To Secure Kazakhstan’s Uranium, Chinese Players Were Compelled to Accommodate Local Partners

CHINA LOCAL/GLOBAL

China has become a global power, but there is too little debate about how this has happened and what it means. Many argue that China exports its developmental model and imposes it on other countries. But Chinese players also extend their influence by working through local actors and institutions while adapting and assimilating local and traditional forms, norms, and practices.

With a generous multiyear grant from the Ford Foundation, Carnegie has launched an innovative body of research on Chinese engagement strategies in seven regions of the world—Africa, Central Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, the Pacific, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Through a mix of research and strategic convening, this project explores these complex dynamics, including the ways Chinese firms are adapting to local labor laws in Latin America, Chinese banks and funds are exploring traditional Islamic financial and credit products in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and Chinese actors are helping local workers upgrade their skills in Central Asia. These adaptive Chinese strategies that accommodate and work within local realities are mostly ignored by Western policymakers in particular.

Ultimately, the project aims to significantly broaden understanding and debate about China’s role in the world and to generate innovative policy ideas. These could enable local players to better channel Chinese energies to support their societies and economies; provide lessons for Western engagement around the world, especially in developing countries; help China’s own policy community learn from the diversity of Chinese experience; and potentially reduce frictions.

Introduction

China’s economic relationship with Kazakhstan is often framed in clichéd narratives associated with Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, in which Kazakhstan represents the “buckle” of the land-based economic belt connecting China and Europe. As the largest country in Central Asia, Kazakhstan is unquestionably critical to Beijing’s vision of westward connectivity, but reducing Kazakhstan to no more than a node in Beijing’s transregional geoeconomic strategy obscures Chinese actors’ adaptive approach to Kazakhstani local interests while overlooking the gains that Kazakhstani actors themselves have skillfully extracted in key sectors of engagement with China.

One example of these dynamics is bilateral cooperation in uranium extraction and nuclear fuel supply, where Chinese actors have had to play Kazakhstan’s game rather than the other way around.

Kazakhstan is the largest producer of natural uranium worldwide, accounting for 43 percent of global uranium production in 2022.1 One reason is the country’s abundant uranium resources. Another is the geology of its deposits, which allows for low-cost, high-profit extraction through the method of in-situ leaching (ISL). Kazakhstan possesses two-thirds of the world’s ISL-suitable reserves and in 2022 accounted for nearly 80 percent of the world’s ISL-derived natural uranium supply.2 The enormous cost advantage has allowed the national nuclear company, Kazatomprom, to become one of the world’s most competitive uranium producers and to wield significant bargaining power over foreign uranium companies eager to access the country’s low-cost resources.

Leveraging that power by trading uranium access for foreign investment, technology, and market share, Kazakhstan has modernized its uranium industry and vastly expanded the volume of its uranium production over the past two decades. From a mere 796 metric tons of uranium (tU) in 1997,3 when Kazatomprom first consolidated the country’s Soviet-era civil nuclear assets,4 annual uranium production in Kazakhstan grew by more than thirty times to some 25,000 tU in 2016 before depressed global prices led to a voluntary reduction in output.5 With prices recovering, Kazatomprom expects to ramp up to 31,000 tU by 2025.6 Since the country produces no nuclear power domestically, the question is where all that uranium might go.

Enter China, the world’s second-largest producer of nuclear energy and the country with the fastest-growing civilian reactor fleet. Compared to the United States, where just a handful of new reactor units have entered commercial operation in the past three decades,7 China has maintained a remarkable rate of new nuclear construction that has only accelerated in recent years. In fact, most of China’s twenty-six ongoing reactor projects were launched during the latest building spree, which began in 2022.8 To ensure the supply of natural uranium for its vast nuclear industry, China has adopted a four-pillar (“四位一体” or, literally, “four-in-one”) strategy consisting of domestic and overseas mining as well as international purchases and reserves.9

China has invested heavily in domestic uranium exploration in recent years, boosting its total uranium resources to an estimated 2.8 million metric tons.10 With the development of promising ISL-suitable deposits in the north that are expected to gradually replace the less productive legacy deposits in the south, the country is headed for a uranium mining boom.11 These developments, however, are recent. In the half-century prior (that is, from the start of uranium extraction in the 1950s), China’s uranium endowments were thought to be poor. As nuclear power generation rapidly expanded, domestic uranium demand far outstripped production, and the country relied overwhelmingly on uranium purchased from international suppliers or mined overseas (see figure 1). Kazakhstan has been indispensable to both these pillars of foreign supply.

