Aral Sea Recovery: North Aral Grows by Twenty Percent

(Kazakh Government is set to recover the Aral, National Geographic reported)

New Plan for Accelerated Industrialization of Kazakhstan’s Economy

(The Kazakh Government approves a program of rapid industrial development)

Kazakhstan’s Uranium Boom Coincides with Global Nuclear Renaissance

(Potential for cooperation with global players is immense and growing)

Kazakhstan’s Military Budget Grows 

(The Kazakh Army gets more funds to enhance its effectiveness)

Aral Sea, one of the world’s most shocking environmental disasters of all times, despite being so intensely altered, shows some signs of recovery, Pat Walters of National Geographic magazine reported. The story, published on April 2, 2010 is part of a special series that explores the global water crisis and says with help from the Kazakh government, the World Bank, and scientists, the Aral’s northern part has started to make a recovery. Fish, sea birds and reptiles have begun to repopulate the Aral Sea and surrounding area.

Below are excerpts from Pat Walter’s article. (For the full text click here).

“Once a colossal geographic feature—at 26,000 square miles, it was the fourth largest inland water body on earth in terms of surface area — the Aral shrank to hold just one-tenth of its original volume, becoming a tragic shadow of itself. The fishery died in the 1980s, after the Soviet government drained the sea to feed thirsty cotton fields planted in the inhospitable landscape surrounding it. As less freshwater entered from the rivers, the Aral, which had always been brackish, became increasingly salty. All 24 species of native fish vanished, and almost overnight, the fishing industry collapsed. The most skilled fishermen abandoned their ships on sandbars as the Soviet government transferred them to other fisheries on the Caspian and Baltic seas.

After the Soviet Union collapsed and Kazakhstan became independent in 1991, glimmers of hope appeared for the North Aral’s recovery. The mayor of the town of Aralsk followed scientists’ advice and built a makeshift dam, isolating it from the South Aral and retaining the entirety of the Syr Darya’s meager discharge.

By 2005 the World Bank and the government of Kazakhstan had designed and built a permanent eight-mile dam intended to raise the North Aral by about 13 feet, several feet shy of the level needed to refill Aralsk’s harbor, but deep enough to drop salinity and allow native fish to repopulate the sea. The $85 million project also improved irrigation structures upriver from the Aral. “That dam,” says Joop Stoutjesdijk, the World Bank officer assigned to the Aral region, “showed us that something could be done.”

The North Aral grew by 20 percent, and today salinity is at 14 grams per liter, not far from 1960 levels. Soon native plants, stifled for years by the saltwater, began to sprout, and migrating birds like pelicans, flamingos, and ducks again began to visit the Aral.  Nowadays, “It’s a paradise for birds,” says Russian Academy of Sciences zoologist Nick Aladin, who has been studying the Aral since the 1970s. “It’s a place for pleasure, and it’s an enormous victory.”

Most importantly, though, freshwater fish like pike, perch and carp, which took refuge in the Syr Darya, have returned to the Aral, and in 2008 fishermen caught roughly 1,500 tons (1,360 metric tons) of them. Mostly, the men are selling locally, but they have shipped some fish to Russia and Georgia. Two fish processing plants operate in Aralsk and a third, with a capacity of 6,000 tons a year, is under construction. Middle-aged men and women who left the region when they were young are starting to return for the fishing, and they’re building houses. Billboards announcing the Aral’s return stand beside a new hotel.

To be sure, progress has been limited, but the president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, has said he hopes Aralsk can become a tourist destination. In 2008 he stood on the dam near the town and committed to a five-year, $250 million project that will guide the North Aral, still 12 miles (20 kilometers) away from the city, back to the harbor through an elaborate system of locks and dams. The World Bank will help, but most of the cost will fall on the government, which happens to be flush with cash from its oil fields: Kazakhstan is expected to double oil output and become one of the world’s top 10 oil-producing countries by 2020. With the government’s help, some say the water could bring more than just fish to the city. Locals imagine hotels, cafes, and nightclubs.

Nonetheless, while the president talks about attracting tourists to the city, Aralsk’s fishermen are relishing the simple pleasure of casting their nets. “For now,” Stourjesdijk says, “they will fish.” And for now, fishing is plenty.”

