Kazakhstan « nuclear-news

Another nuclear crisis would wipe out investment in uranium

While currently abandonment of nuclear power remains an option limited to affluent countries, one more cataclysm may nail the coffin lid of the nuclear power industry shut for good…., as another nuclear debacle in the U.S. following in the wake 1979’s Three Mile Island accident will undoubtedly prove too much, even for Madison Ave.’s PR spin doctors. No NPPS have been built in the U.S. since Three Mile Island and should bad things happen at Ft. Calhoun, where the Missouri’s water’s are still rising, the global market for uranium fuel for NPPs worldwide is going to crater, beginning with the U.S.

Kazakhstan’s Uranium Industry Could Lose Its Luster, By. John Daily, OilPrice.com, 18 June 11-– What a difference a year and a tsunami make!

Western investors have been salivating over the post-Soviet space’s energy riches since the 1991 collapse of communism. While focusing on the Caspian’s hydrocarbon reserves other mineralogical riches awaited development as well, none more so than Kazakhstan’s vast uranium deposits. Continue reading →

June 19, 2011 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, Kazakhstan, Uranium | Leave a comment

Highly secret transport of Highly Enriched Uranium to secret Russian facility

In the largest such operation ever mounted, U.S. and Kazakh officials transferred 11 tons of highly enriched uranium and 3 tons of plutonium some 1,890 miles by rail and road across the Central Asian country………….

U.S., Kazakhstan complete secret transfer of nuclear materials, KansasCity.com, By JONATHAN S. LANDAY, McClatchy Newspapers, 18 Nov 10, WASHINGTON – Working under extraordinary secrecy, the U.S. and Kazakh governments in the past year have moved nuclear material that could have been used to make more than 770 bombs from a location feared vulnerable to terrorist attack to a new high-security facility. Continue reading →

November 18, 2010 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Kazakhstan, secrets,lies and civil liberties, Uranium | antinuclear, enriched, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear weapons, radiation, radioactive, uranium | Leave a comment

Kazakhstan has paid a high price for hosting nuclear weapons

Why Kazakhstan Is Front and Center at the Global Nuclear Security Summit THE HUFFINGTON POST, Al Eisele, 11 April 2010, “………..The radioactive fallout from all the above ground and atmospheric tests left Mrs. Koloskova with health problems and occasional nightmares. “I don’t know what happened with me, but from that moment, I felt headaches and nervous disorders, and I imagined it many times,” she said.

But she was one of the lucky ones. Still vigorous and able to walk with aid of a cane, she was not afflicted with any of the horrific tumors or the radiation-caused genetic mutilations and birth defects that affected many residents of Semey and other settlements near the 7,000-square-mile test site known as the Polygon, Russian for “firing range.”

Her story, and those of thousands of others like her, is the reason why Kazakhstan, a Central Asia country unknown to most Americans, is standing front and center among the 47 nations represented at the two-day Global Nuclear Security Summit beginning Monday in Washington…….

[Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev] was the first foreign leader to renounce the possession and use of nuclear weapons. Al Eisele: Why Kazakhstan Is Front and Center at the Global Nuclear Security Summit

April 13, 2010 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Kazakhstan, politics international | antinuclear, enriched, nuclear, nuclear secrecy, nuclear weapons, radiation, radioactive, uranium | Leave a comment

Crooked dealings in uranium-rich Kazakhstan

Kazakhs accuse ex-uranium boss of money laundering

Mining Weekly, -2010-03-04By: Reuters

4th March 2010 , ASTANA – Kazakhstan on Thursday accused a former uranium tycoon of money laundering and said its security service had launched a new criminal probe into his affairs in a case that has shaken confidence in the Central Asian state.

One of Kazakhstan’s most prominent business figures, Mukhtar Dzhakishev was arrested last year on accusations of corruption, theft and illegal sales of uranium assets to foreign companies…..

Kazakhstan, hit hard by global economic slowdown, wants to attract fresh foreign investment as well as bolster the role of the state in strategic industries such as uranium and oil.