China has been purchasing natural uranium from Kazakhstan since the early 2000s.12 While Chinese companies have signed uranium purchase contracts with a range of suppliers—including those based in Western countries such as Australia, Canada, and France13—logistical constraints are such that even Western suppliers often source their China-bound material from Kazakhstan.14 Chinese customs data indicate that almost all of the country’s imported natural uranium came from Kazakhstan and Namibia in 2023, with Kazakhstan alone accounting for two-thirds of the volume.15

As for the remaining suppliers, Australia had dropped off the origin-country list by 2018, and Uzbekistan ceased to be a major supplier in 2022, likely after the expiration of a 2014 deal.16 The large volumes imported from Namibia, meanwhile, are produced by China’s state-owned companies via local mining operations. China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), for instance, has controlled a 68.62 percent stake in Namibia’s Rössing mine since 2019, plus a 25 percent stake in Langer Heinrich,17 while the Husab mine adjacent to Rössing was acquired by China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN) in 2012. After four years of development, uranium production at Husab began in 2016 but did not reach full capacity until a few years later.18 Before these developments, uranium mines in Kazakhstan dominated CGN’s overseas mining portfolio.

CGN’S Uranium Mining Operations: Constraints and Expectations

At its founding, CGN was 45 percent owned by CNNC, the latter having inherited most of the country’s nuclear assets from the restructured Ministry of Nuclear Industry.19 It was not until 2013 that CNNC formally relinquished its by then much diminished CGN shares,20 though it continued to monopolize China’s domestic nuclear fuel cycle, including uranium and reactor fuel production.21

To break the monopoly of its competitor, CGN had to search for opportunities abroad. Through a flurry of agreements between 2006 and 2008, the Chinese company succeeded in securing through its subsidiary a 49 percent stake in Semizbay-U—a joint mining venture with Kazatomprom.22 Then, another wave of agreements between 2014 and 2016 laid the foundation for CGN to take over a 49 percent stake in the Ortalyk joint venture from Kazatomprom in 2021.23

On the surface, these acquisitions appear no different than those in Namibia—all part of Chinese state-owned corporations’ strategy to maximize overseas uranium extraction to satisfy domestic demand. However, upon scrutiny, the local differences are vast, in no small part because of divergent local norms, expectations, and bargaining power. One clear difference, for example, concerns the ownership structure of joint mining ventures. Whereas CGN holds a 90 percent stake in Namibia’s Husab mine after allocating merely 10 percent to Epangelo, the Namibian state-owned uranium mining company,24 the same Chinese company and its subsidiaries have never acquired a majority stake in any Kazakhstani mining venture, either before or after the 2017 law that fixed Kazatomprom’s minimum ownership at 50 percent.25

In fact, around 50 percent local ownership or more is the rule across Kazatomprom’s dozen joint ventures with foreign partners, with just one exception (as shown in table 1).26 That means the Kazakhstani state owns around half of the joint ventures’ uranium production and shares accordingly in the resource rents. Meanwhile, a country without significant local ownership of mining ventures can benefit only via marginal pathways of accrual such as taxes, royalties, and local employment and procurement.

A number of local factors account for the difference in rent distribution. Kazakhstan’s economy is some seventeen times the size of Namibia’s. Unlike Kazakhstan, Namibia has some of the world’s lowest-grade uranium deposits, and production costs are consequently high. Without Chinese demand and investment, Namibia’s uranium mining sector never would have recovered from the market bust of the 1990s and early 2000s or after the 2011 Fukushima accident.27 Furthermore, the vast majority of Namibia’s uranium resources have been owned by foreign companies since the colonial era. As such, despite the establishment of Epangelo in 2008, the Namibian state has continued to lack the financial and technological means and the bargaining power to secure the type of majority ownership that Kazatomprom routinely enjoys in joint uranium mining ventures with foreign partners.

