World’s first
low Enriched Uranium bank in Kazakhstan
The International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) supported by the Kazakh government opened Aug. 29 its first-ever
Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) Bank in Kazakhstan.
The LEU Bank will serve as a
last-resort mechanism to provide confidence to countries that they will be able
to obtain LEU for the manufacture of fuel for nuclear power plants in the event
of an unforeseen, non-commercial disruption to their supplies,” IAEA Director
General Yukiya Amano said.
The LEU Bank is based at the Ulba
Metallurgical Plant (UMP) in Ust-Kamenogorsk, in the East Kazakhstan region.
The facility will store nuclear fuel and sell it to IAEA members. The bank will
store up to 90 tonnes of low-enriched uranium, sufficient to run a 1,000 MW
light water reactor or give power to a large city for three years.
It’s the largest producer of uranium
and are ready to play an important role in the world energy. Also, Kazakhstan
is in the mainstream of a global green trend.
The IAEA plans to start
buying uranium soon and to start shipping it to the bank in 2018.
The IAEA is the world’s central intergovernmental
organisation, established for scientific and technical cooperation in the
nuclear field. The IAEA seeks safe, secure and peaceful uses of nuclear
technologies and science.
In 2009, Kazakhstan
proposed to host the LEU bank in Kazakhstan under the IAEA. An agreement was
signed with the IAEA on Aug. 27, 2015. Kazakhstan is a leading producer of
uranium, boasting more than 15 percent of global uranium reserves.
Russia established its own LEU bank in 2010, but the LEU
bank in Kazakhstan is the first to be fully owned and managed by the IAEA.
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