It has also alarmed human rights groups who have questioned Kazakhstan’s methods of fighting corruption in a country where President Nursultan Nazarbayev, in power for two decades, tolerates little political dissent.http://www.miningweekly.com/article/kazakhs-accuse-ex-uranium-boss-of-money-laundering-2010-03-04

March 5, 2010 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Kazakhstan, secrets,lies and civil liberties | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear secrecy, nuclear spin, nuclear wastes, uranium | Leave a comment

Alleged uranium deal between Kazakhstan and Iran

Russia to probe alleged Iran uranium deal with Kazakhstan

Sources: RIA Novosti, Associated Press

December 31, 2009 Washington, (WashingtonTV)—Russia said on Thursday that it had no knowledge of an alleged uranium deal between Iran and Kazakhstan, but it will look into the allegations. Continue reading →

December 31, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Kazakhstan, secrets,lies and civil liberties | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear secrecy, uranium | Leave a comment

Uranium corruption in Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan to take former uranium boss to court over thef tKazakh prosecutors have filed a criminal court case against the former uranium boss Dzhakishev over corruption, they said World Bulletin 10 December 2009.………………Charges of illegally selling uranium deposits that had previously caused concerns among foreign investors have not been included in the case and will be investigated separately, the Kazakh Prosecutor General’s office said.

Kazakhstan to take former uranium boss to court over theft [ WORLD BULLETIN- TURKEY NEWS, WORLD NEWS ]

December 11, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Kazakhstan, secrets,lies and civil liberties | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear secrecy, uranium | Leave a comment

France’s pro-nuke President dismisses human rights concerns

France, Kazakhs ink military transit, energy deals By PETER LEONARD (AP) –Associated Press Writer Angela Charlton contributed to this report from Paris., Kazakhstan 6 Oct 09 French President Nicolas Sarkozy scored a diplomatic coup Tuesday during a visit to energy-rich Kazakhstan, overseeing an agreement to allow military hardware for French forces fighting in Afghanistan to pass through Kazakh territory and clinching a raft of lucrative energy deals.Facing criticism over its human rights record, Kazakhstan won a measure of support from Sarkozy…………. Continue reading →

October 7, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 1, Kazakhstan, secrets,lies and civil liberties, spinbuster | antinuclear, AREVA, nuclear, nuclear secrecy, nuclear spin, nuclear wastes, nuclear weapons, radioactive, Sarkozy, uranium | Leave a comment

Kazakhstan radiation hotspot

The world’s worst radiation hotspot
THE INDEPENDENT 10 September 2009
At the start of the Cold War, Stalin chose one of the furthest outposts of his empire to test the Soviet Union’s first nuclear bombs. Sixty years on, their cancerous legacy is still being felt. Jerome Taylor reports from Kurchatov Continue reading →

September 10, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 1, environment, Kazakhstan | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear wastes, radiation, radioactive, uranium | Leave a comment

Millions affected by nuclear tests in Kazakhstan?

Soviet nuclear tests leave Kazakh fallout

BBC News 7 Sept 09

Decades of Soviet nuclear testing on the steppes of Kazakhstan have been blamed for an alarming number of health problems suffered by residents in the area. Continue reading →

September 7, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 1, environment, Kazakhstan | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear wastes, radiation, radioactive, uranium | Leave a comment

Kazakhstan: Lingering effects of nuclear tests

60 Years After First Soviet Nuclear Test, Legacy Of Misery Lives On In Kazakhstan
Radio Free Europe, August 28, 2009

By Bruce Pannier

“First Lightning,” a 22-kiloton nuclear bomb, exploded at 7 a.m. local time on August 29, 1949, at the Semipalatinsk testing site in northern Kazakhstan. Thousands of cases of birth defects, cancer, and neurological illnesses have since been reported in the Semipalatinsk region. Livestock living within range of the site also suffer from deformities and other defects. Continue reading →

August 29, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 1, Kazakhstan, wastes | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear wastes, nuclear weapons, radiation, radioactive | Leave a comment

NUCLEAR LEGACY

NUCLEAR LEGACY Soviet nuclear tests still haunt Kazakhs canada.com By Maria Golovnina, ReutersJune 25, 2009 “…………………………

Moscow tested about 500 bombs here between 1949 and 1989, exposing 1.5 million people like Abishev to extreme levels of radiation and contaminating an area roughly the size of Germany.

