Kazakhstan's Ministry of Energy announced that it will begin to supply uranium to five Chinese nuclear plants starting from 2019 onwards. The facilities are currently under construction and will be supplied with uranium fuel from Kazakhstan. The country is a key uranium producer, with around 40% of the worldwide production and 12% of the uranium reserves, ahead of Canada and Australia. The state-run company KazAtomProm has reduced the level of its uranium production by 10% for 2017 due to a 47% drop in world uranium prices at the beginning of the year.
Kazakhstan has no nuclear power plants of its own and exports uranium mostly in the form of pellets or triuranium octoxide, both of which require additional processing before being fuelled into the power plants. China is also playing a growing role in Kazakh uranium exportation and in 2014, 55% of Kazakhstan's uranium production was exported to China.
Interested in Global Energy Research?
Enerdata's premium online information service provides up-to-date market reports on 110+ countries. The reports include valuable market data and analysis as well as a daily newsfeed, curated by our energy analysts, on the oil, gas, coal and power markets.
This user-friendly tool gives you the essentials about the domestic markets of your concern, including market structure, organisation, actors, projects and business perspectives.