When the USSR collapsed in December 1991, Kazakhstan inherited the fourth largest nuclear arsenal in the world after the Russian Federation and the United States -- 104 SS-18 intercontinental ballistic missiles, 40 Tu-95 strategic bombers with air-launched cruise missiles -- around 1,410 nuclear warheads in all. In addition, Kazakhstan was home to the Semipalatinsk nuclear weapons test site. Upon declaring independence, Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev made the decision to renounce nuclear weapons. Kazakhstan transferred all of its nuclear warheads to Russia by April 1995 and destroyed the nuclear testing infrastructure at Semipalatinsk by July 2000. Weapons-grade nuclear material remains in Kazakhstan, however, including three metric tons of plutonium at a shutdown breeder reactor in Aktau, Kazakhstan and small amounts of highly enriched uranium (HEU) at two nuclear research institutes.
Approximately 600 kg of weapons-grade HEU was removed to the United States from the Ulba Metallurgy Plant in 1994 under a joint U.S.-Kazakhstani operation known as Project Sapphire. In a subsequent operation that began in 2001, 2,900 kg of up to 26% enriched nuclear fuel was transferred from Aktau to Ulba to be blended down to non-weapons usable forms of uranium for use in commercial and scientific activities.
Kazakhstan is a party to START-I, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). It signed the Additional Protocol with the International Atomic Energy Agency in February 2004. On 19 February 2007, Kazakhstani President Nazarbayev signed a law approving the nation’s Additional Protocol. Kazakhstan is a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group.
Kazakhstan currently possesses approximately 15-30% of the world’s uranium reserves and has expressed intent to become the world’s largest producer of uranium under its “number one in the world” program. Moscow has stated its interest in integrating Soviet-era nuclear infrastructure that once linked the uranium and nuclear fuel facilities in Russia and Central Asia in order to meet Russian and global demand. In October 2006, Kazakhstan agreed to participate in the creation of international uranium enrichment centers in Russia.
The foreign ministers of the five Central Asian States--Kazakhstan, Krygyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan--signed a treaty establishing a Central Asian Nuclear Weapon Free Zone (CANWFZ) on 8 September 2006.
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Updated January 2008 |
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