Delegation from Kazatomprom visits site

On 8-9 March, delegations from some sixty countries and nuclear institutions met in Paris to discuss "access to civilian nuclear energy." Kazatomprom, the state-owned nuclear holding company of the republic of Kazakhstan, in central Asia, was one of the participants.

Before returning to Almaty, the Kazakh capital, the six-member delegation headed by Kazatomprom Chairman and former Energy Minister Vladimir Shkolnik, stopped in Cadarache and toured CEA installations and the ITER platform. Formal interaction between ITER and Kazakhstan in view of a possible accession to the project began after the third ITER Council, in June 2008.

Kazatomprom was established in 1997. It employs 25,000 people in uranium mining, nuclear pellets manufacturing, beryllium and tantalum metallurgy. The company is presently engaged in dismantling the 135 megawatt BN-350 installation, the world's first commercial fast breeder reactor that began operation in 1973 and was shut down in 1999.