In this context, the 10 percent stake that CGN allowed and, indeed, helped the Namibian state to acquire in the Husab project not only fulfilled local expectations, but was more generous than what preexisting local norms would have dictated.28 In both Kazakhstan and Namibia, the Chinese player tried to maximize its ownership of uranium resources within local constraints and expectations—such as those relating to rent distribution. The different ownership arrangements reflect the Chinese player’s adaptation to the local partners’ financial and technological means as well as bargaining power, which, in turn, has been shaped by factors as divergent as political history, geology, and market dynamics.

Beyond Uranium Mining: Kazatomprom’s Quest for Vertical Integration

The extraction of uranium represents merely the first stage of a nuclear fuel supply chain that involves a series of capital- and technology-intensive processes beginning with the conversion and enrichment of natural uranium and ending with the fabrication of reactor fuel pellets and fuel assemblies. In addition to expanding its uranium production, Kazakhstan has pursued an explicit strategy of diversifying beyond its Soviet-era dependencies and migrating into higher value–added nuclear fuel production.29 Its way of doing so is to trade uranium resources for the foreign investment, technology, and market access necessary to integrate its nuclear fuel supply chain vertically.

As such, Kazatomprom’s joint mining venture deals and its offers of uranium access are almost always tethered to expectations of assistance in vertical integration—such as technology transfers—in explicit quid pro quo arrangements. If the foreign partner fails to fulfill these expectations, resource access may be withdrawn, as then president Nursultan Nazarbayev reminded the head of Kazatomprom explicitly during a meeting in 2016.30 Two years later, when Kazatomprom’s Japanese partners failed to deliver on their promises of technology transfer,31 their shares in Kazakhstani joint mining ventures were dramatically reduced, and Kazatomprom took back control of the associated mining operations.32

Earlier that same year, Kazatomprom increased its share in the Inkai joint venture with Canada’s Cameco from 40 percent to 60 percent,33 a move that was likewise tied to an earlier renegotiation of the Canadian partner’s obligations to assist in Kazatomprom’s vertical integration.34 Cameco had pledged in a 2007 joint venture deal to take 49 percent equity in a uranium conversion plant to be built at Kazatomprom’s Ulba nuclear fuel manufacturing plant.

Kazakhstan would have been able to leverage Canadian investment and technology to expand into yet another segment of the nuclear fuel supply chain. However, the Canadian company later moved away from these plans, citing market considerations,35 and offered technology transfers along with access to Canadian conversion capacity instead. Accordingly, the Ulba conversion joint venture was dissolved in 2019.36 Although Cameco later transferred its uranium refining and conversion technology to Kazakhstan, its share of the uranium production at Inkai would remain at 40 percent under the renegotiated terms.37

As was the case with other foreign companies, CGN’s uranium access in Kazakhstan was from the very beginning conditioned upon its ability to provide Kazatomprom with vertical integration opportunities. The agreements that the two companies signed in 2006 and 2007, for instance, codified the quid pro quo between Chinese resource access and Kazakhstani migration into fuel pellet and fuel assembly manufacturing.38

The arrangement envisioned that “all natural uranium produced by joint Kazakhstani-Chinese enterprises will be delivered to China in the form of high value-added nuclear fuel products.”39 Under these terms, Kazatomprom licensed its plant at Ulba to fabricate uranium fuel pellets for China’s commercial nuclear power plants,40 an arrangement that remains in effect to the present day.41 The entire uranium output of the Semizbay joint venture is converted and enriched in China before being transported to Ulba to be manufactured into fuel pellets, which are then supplied back to China.42 Such a supply chain setup allows Kazatomprom to access China’s huge nuclear fuel market and profit from high value–added fuel fabrication, beyond the supply of cheap raw material.

