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Uzbekistan plans to build four 1,200 MW nuclear reactors

The Ministry of Energy of Uzbekistan has decided to build four nuclear reactors, instead of the two initially planned. In 2018, Uzbekistan announced plans to build two 1,200 MW reactors by 2028 and 2030, and in May 2019 the nuclear development agency UzAtom signed an agreement with the Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom to start engineering surveys for the site of the first nuclear power plant in Uzbekistan. The site that has been chosen, near Lake Tuzkan in the Farishsky district, already takes into account the siting of four units and the Ministry of Energy expects that the construction of four units would take less time and investment.

The nuclear project is expected to help Uzbekistan, which is posting a very fast economic growth (around +5% in 2019 and +5.5% in 2020), meet its rising power consumption; electricity consumption increased by 21% between 2010 and 2018 to 53.5 TWh and power generation might have to double by 2030 to match electricity demand. The first two 1,200 MW units are expected to add 21 TWh/year, covering 18% of total power generation. Moreover, the nuclear project would enable Uzbekistan to cut its CO2 emissions and to use part of the gas currently burnt in power generation (16 bcm consumed for power generation in 2018) for producing high added value petrochemical products or for exports (revenue estimated at US$550-600m/year).

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