.
According to Tass, Kazakhstan has a surplus of electricity generation and therefore finds it difficult to justify the construction of a nuclear plant.
But Mr Mirzagaliyev said: “We have now made a balance of generation and consumption of electricity until 2035. We clearly see the need to build a nuclear power plant in order to provide our population and our economy with electricity.”
He added: “One has to understand that the construction of any [nuclear] station is not a question of immediacy, it could take on average 10 years.”
According to Mr Mirzagaliyev, Ulken is the “more interesting” of the two locations because of its proximity to an existing north-south power transmission lane and a large consumer base in the populated region of Almaty, home to the country’s largest city of Almaty.