At the same time, Kazatomprom had by the late 2000s concluded ambitious cooperation agreements with then Japanese-owned Westinghouse43 and France’s Areva to set up fuel assembly manufacturing operations at Ulba—one step further from the fabrication of fuel pellets.44 However, as Japan shut down its nuclear power plants following the 2011 Fukushima accident, and as Westinghouse’s reactor projects faced mounting delays that eventually drove the company into bankruptcy, the markets that those partnerships had promised were lost. Similarly, plans to construct a joint fuel assembly fabrication plant with Areva were suspended by 2014 because of “the absence of a guaranteed market.”45 That was the opening that CGN needed to step in.

While the Chinese company offered no technology of its own, it did guarantee sufficient demand for reactor fuel assemblies to justify a new plant in Kazakhstan, and it was a new plant that Kazatomprom had wanted. Through a series of agreements from 2014 onward, Kazatomprom offered CGN a 49 percent stake in the Ortalyk joint mining venture as long as the Chinese company invested in the Ulba fuel fabrication plant and purchased its production of fuel assemblies for the next twenty years.46 In December 2020, CGN signed the purchase contract, fulfilling its end of the bargain. The Ortalyk agreement was signed four months later. By November 2021, the Ulba fuel fabrication plant had been launched. The first batch of fuel assemblies was delivered to the Chinese customer in December 2022.47

At the end of the day, this latest episode of cooperation was driven as much by Chinese interests as by Kazatomprom’s quest for vertical integration and Western companies’ failure to deliver. Moreover, CGN was not simply acting as an arm of the Chinese state eager to lock up global uranium supplies. Rather, it skillfully leveraged a local opportunity to advance its commercial interest in a nuclear fuel supply chain that is less beholden to the monopoly of its competitor—the state-owned CNNC. And it succeeded.

Key Takeaways—and What the Future Holds

Caricatures of Beijing’s geoeconomic strategy in Central Asia present the picture of a monolithic Chinese state imposing a hub-and-spoke vision of connectivity upon the region while perpetuating a neocolonial pattern of resource extraction.48 These tropes poorly reflect Chinese actors’ adaptive approach to local partnerships in nuclear commerce.

Chinese players secured their access to Kazakhstani raw material by yielding to local norms of resource ownership and fulfilling local expectations of vertical integration. In fact, CGN was Kazatomprom’s first foreign partner to fulfill its promise of localizing a high value–added nuclear fuel production facility, thus altering rather than perpetuating Kazakhstan’s status as an exporter of cheap natural uranium.

The hub-and-spoke narrative is likewise inadequate as it overlooks the mutual benefits of connectivity. As Russia falls under Western sanctions, Kazatomprom is seeking alternative routes for the transit of its Western-bound uranium exports. The trans-Caspian corridor alone cannot replace the traditional route of transit through St. Petersburg because of volume- and cost-related constraints.49 China is offering a different option. Kazatomprom has engaged with its Chinese partners for years on the possibility of establishing a transit corridor through the Alashankou border crossing,50 through which all the uranium China imports from Kazakhstan currently passes.51 While China’s internal regulations on the transit of radioactive cargo remain a barrier, according to Kazatomprom, the infrastructure is already in place,52 and China has set a precedent by allowing the transit of low-enriched uranium to the International Atomic Energy Agency fuel bank in Kazakhstan.53

As CNNC presses ahead with the establishment of a bonded uranium warehouse at Alashankou to rival Western uranium trading hubs,54 Kazatomprom is seeking to become a “strategic partner” to take advantage of the greater logistical flexibility the infrastructure will afford and enhance its own connectivity, bypassing Russia.55 With countries in Asia, Europe, and North America on the verge of another nuclear renaissance, China may well become the “buckle” of a uranium transit belt connecting Kazakhstan to revitalized Western markets.

Notes

1 “World Uranium Mining Production,” World Nuclear Association, August 2023, https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/mining-of-uranium/world-uranium-mining-production.aspx.

2 World Nuclear Association, “World Uranium Mining Production.”

3 Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan, “Kontseptsiia razvitiia toplivno-ėnergeticheskogo kompleksa Respubliki Kazakhstan na 2022 – 2026 gody [Concept Paper for the Development of the Fuel and Energy Complex of the Republic of Kazakhstan 2022–2026],” Adilet, November 21, 2022, https://adilet.zan.kz/rus/docs/P2200000931.