The Soviet Union conducted its last test here in 1989 and the facility was officially closed in 1991 as the Soviet collapse brought the global nuclear arms race to an end.

Twenty years on, the Semipalatinsk test range is silent, a steppe wind blowing gently through the abandoned site dotted by ruined concrete buildings and giant hunks of rusty metal.

But hundreds of thousands of residents, subjected to the equivalent of 20,000 Hiroshima bombs during 40 years of Russian experiments, are still sickened by the legacy of their past.

The incidence of cancer, mental illness and fertility problems in this region is among the highest in Kazakhstan, a vast Central Asian nation west of China, and infant mortality is five times higher than in other regions………………………………scientists say more needs to be done to study the effect of 40 years of tests on the people. It is an issue still little understood by science, and researchers say mutations are already being passed down from parents to their children.

“The biggest issue is not so much those who experienced the explosions directly but the impact on their children and grandchildren,” said Mikhail Panin, an environmental scientist who is researching the matter in the Semipalatinsk area.

NUCLEAR LEGACY

June 26, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Kazakhstan, wastes | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear wastes, radiation, radioactive | Leave a comment

Kazakhstan unrest dims Uranium One shares 40%

Kazakhstan unrest dims Uranium One shares 40%’Misunderstanding’ swirls about stake in Kazakh mine: CEOPeter Koven, Financial Post May 28, 2009

A political flare-up in Kazakhstan’s uranium sector has prompted new investor concerns about an authoritarian country that the world is relying on to provide much of its nuclear fuel in the future.

Yesterday, the government accused Mukhtar Dzhakishev, the former head of state-owned uranium miner Kazatomprom, of illegally selling stakes in uranium deposits to foreign companies……………………………..

The broader issue is that the arrest and the accusations, which came out of nowhere, reinforce the fact the political risk in Kazakhstan remains enormous for mining companies.

Uranium deposits are usually considered strategic by host countries, which makes it difficult for uranium miners such as Cameco Corp. to access most markets. As a result, they have flocked to Kazakhstan, which has emerged as a huge uranium hotbed in the past decade.

May 30, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, Kazakhstan | antinuclear, nuclear, radioactive, uranium | Leave a comment

Another Top Kazakh Uranium Company Official Arrested –

Another Top Kazakh Uranium Company Official Arrested Radio Free Europe

May 27, 2009

ASTANA — Baurzhan Ibraev, the vice president of the Kazakh state uranium company Kazatomprom, has been arrested, RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service reports.

Ibraev’s arrest on May 25 comes after company President Mukhtar Dzhakishev and his deputies — Dmitry Parfenov, Askar Kasabekov, and Malkhaz Tsotsoria — were arrested last week and charged with theft……………….Of the seven top managers at Kazatomprom, only two are not in jail, including former National Security Committee chief Nartai Dutbaev.

May 30, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Kazakhstan, politics | antinuclear, nuclear, radioactive, uranium | Leave a comment

Uranium intrigue

Uranium intrigue

Market Blog May 28, 2009 The Globe and Mail Uranium One Inc. (UUU-T2.20-0.21-8.71%) was whacked on Wednesday after the head of Kazakhstan’s state-owned uranium mining company was reportedly arrested and accused of illegally selling uranium concessions to foreign companies – a potentially big problem, given that Uranium One operates in Kazakhstan.

Uranium intrigue – The Globe and Mail

May 30, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Kazakhstan, secrets,lies and civil liberties | antinuclear, nuclear, radioactive, uranium | 1 Comment