Recently, the Central Asian states have been facing a growing energy shortage in the region, which has a very negative impact on the pace of development of national economies. Thus, according to forecasts of the Ministry of Economy of Uzbekistan, by 2030 the population of the republic will exceed 40 million people and, while maintaining the current GDP rate of 5%, the estimated demand for electricity in the economy should amount to 110-115 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) (in 2024, the total annual energy generation was 80 billion kWh). Therefore, the energy deficit will amount to 35 billion kWh. That said, the energy deficit in the neighboring Republic of Kazakhstan for the same period is projected at 10 billion kWh.
Currently, the main generating source of electricity in Uzbekistan is gas-fired thermal power plants, which provide up to 80% of the total electricity generation. However, with a sharp decline in natural gas production from 70 billion cubic meters in 1991 to 42 billion cubic meters in 2024, and with the depletion of existing fields and the absence of new promising fields, the overall energy deficit in the country is increasing.
Existing renewable energy plants in Uzbekistan, which generate up to 6 gigawatts of energy per year, cannot compensate for the lack of electricity and are of auxiliary importance in the country’s energy balance. In addition, renewable energy sources have serious problems with electricity storage, and solar panels suffer and fail faster as a result of prohibitively high summer temperatures and frosts in winter. In general, this is such an intermittent power generation, the effectiveness of which largely depends on weather conditions.
Taking into account all of the above, the Uzbek leadership came to the conclusion that the volume of electricity generated by thermal power plants in the total energy balance of the republic will continue to steadily decrease. Therefore, if this is not compensated by new permanent sources of generation in the form of nuclear power plants, Uzbekistan will not be able to solve the energy shortage problem in the future.
In this regard, it is worth noting that the Central Asian countries have long been associated with the Russian nuclear industry, since the Soviet Union’s nuclear shield was forged from uranium mined primarily in the republics of Central Asia. And now, when Kazakhstan ranks second in uranium reserves and first in processing uranium raw materials, and Uzbekistan ranks fourth in the world in reserves, both countries have begun to develop their own nuclear energy.
In 2024, Uzbek Atomic Agency UzAtom signed an agreement with Russia’s Rosatom on the deployment of 6 small mobile low-power RITM-200 reactors as part of one nuclear power plant in the Jizzakh region of the republic, and in 2025 signed an additional contract for the creation of an integrated energy site (for the first time in the world), which will include in addition to the nuclear power plant with six small mobile low-power RITM-200 reactors, two more nuclear power plants with two VVER-1000 reactors for each of these stations.
Construction work has already begun, and in the spring of 2026 it is planned to begin pouring concrete under the base of 6 small reactors. The RITM-200 reactor units are currently being cast at Rosatom’s AEM-Technology plant in St. Petersburg. The entire reactor manufacturing and installation procedure should take two years, and then these reactors will be transported by special transport from Podolsk Machine-Building Plant to Jizzakh.
As for nuclear fuel, Tashkent suggests using its Uzbek uranium for this purpose, and since uranium 235 for RITM- 200 reactors should have a degree of enrichment of up to 19.7% (for VVER -1000 reactors it is necessary to enrich only up to 5%), only one company in the world enriches to this level – Rosatom. In addition, an engineering school is currently being opened in Tashkent on the basis of a branch of the Moscow Institute of Engineering and Physics (MEPhI) to train Uzbek specialists for the maintenance of future nuclear power plants.
That said, Uzbekistan does not plan to limit itself only to the problem of solving energy shortages through nuclear energy, but also intends to develop nuclear technologies. Currently, the UzAtom agency is negotiating with the Russian side to construct a large Nuclear Medicine Center in the Ulugbek settlement near Tashkent for the diagnosis and treatment of oncological diseases using radiopharmaceuticals in cooperation with the Russia’s Berezin Medical Institute.
Tashkent also considers the use of nuclear technologies in agriculture to be a very promising area. Thus, irradiation of grown vegetables and fruits will make it possible to extend their shelf life and safety during transportation, as well as to abandon toxic chemical methods of fruit processing.
At the same very time, engineering and survey work has also begun in Kazakhstan at the site of a future nuclear power plant on the shores of Lake Balkhash in the town of Ulken. The maintenance works will last 18 months, and only then will the exact location for the installation of the two VVER-1200 reactors be determined and concrete pouring for their foundations will begin. In the future, Astana plans to build two nuclear power plants with the same capacity as the first station. Moreover, Rosatom will also build the second nuclear power plant, and the contractor for the construction of the third nuclear power plant has not yet been determined. In addition, the Kazakh industry has already mastered the production of uranium fuel pellets and fuel cells and can provide itself with nuclear fuel in full.
Thus, the two largest economies of Central Asia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, began building nuclear power plants on their territories with the help of Russia in order to achieve energy independence, stimulate economic growth and preserve the environment.
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