4 Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan, “Ob utverzhdenii Programmy razvitiia uranovoĭ promyshlennosti Respubliki Kazakhstan na 2004-2015 gody [On the Confirmation of the Program of Uranium Industry Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan 2004–2015],” Adilet, November 23, 2004, https://adilet.zan.kz/rus/docs/P040000078_#z0.

5 “Uranium and Nuclear Power in Kazakhstan,” World Nuclear Association, August 2023, https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-g-n/kazakhstan.aspx.

6 Kazatomprom, “Investor Handout 1H2023,” Kazatomprom, accessed February 23, 2024, https://www.kazatomprom.kz/storage/05/kap_investor_handout_24112023ksru6eq4ehlxeyb6sabq.pdf.

7 Elesia Fasching, Tyler Hodge, and Slade Johnson, “First New U.S. Nuclear Reactor Since 2016 Is Now in Operation,” U.S. Energy Information Administration, August 1, 2023, https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=57280#.

8 World Nuclear Association, “Nuclear Power in China,” World Nuclear Association, December 2023, https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/china-nuclear-power.aspx.

9 “Wo guo chubu jianli ‘siweiyiti’ tianran you baozhang gongying tixi [The Country Preliminarily Establishes a “Four-in-One” Natural Uranium Supply Security System],” Science and Technology Daily, October 28, 2023, http://www.stdaily.com/index/kejixinwen/202310/048f52f9931245ce9f32c4033220184e.shtml.

10 “Wo guo you kuang kancha shi da chengguo fabu [The Country’s Ten Most Significant Uranium Mine Exploration Accomplishments Are Announced],” China Atomic Energy Agency, July 21, 2023, https://www.caea.gov.cn/n6760338/n6760342/c10079976/content.html.

11 China Nuclear Industry News, “Sanshi nian, Zhongguoyouye ‘diqin zhi jian’ cong cuilian dao qiwu [Thirty Years, CNUC’s “Sword Of In-Situ Leaching” From Tempering to Upswing],” National Nuclear Safety Administration, August 15, 2023, https://nnsa.mee.gov.cn/ywdt/hyzx/202308/t20230815_1038642.html.

12 RBK, “‘Kazatomprom’ vedet peregovory o prodazhe Kitaiu urana [‘Kazatomprom’ Is in Talks on the Sale of Uranium to China],” Business Press, August 24, 2001, https://web.archive.org/web/20130424160527/http://businesspress.ru/newspaper/default_mId_21960_numId_1574.html.

13 “Australia Starts Shipping Uranium to China,” World Nuclear News, November 21, 2008, https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Australia-starts-shipping-uranium-to-China; and “Areva into Chinese Fuel Supply,” World Nuclear News, November 5, 2010, https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/ENF_Areva_into_Chinese_fuel_supply_0511103.html.

14 World Nuclear News, “Cameco Signs Chinese Uranium Supply Deal,” World Nuclear News, November 24, 2010, https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/ENF-Cameco_signs_Chinese_uranium_supply_deal-2411104.html; and Kim Feng Wong, “Interview: CNNC’s Simon Sun on Alashankou Uranium Hub,” Energy Intelligence, February 3, 2023, https://web.archive.org/web/20230326162242/https://www.energyintel.com/00000186-0483-d963-a396-acb71a290000.

15 “Haiguan tongji shuju zaixian chaxun pingtai [Customs Statistics Data Online Query Platform],” General Administration of Customs of the People’s Republic of China, accessed February 23, 2024, http://stats.customs.gov.cn/.

16 “Kitaĭ k 2022 g zakupit v Uzbekistane uran na $800 mln. [China Will Buy Up $800 Million Worth of Uranium in Uzbekistan by 2022],” UzDaily, May 27, 2014, https://www.uzdaily.uz/index.php/ru/post/20433.

17 Xinhua News Agency, “Zhonghe Jituan zhengshi konggu Namibiya Luoxin you kuang [CNNC Formally Takes Control of Rossing Uranium Mine Shares],” Government of the People’s Republic of China, July 26, 2019, https://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2019-07/26/content_5415417.htm; and World Nuclear News, “Rio Tinto to Sell Rössing Stake,” World Nuclear News, November 26, 2018, https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Rio-Tinto-to-sell-Rossing-stake.

