Kazakhstan has signed for a reactor before it knows the loan’s price

Kazakhstan has now signed the contract for its first nuclear power plant, and the easy questions are settled. The builder is Rosatom, the design is the VVER-1200, the site is on the western shore of Lake Balkhash and the price is estimated at about $16.4bn. The question that matters most for the country’s finances is still open: on what terms Russia will lend the money. Until those terms are published, the contract fixes the engineering of the project but not its economics.

What was signed in Vladivostok

The contract was signed on 3 September at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok by the state-owned Kazakhstan Nuclear Power Plants and Atomstroyexport, Rosatom’s engineering arm. The chairman of Kazakhstan’s Atomic Energy Agency, Almasadam Satkaliyev, and Rosatom’s director general, Alexei Likhachev, attended. Rosatom takes responsibility for the whole chain, from design and procurement through construction and commissioning to handover. Likhachev said the document marked “a new stage in our cooperation with Kazakhstan”.

The plant will have two VVER-1200 pressurised water reactors with a combined capacity of about 2.4 GW, near the village of Ulken in the Zhambyl district of Almaty region, some 400 km from the city of Almaty. The Times of Central Asia puts that at roughly 9 per cent of the country’s current installed generating capacity. The cost breaks down into about $14.4bn for the two units and about $2bn for infrastructure, physical protection and warranty fuel. On the headline figure alone, that is around $6,000 per kilowatt of capacity before any overruns.

The contract follows the intergovernmental agreement signed on 28 May during President Vladimir Putin’s state visit to Astana. Rosatom was chosen in 2025 over bids from China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), France’s EDF and Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power. The political mandate goes back to the October 2024 referendum, in which about 71 per cent of voters backed nuclear power, according to the official result. RFE/RL reported at the time that the vote was marked by low urban turnout and the arrest of activists.

The loan is the real contract

Kazakhstan said in May that it expects Russia to finance 85 per cent of the project through a state export loan. The Times of Central Asia reports that the specific terms have not been made public. The Kazakh budget has so far committed 818.3bn tenge, about $1.7bn, spread over 2027–2029: 247.9bn in 2027, 303.1bn in 2028 and 267.3bn in 2029. That is roughly a tenth of the estimated cost. It covers the first three years of construction, not the whole of Kazakhstan’s 15 per cent share.

For a project of this size, the interest rate, grace period, currency and repayment schedule matter as much as the reactor. A Caspian Policy Center analysis in 2025 noted that Rosatom’s state-backed loans to other customers have historically run from $10bn to $25bn at 3–4 per cent interest. Whether Kazakhstan secured terms in that range, and whether repayment is tied to the plant’s output or to the state budget, is not yet known. An earlier Kazakh government statement, quoted by RFE/RL in 2025, said work on “attracting state export financing” from Russia had only just begun, and RFE/RL reported doubts at the time about Russia’s capacity to fund a project of this size.

A second exposure is political rather than technical. The VVER-1200 is the type used in Rosatom projects in Belarus, China, Türkiye, Bangladesh, Egypt and Hungary, so the design carries little novelty risk. The risk lies in financing and supply from a lender under Western sanctions. A Kazakh lawmaker, Ermurat Bapi, cited CNNC’s “freedom from Western sanctions” as one reason to give the later plants to China. By signing the first contract with Rosatom anyway, Astana has judged that risk acceptable for one plant, though not for all three.

Two vendors, one site

Kazakhstan has not bet on one partner. On 31 July 2025, First Deputy Prime Minister Roman Sklyar said CNNC would build the country’s second and third nuclear plants. A government resolution signed by Prime Minister Oljas Bektenov in late January 2026 placed the second plant next to the first, in the same Zhambyl district on the Balkhash shore.

The split has a commercial logic as well as a diplomatic one. The Caspian Policy Center estimated in 2025 that Chinese reactors take about six years to build, against about nine for Russian and South Korean designs. If those estimates hold, China’s plant could come online close to Russia’s despite starting later. Two vendors on one site also means two safety cultures, two fuel supply chains and two sets of spare parts for a regulator that has never licensed a power reactor. The analyst Dosym Satpaev has warned that a supplier country provides “reactors, technical support, consulting, and often maintenance” and gains leverage accordingly. Splitting the programme spreads that leverage, but it doubles the work of oversight.

The shortage will be solved by other means

The government presents the plant as an answer to the country’s power shortage. The numbers suggest the shortage will be dealt with long before the reactors run. In 2025 Kazakhstan generated 123.1bn kWh and consumed 124.6bn kWh. Demand rose 3.8 per cent and peaked at a record 17.724 GW on 18 December. Net imports from Russia fell from 3.41bn kWh in 2024 to 2.48bn kWh in 2025. In the first five months of 2026 the country ran a small surplus of about 300m kWh, according to Interfax.

The Energy Ministry plans about 2.6 GW of new capacity in 2026, mostly gas plants and wind and solar farms, and another 845 MW in 2027. It expects to close the deficit by the end of the first quarter of 2027 and to phase out imports from Russia that year. The first reactor is due in 2034, according to World Nuclear News; the Moscow Times, reporting in May, cited 2035–2036. The Astana Times puts construction at about eight years from a 2027 start. On any of these dates, nuclear power arrives as baseload for the 2030s, not as relief for today’s shortfall.

That matters for how the project should be judged. The grid’s immediate weaknesses are wear and geography. The Times of Central Asia reports physical wear on the network of about 76 per cent, with a target of 45 per cent by 2029. Consumption in the southern zone grew 8 per cent in 2025 and in the western zone 13.2 per cent. The regional blackout of 14 August showed how exposed the system remains, even in a year of overall balance. None of that is fixed by a plant that will not produce power for eight years.

What to watch

Three things will show whether the Balkhash plant is on track. The first is the publication of the loan agreement, or at least its main terms. The second is the site licence, which the government expects in 2027, and the independence of the regulator that grants it. The third is whether the government commits to a domestic share of work. Officials say they want Kazakh firms involved “as extensively as possible” but have not published a figure. The target of about 5 per cent of electricity from nuclear power by 2035 now looks tight on every published timeline. A clear public account of the costs would do more for the project’s credibility than a firm start date.

Sources

• World Nuclear News — Rosatom signs EPC contract for Kazakhstan nuclear plant (3 September 2026)
• The Times of Central Asia — Kazakhstan nuclear power plant contract signed with Rosatom (3 September 2026)
• The Astana Times — Kazakhstan signs contract for construction of first nuclear power plant (September 2026)
• The Moscow Times — Russia signs agreement to build first nuclear power plant in Kazakhstan (28 May 2026)
• World Nuclear News — Location of second Kazakh nuclear power plant announced (3 February 2026)
• RFE/RL — Kazakhstan’s atomic maneuvers: Astana tilts toward Beijing in its nuclear energy ambitions (2025)
• Caspian Policy Center — Beyond the contract: what Kazakhstan’s Rosatom deal says about its foreign policy balancing act (24 June 2025)
• The Times of Central Asia — Kazakhstan targets end to electricity deficit by 2027 (20 August 2026)