38 Stefan Guth
these imaginaries are currently extolled by the public relations department of
Russia’s nuclear state corporation Rosatom: computer animations produced
in 2012 show a floating NPP-cum-desalination-plant dropping anchor on a
desert shoreline, sending electricity and freshwater to the shore, whereupon
palm trees and skyscrapers start sprouting from the sandy ground (in the same
animation, the reactor vessel also makes port in the Arctic to give life to a city
radiating with warmth and light). 155 Far-fetched as these visions may seem,
a prototype floating NPP by the name of Akademik Lomonosov has recently
been completed at a St. Petersburg shipyard, and one of the usage scenarios for
this type of vessel calls for it to work in tandem with a floating desalination
plant to supply energy and freshwater to arid coastal regions on short notice,
such as to support the development of oil and gas fields in the Near East. 156
In broader terms, Rosatom has identified atomic-powered water desalination
as a highly promising business field. Forecasting a global freshwater deficit of
up to 2 trillion cubic meters by 2025 and expecting desalination to quickly
become a multibillion-dollar business, 157 the corporation began offering its
latest generation of pressurized water reactors (the VVER-1200) integrated
with desalination facilities in 2015. 158 The “Mangyshlak precedent” figures
prominently in these plans: not only does Shevchenko’s MAEK serve as proof
of concept for the technology, 159 but its specialists also take an active part
in the present-day development of these technologies, with MAEK having
joined the Kurchatov Institute and the Research Institute of Human Ecology
and Environmental Health as the third party in Rosatom’s Expert Council
on Desalination. 160 Nor has FBR technology’s promise of supplying virtually unlimited energy lost its luster yet: as part of an ambitious innovation
program dubbed “breakthrough” (proryv), Russia envisions the transition
to a closed fuel cycle and the mass deployment of FBRs and has recently
brought online the BN-800 at Beloiarsk NPP, making Russia one of the few
countries to still pursue the development of this controversial reactor type. 161
Rosatom is thus still forcefully leveraging the very technologies it pioneered
in Shevchenko – FBRs and nuclear desalination.
At the same time, Kazakhstan’s post-Soviet nuclear policy is built on stark
axiological binaries juxtaposing good and bad ways of exploiting nuclear
energy, revolving around postcolonial motives of imperial versus sovereign
control over national resources and around the dichotomy of peaceful and
military applications of nuclear energy. On the one hand, the country has
been leveraging its status as a victim of the Soviet nuclear weapons’ program
to garner international support since the day it gained independence. On the
other hand, it also imagines itself as a shareholder of civilian nuclear modernity. In the context of what looked like a global nuclear renaissance driven
by universal decarbonization efforts, the Kazakhstani leadership embraced
nuclear technopolitics as a technological way forward, assuming that the
country’s uranium reserves, rather than its hydrocarbon deposits, promised
to fuel its transition from a global commodity provider to a technologically
advanced nation. As a consequence of significant investments in mining and
these imaginaries are currently extolled by the public relations department of
Russia’s nuclear state corporation Rosatom: computer animations produced
in 2012 show a floating NPP-cum-desalination-plant dropping anchor on a
desert shoreline, sending electricity and freshwater to the shore, whereupon
palm trees and skyscrapers start sprouting from the sandy ground (in the same
animation, the reactor vessel also makes port in the Arctic to give life to a city
radiating with warmth and light). 155 Far-fetched as these visions may seem,
a prototype floating NPP by the name of Akademik Lomonosov has recently
been completed at a St. Petersburg shipyard, and one of the usage scenarios for
this type of vessel calls for it to work in tandem with a floating desalination
plant to supply energy and freshwater to arid coastal regions on short notice,
such as to support the development of oil and gas fields in the Near East. 156
In broader terms, Rosatom has identified atomic-powered water desalination
as a highly promising business field. Forecasting a global freshwater deficit of
up to 2 trillion cubic meters by 2025 and expecting desalination to quickly
become a multibillion-dollar business, 157 the corporation began offering its
latest generation of pressurized water reactors (the VVER-1200) integrated
with desalination facilities in 2015. 158 The “Mangyshlak precedent” figures
prominently in these plans: not only does Shevchenko’s MAEK serve as proof
of concept for the technology, 159 but its specialists also take an active part
in the present-day development of these technologies, with MAEK having
joined the Kurchatov Institute and the Research Institute of Human Ecology
and Environmental Health as the third party in Rosatom’s Expert Council
on Desalination. 160 Nor has FBR technology’s promise of supplying virtually unlimited energy lost its luster yet: as part of an ambitious innovation
program dubbed “breakthrough” (proryv), Russia envisions the transition
to a closed fuel cycle and the mass deployment of FBRs and has recently
brought online the BN-800 at Beloiarsk NPP, making Russia one of the few
countries to still pursue the development of this controversial reactor type. 161
Rosatom is thus still forcefully leveraging the very technologies it pioneered
in Shevchenko – FBRs and nuclear desalination.
At the same time, Kazakhstan’s post-Soviet nuclear policy is built on stark
axiological binaries juxtaposing good and bad ways of exploiting nuclear
energy, revolving around postcolonial motives of imperial versus sovereign
control over national resources and around the dichotomy of peaceful and
military applications of nuclear energy. On the one hand, the country has
been leveraging its status as a victim of the Soviet nuclear weapons’ program
to garner international support since the day it gained independence. On the
other hand, it also imagines itself as a shareholder of civilian nuclear modernity. In the context of what looked like a global nuclear renaissance driven
by universal decarbonization efforts, the Kazakhstani leadership embraced
nuclear technopolitics as a technological way forward, assuming that the
country’s uranium reserves, rather than its hydrocarbon deposits, promised
to fuel its transition from a global commodity provider to a technologically
advanced nation. As a consequence of significant investments in mining and