18 Yi Han, “Shijie di er da you kuang dadao sheji channeng wei Zhongguo zai Feizhou zui da touzi [The World’s Second Largest Uranium Mine Reaches Design Capacity, Represents China’s Biggest Investment Project in Africa],” Guancha, April 12, 2018, https://www.yidaiyilu.gov.cn/sjzgh.htm.

19 Time Weekly, “Zhonghe Zhongguanghe nian nei chongci shangshi [CNNC and CGN Rush Toward IPO Within the Year],” People’s Daily Online, March 28, 2014, http://energy.people.com.cn/n/2014/0328/c71661-24760626.html.

20 Time Weekly, “Zhonghe Zhongguanghe nian nei chongci shangshi [CNNC and CGN Rush Toward IPO Within the Year]”; and CGN, “Zhongguo Guanghe Jituan Youxian Gongsi guanyu guquan tiaozheng xiangguan shiyi de gonggao [CGN Public Notice on Matters Related to the Adjustment of Shares],” Chinamoney, March 27, 2014, https://www.chinamoney.com.cn/dqs/cm-s-notice-query/fileDownLoad.do?contentId=436411&priority=0&mode=open.

21 Wang Lu, “Zhongguanghe ‘quxian jiu guo’ yu po Zhonghe longduan [CGN’s Indirect Path to National Service, Desire to Break CNNC’s Monopoly],” Economic Information Daily and People’s Daily Online, December 16, 2014, http://energy.people.com.cn/n/2014/1216/c71661-26213242.html.

22 “Chinese Equity in Kazakh Uranium Mines Confirmed,” World Nuclear News, November 18, 2008, https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/IT-Chinese_equity_in_Kazakh_uranium_mines_confirmed-1811085.html.

23 “Ortalyk Stake Sale Agreement Signed,” World Nuclear News, April 26, 2021, https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Kazatomprom,-CGN-sign-agreement-for-Ortalyk-stake.

24 Nuclear Energy Agency and International Atomic Energy Agency, “Uranium 2022: Resources, Production and Demand,” Nuclear Energy Agency, 2023, 372–373, https://www.oecd-nea.org/jcms/pl_79960/uranium-2022-resources-production-and-demand?details=true.

25 Khadisha Akaeva and Ayia Renault, “«Nedra»: Kto dobyvaet kazakhstanskiĭ uran? [Subsoil: Who Is Mining Kazakhstan’s Uranium?],” Radio Azattyq, January 15, 2024, https://rus.azattyq.org/a/32767436.html.

26 Abctv.kz, “Novoe regulirovanie nedropolʹzovaniia ne privedet k pereraspredeleniiu doleĭ v uranovykh SP [New Regulations on Subsoil Use Will Not Lead to the Redistribution of Shares in Uranium Joint Ventures],” Nuclear Society of Kazakhstan, May 3, 2018, https://www.nuclear.kz/news/2018-05-03.html?lang=ru.

27 Meredith J. DeBoom, “Nuclear (Geo)Political Ecologies: A Hybrid Geography of Chinese Investment in Namibia’s Uranium Sector,” Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 46, no. 3 (2017): 53–83.

28 Meredith J. DeBoom, “Developmental Fusion: Chinese Investment, Resource Nationalism, and the Distributive Politics of Uranium Mining in Namibia” (PhD diss., University of Colorado, Boulder, 2018), 214, https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/hd76s013x.

29 Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan, “Ob utverzhdenii Kontseptsii razvitiia toplivno-ėnergeticheskogo kompleksa Respubliki Kazakhstan do 2030 goda [On the Confirmation of the Concept Paper for the Development of the Fuel and Energy Complex of the Republic of Kazakhstan up to 2030],” Adilet, June 28, 2014, https://adilet.zan.kz/rus/archive/docs/P1400000724/28.06.2014.

30 Akorda Press Service, “Gosudarstvo mozhet vernutʹ sebe aktivy v atomnoĭ otrasli [The State Can Take Back Its Assets in the Nuclear Industry],” Forbes.kz, March 15, 2016, https://forbes.kz/process/energetics/gosudarstvo_mojet_vernut_sebe_aktivyi_v_atomnoy_otrasli/.

