Archives Russia and Central Asia - New Eastern Outlook

The ‘Blue Horse’ is a project noble in its designs, aiming to bring water to those lands where sand dust rules. Nevertheless, despite all the imaginary (and quite real) prospects created for Mongolia by this initiative, its implementation is almost inevitably associated with negative consequences for the vast Baikal region. Is there an optimal way out of this difficult situation?

Rosatom’s most active development in Central Asia to date has been the creation of the first energy facility of its kind in Uzbekistan – the Jizzakh NPP. In September 2018, Russia and Uzbekistan signed an intergovernmental agreement on the construction of a nuclear power plant. In September 2023, the Joint Commission at the level of the heads of government of Russia and Uzbekistan discussed issues related to the construction of the NPP. Survey work commenced at a promising construction site near Lake Tuzkan around the same time. On November 28, 2023, Alexey Likhachev…

In the second half of 2023, Rosatom’s activities to promote and implement new NPP projects in the Central Asian republics entered an unprecedentedly active phase. At present, such initiatives, which are at different stages of discussion and implementation, are proposed to three of the five countries of the region – Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. But by far the largest of the promising projects in the region is the concept of creating the first nuclear power plant in the leading country in Central Asia in terms of electricity consumption, namely Kazakhstan. This particular project…