OREANDA-NEWS. On the 30th of September in the city of Aterau the draft Intergovernmental Agreement on construction and operation of a nuclear power plant in Kazakhstan was initialed in the framework of the XI Russia and Kazakhstan Interregional Cooperation Forum.

The document was initialed by CEO of ROSATOM Sergey Kirienko and Minister of Energy of Kazakhstan Vladimir Shkolnik.

The draft agreement provides for construction of the nuclear power plant. Its site, power capacity and construction timeframe will be defined in the contract. According to the draft document, it is planned to carry out pre-contractual works to determine and justify technical, financial and economic parameters of the project, analyze infrastructure and prepare its development plan, prepare a package of contracts and sub-contracts to start implementing the plant construction project. The pre-contractual period includes the process of getting licenses and permits necessary for the plant construction to start, design and survey activities, generation of design and working documentation.

The draft agreement also provides for the cooperation in development of an appropriate regulatory framework, education of the personnel, and decommissioning. Besides, the parties expressed their intention to jointly consider issues of selling electricity to be produced by the NPP.

Late May this year, Russia and Kazakhstan signed a Memorandum of Understanding concerning the cooperation in building the NPP. The project provides for a plant with VVER reactors with an installed capacity ranging from 300 up to 1,200 MW. According to the document, the parties also intend to cooperate in nuclear fuel supplies to the plant with a possibility of fabricating the fuel or its components in Kazakhstan within the parties' cooperation process.

On the 23rd of September, at the margins of the 58th IAEA General Conference in Vienna, ROSATOM and NAC Kazatomprom signed a Memorandum of Understanding concerning the cooperation in promotion of nuclear power. The Russian and Kazakh companies decided to merge efforts in the field of promotion of nuclear power and state-of-the-art nuclear technologies in the Republic of Kazakhstan. The parties intend to produce educational and methodological materials, implement joint programs aimed at enticing the young generation into getting secondary-level and higher education in specialties, which are in demand in the nuclear power and industry. The agreement to establish an atomic energy information center in the Schoolchildren's Palace in Astana was one of the key items of the Memorandum.