31 Daniiar Serikov, “Partnëry ‘Kazatomproma’ ne vypolnili obiazatelʹstva v dole [Partners of Kazatomprom Failed to Fulfill Their Partnership Obligations],” Inbusiness.kz, December 28, 2018, https://inbusiness.kz/ru/news/partnery-kazatomproma-ne-vypolnili-obyazatelstva-v-dole.

32 Daniiar Serikov, “‘Kazatomprom’ ne poluchil vovremia oplatu za doliu v stepnogorskom proekte ‘Kyzyltu’ [‘Kazatomprom’ Did Not Receive Timely Payment for Its Share in the Stepnogorsk Project ‘Kyzyltu’],” Inbusiness.kz, May 8, 2019, https://inbusiness.kz/ru/news/kazatomprom-ne-poluchil-vovremya-oplatu-za-dolyu-v-stepnogorskom-proekte-kyzyltu.

33 “Kazatomprom uvelichivaet doliu uchastiia v sovmestnom predpriiatii «Inkaĭ» [Kazatomprom Will Increase Its Share in the Inkai Joint Venture],” Kazatomprom, December 11, 2017, https://inkai.kazatomprom.kz/ru/news/kazatomprom-uvelichivaet-dolyu-uchastiya-v-sovmestnom-predpriyatii-inkay.

34 “Kazatomprom uvelichit doliu v SP «Inkaĭ» do 60% [Kazatomprom Will Increase Its Share in Inkai JV to 60%],” Kazinform, May 27, 2016, https://www.inform.kz/ru/kazatomprom-uvelichit-dolyu-v-sp-inkay-do-60_a2908308.

35 “CAMECO somnevaetsia v tselesoobraznosti investitsiĭ v konversionnyĭ zavod v Kazakhstane [Cameco Questions the Rationale of Investing in the Conversion Plant in Kazakhstan],” Atominfo.ru, May 1, 2012, http://atominfo.ru/newsa/j0669.htm.

36 “Svodnyĭ plan restrukturizatsii neprofilʹnykh aktivov AO «UMZ» po sostoianiiu na 22.08.2019 [Consolidated Plan for the Restructuring of Non-Core Assets of UMP JSC as of August 22, 2019],” Ulba, August 22, 2019, http://www.ulba.kz/ru/files/corporate8_15.doc.

37 Kuralai Abylgazina, “Kakie inostrannye kompanii dobyvaiut uran v Kazakhstane [Which Foreign Companies Mine Uranium in Kazakhstan],” Kursiv, November 7, 2023, https://kz.kursiv.media/2021-02-12/kakie-inostrannye-kompanii-dobyvayut-uran-v-kazakhstane/.

38 Economic and Commercial Office of the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the Republic of Kazakhstan, “Zhong Ha heping liyong heneng lingyu hezuo chengguo fengshuo [China-Kazakhstan Cooperation in the Peaceful Use of Nuclear Energy Achieves Fruitful Outcomes],” Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China, August 31, 2021, http://kz.mofcom.gov.cn/article/todayheader/202108/20210803187413.shtml.

39 “Kazatomprom Strategises With China,” World Nuclear News, October 15, 2007, https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Kazatomprom-strategises-with-China.

40 RIA Novosti, “Kazatomprom mozhet do kontsa goda sertifitsirovatʹ toplivnye tabletki dlia postavki v Kitaĭ [Kazatomprom May Certify Fuel Pellets for Delivery to China by the End of the Year],” Atominfo.ru, September 14, 2010, http://atominfo.ru/news3/z006.htm; and RIA Novosti, “Kazakhstan nachnet s ėtogo goda postavliatʹ v KNR toplivo dlia AĖS – Nazarbaev [Kazakhstan Will Begin Supplying Fuel for Nuclear Power Plants in China This Year – Nazarbayev],” Atominfo.ru, June 14, 2011, http://atominfo.ru/news7/g0212.htm.

