Putin leaves Kazakhstan without deal to build nuclear plant
A visit last week by Vladimir Putin and a Kremlin entourage to Astana, Kazakhstan sought in part to put Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, on good footing with local officials.
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Publish date: August 20, 2003
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This happened despite mounting world pressure on Irans nuclear programme to open its doors for more invasive inspections, and the threat of an Israeli military attack on the Moscow-built Bushehr reactor. According to Yury Bespalko, a spokesman for Russias Ministry of Atomic Energy, or Minatom, the second reactorwhich has already been approved by Irans Atomic Energy Organisationwill be identical to the first. That first reactor is an $800m, 1000-megawatt light water reactor, which is now slated to go online in 2005. Bespalko said Minatoms foreign reactor construction wing, Atomstroiproekt, would be building the second reactor for approximately the same price as the first reactor, $800m, and that a new influx of Russian nuclear specialists into Iranwhich is suspected by the West, and even some security experts and government officials in Russia, of developing a weapons programmewould follow the signing of the new reactor contract between Moscow and Tehran. Bespalko said no date had yet been set for the beginning of construction.
A visit last week by Vladimir Putin and a Kremlin entourage to Astana, Kazakhstan sought in part to put Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, on good footing with local officials.
Russia is formally withdrawing from a landmark environmental agreement that channeled billions in international funding to secure the Soviet nuclear legacy, leaving undone some of the most radioactively dangerous projects and burning one more bridge of potential cooperation with the West.
While Moscow pushes ahead with major oil, gas and mining projects in the Arctic—bringing more pollution to the fragile region—the spoils of these undertakings are sold to fuel Russia’s war economy, Bellona’s Ksenia Vakhrusheva told a side event at the COP 29, now underway in Baku, Azerbaijan.
A survey of events in the field of nuclear and radiation safety relating to Russia and Ukraine.