On October 16, President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev approved an agreement with Russia on the construction of the first nuclear power plant in Uzbekistan at the Tudakul reservoir.
The station will be constructed on the Russian project, similar to the one NPP which is being built in the Belarusian Ostrovets. Its cost in the Kremlin was estimated at $ 11 billion. As expected, Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Uzbekistan October 18-19 and personally took part in the opening ceremony of the NPP construction site.
The nuclear power plant will be located not far from the artificial reservoir Tudakul 25 km north-east of Bukhara. When experts were looking for a site for the station, these were important:
- availability of water
- proximity of infrastructure systems
- and also that the site was in a seismic zone, where there are no earthquakes.
All three conditions have been met. The site of the nuclear power plant is located far from the mountains, 700 km from the nearest seismic center of the Pamir-Hindu Kush zone. Not far from the future station there are large industrial zones of Bukhara and Navoi. And the Tudakul reservoir collects excess water from the Zeravshan River and is additionally fed by the waters of the Amudarya through a complex system of canals.
The Russian Rosatom plans to build a complex of two power units, with the launch of the first power unit being planned in 2028. The capacity of the nuclear power plant according to the plan will be 2300 megawatts, which should cover up to 20% of Uzbekistan’s electricity needs. The project is expensive: in the Kremlin it is estimated at $ 11 billion. However, according to the calculations of the Uzbek authorities, the nuclear power plant will save up to 4 billion cubic meters of natural gas, which today produces electricity.
Ecologists have concerns about the use of atomic energy in Uzbekistan and recommend to the country's authorities a safe alternative to nuclear power plants - a solar power station. The republic is located in the subtropics, and it has colossal territories on which to install panels. But the high cost of green technologies has put an end to the project of safe energy.
In other countries of Central Asia, nuclear power plants were used only in Kazakhstan. In 1973–1999, a 350 MW fast-neutron reactor operated in Aktau. Now there are no nuclear power plants in Kazakhstan, but between Astana and Moscow there are agreements on the construction of at least two nuclear power plants: in Kurchatov in the East Kazakhstan and in Ulken in the Almaty region on the shores of Lake Balkhash.