New Plan for Accelerated Industrialization of Kazakhstan’s Economy

The world’s renewed interest in nuclear energy as a long-term source of power, after a break of almost three decades, looks set to play a core role in the future development of trade and investment relations between Kazakhstan, the U.S., France, China, Japan and other players.

The return of nuclear energy to the global newly emerging energy policy mix comes at a time when Kazakhstan is unleashing ambitious plans not only to become one of the most important suppliers of uranium and uranium fuel pellets to world markets, but also a leading world player in the global nuclear power generation industry, both at home and abroad.

Its political and natural resource credentials for pursuing this policy are beyond reproach. Kazakhstan is a nuclear weapons-free state blessed with 20 percent of the world’s known uranium reserves, becoming, in 2009, the world’s largest producer of uranium.

In a world anxious about the consequences of nuclear weapons proliferation getting out of hand against a backdrop of international security concerns, Kazakhstan firmly staked its own nuclear disarmament credentials shortly after it became an independent state 18 years ago.

Up until that point geographically, technically, and strategically integrated into the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons policy, Kazakhstan foreswore nuclear weapons future, signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and pursued a policy of rapid nuclear disarmament. By 1995, Kazakhstan fully rid itself of the world’s fourth largest nuclear arsenal, which included 1,040 nuclear warheads of one megaton TNT equivalent each.

This policy yields many benefits, both in a global and national context. Kazakhstan pursues a successful multi-lateral foreign policy. Its position as a non-nuclear weapons state confers upon the country additional kudos, particularly within the context of sensitive international discussions on nuclear proliferation issues. Moreover, it is a status that the country actively seeks to use in the interests of peace and security, as evidenced by President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s proposal to host an IAEA-supervised nuclear fuel bank located in Kazakhstan, which would become a secure, controlled fuel source for countries seeking to develop their nuclear power generation capacity.

The significance of Kazakhstan’s NPT status, however, goes much further. It provides the setting for the country itself to move forward as a major international nuclear industry player, from the mining and exporting of uranium, through to the manufacture and international sale of added-value uranium fuel pellets; and on to the development of the country’s own nuclear generation capacity and its direct involvement in power generation in national and regional markets around the world through long-term partnership arrangements. 

At the heart of Kazakhstan’s nuclear industry is Kazatomprom, the national atomic company established some 13 years ago and wholly owned by the government. Not only does Kazatomprom control the country’s uranium exploration and mining, but up-stream activities such as the manufacture of uranium fuel cycle pellets, as well as imports and exports of nuclear and nuclear-related materials and evolution of international partnerships. In various forms these now embrace a number of countries, including Russia, China, Japan, Canada and France, but are set to expand further in terms of the levels of commercial and investment activity, and also in geographical reach.

Kazakhstan is seeking to maximize its long-term return from its vast uranium deposits in a number of ways. Already the world’s largest producer of uranium, it plans to roughly double output in the next decade or so, and in the process become the source of more than one-third of the world’s uranium exports.

Though the export of uranium is, in itself, a valuable source of revenue, the manufacture and sale of value-added nuclear fuel pellets and assemblies yields substantially greater overall returns, and it is in this area where partnership activities with foreign interests have been, and will remain, especially important.

Moreover, this will also be the case as Kazakhstan pursues plans to expand, from an existing small base, its own nuclear power-generating capacity, while simultaneously setting down an expanding and sustainable industrial presence in global nuclear power markets.

Given Astana’s close links with both Moscow and Beijing, it is to be expected that Kazakhstan has agreements in place with both countries covering all commercial aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle. 

Kazakhstan has in recent years engineered a number of deals that underline the country’s economic and commercial multilateralism, which could not but catch the eyes of all those involved in the West’s nuclear industries.

In 2007, Kazatomprom bought 10 percent of Toshiba-owned Westinghouse, one of the largest manufacturers in U.S. nuclear industry. The following year Canada’s Cameco Corporation, building on an earlier cooperation agreement, announced a joint venture to build a uranium conversion plant in Ust-Kamenogorsk. Moreover, during the last two years, Kazatomprom has also signed mining and nuclear fuel fabrication deals with France’s Areva.

Kazakhstan’s Military Budget Grows