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In 2013 Kazakhstan announced its bid for a seat as non-permanent member of the UN Security Council for the years 2017/18. Kazakhstan regards itself as a global leader in nuclear responsibility, drawing upon its long experience within the nuclear field, as part of the campaign for the seat.
Kazakhstan’s nuclear experience is unusual. In the Soviet period, 456 nuclear tests were carried out at the Semipalatinsk test site, followed by a 17-year cleanup process completed in 2012. On the eve of the Soviet dissolution, Kazakhstan found itself in possession of Soviet strategic nuclear weapons amounting to, at the time, the fourth largest arsenal in the world. The weapons were returned to Russia in the early 1990s for dismantlement.
Today, Kazakhstan is the world’s largest producer of uranium ore concentrates with 41% of the world production in 2014, and production is increasing gradually. It is a founding member of the world’s first international Uranium Enrichment Centre along with the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Armenia, to provide guaranteed uranium enrichment services for nuclear energy. In addition, in 2015, Kazakhstan signed an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to set up an IAEA Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) Bank in Kazakhstan. The Fuel Bank will be a physical reserve of LEU available for eligible IAEA Member States owned and controlled by the IAEA.
At this seminar organized jointly by DIIS and the Kazakhstan Embassy, Kazakhstan’s Ambassador to Denmark and Sweden Dr. Dastan Yeleukenov, Tariq Rauf, Director of the Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and Senior Researcher Cindy Vestergaard (DIIS) will discuss current opportunities and Kazakhstan’s role for strengthening nuclear non-proliferation and promoting nuclear disarmament.
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