41 “China and Kazakhstan Cement Fuel Pellet Deal,” World Nuclear News, September 5, 2016, https://world-nuclear-news.org/UF-China-and-Kazakhstan-cement-fuel-pellet-deal-05091601.html.

42 China Energy News, “Zhong Ha he ranliao lingyu hezuo qianjing ke qi [China and Kazakhstan Have Promising Prospects in Nuclear Fuel Cooperation],” China Atomic Energy Agency, April 1, 2015, https://www.caea.gov.cn/n6760338/n6760342/c6833337/content.html.

43 “KazAtomProm Trumpets Its Plans as China Deal Progresses,” World Nuclear News, November 20, 2007, https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/KazAtomProm-trumpets-its-plans-as-China-deal-progr.

44 “Kazakhstan Signs Agreements with France and Japan,” Nuclear Engineering International, November 9, 2015, https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newskazakhstan-signs-agreements-with-france-and-japan-4713618.

45 “Prospectus,” Kazatomprom, October 31, 2018, 116–117, https://www.kazatomprom.kz/storage/b5/lse_prospectus.pdf.

46 “CGN to Take Stake in Kazakh U Mining Company,” World Nuclear News, January 5, 2021, https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/CGN-set-to-take-stake-in-Kazakh-uranium-mining-com.

47 “History,” Kazatomprom, accessed February 23, 2024, https://www.kazatomprom.kz/en/page/istoriya_kompanii.

48 Deep Pal and Suchet Vir Singh, “Multilateralism With Chinese Characteristics: Bringing in the Hub-and-Spoke,” Diplomat, July 10, 2020, https://thediplomat.com/2020/07/multilateralism-with-chinese-characteristics-bringing-in-the-hub-and-spoke/.

49 “Kazatomprom opublikoval rezulʹtaty deiatelʹnosti za III kvartal 2022 goda [Kazatomprom Published Operating Results for the Third Quarter of 2022],” Atominfo.ru, October 27, 2022, http://atominfo.ru/newsz05/a0639.htm; and “Kazatomprom ob”iavil o fizicheskoĭ postavke partii prirodnogo urana po alʹternativnomu marshrutu [Kazatomprom Announced the Physical Shipment of a Batch of Natural Uranium Via Its Alternative Route],” Atominfo.ru, December 21, 2022, http://atominfo.ru/newsz05/a0893.htm.

50 “Kazakhstan and China Further Cooperation,” World Nuclear News, November 30, 2016, https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Kazakhstan-and-China-further-cooperation; Kazatomprom, “Kazatomprom Will Transport Uranium to North America through China,” Kazatomprom, September 2, 2015, https://www.kazatomprom.kz/en/media/view/kazatomprom-budet-transportirovat-uran-v-severnuyu-ameriku-cherez-kitay; Kazatomprom, “Kazatomprom and Chinese Companies Strengthen Nuclear Cooperation,” Kazatomprom, July 19, 2016, https://www.kazatomprom.kz/en/media/view/kazatomprom-i-kitayskie-kompanii-ukreplyayut-sotrudnichestvo-v-atomnoy-otrasli; and China Energy News, “Zhong Ha he ranliao lingyu hezuo qianjing ke qi [China and Kazakhstan Have Promising Prospects in Nuclear Fuel Cooperation].”

51 Kim Feng Wong, “Interview: CNNC’s Simon Sun on Alashankou Uranium Hub.”

52 Andrea Jannetta and William Freebairn, “Kazatomprom Experiences Delays in Alternate Uranium Export Route,” S&P Global Commodity Insights, October 28, 2022, https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/electric-power/102822-kazatomprom-experiences-delays-in-alternate-uranium-export-route.

53 Laura Gil, “IAEA and China Sign Transit Agreement for LEU Bank,” International Atomic Energy Agency, April 10, 2017, https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/iaea-and-china-sign-transit-agreement-for-leu-bank.

54 Kim Feng Wong, “Interview: CNNC’s Simon Sun on Alashankou Uranium Hub.”

55 Phil Chaffee, “Kazatomprom’s Batyrbayev on Today’s Uranium Bull Market,” Nuclear Intelligence Weekly 15, no. 39 (October 1, 2021): 1–4.