President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev told Kazakhstan in a national address that the country should hold a state strategic reserve of uranium to fuel its planned nuclear plants for more than 100 years. The Atomic Energy Agency has since put a number on the ambition: at least 150,000 tonnes of uranium reserved by 2050. The country already mines about 40% of the world’s supply, so the proposal is a plan to keep a large share of that output at home.
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Tokayev tied the idea to the 2024 referendum that approved building a nuclear plant, arguing that supply planning for those reactors has to start now and look 50 years or more ahead. The address set the political frame: a reserve is not an export decision, it is insurance for reactors Kazakhstan has already voted to build, with the fuel question raised before the first plant has poured concrete.
What Tokayev proposed and how Kazatomprom answered
According to World Nuclear News coverage of the plan, the president made the proposal the week before the report appeared, framing it as a consequence of the decision to build several nuclear plants rather than one. On the Tuesday after, Kazatomprom Chairman Meirzhan Yusupov briefed him on the national uranium company’s plans, including geological exploration in six areas covering more than 1,000 square kilometres and work on the promising Kyzyltu area, which spans 124 square kilometres.
Exploration matters because a reserve needs uranium to put in it, and Kazatomprom is the producer that would supply the material. The briefing was reported on the website of the President’s Office, which also supplied the photograph that accompanied the story.
The reserve is meant to feed a domestic fleet that does not yet exist. The first station, the Balkhash plant, is to use two Rosatom reactors with construction targeted for 2027, and China National Nuclear Corporation is slated to build a second station on an adjacent site in the Zhambyl district. Officials are also examining locations for a third station with medium-sized units of 300 to 600 MW. The government’s goal is for nuclear power to supply 5% of generation by 2035, a modest share that explains why a reserve counted in tonnes of metal looks large next to the demand it is meant to serve.
A 150,000-tonne target and a multi-level reserve
The number comes from the Atomic Energy Agency. Its chairman, Almassadam Satkaliyev, told a parliamentary committee, as relayed by the Kazinform news agency, that the development strategy calls for reserving at least 150,000 tonnes of uranium by 2050. A conceptual framework is still being drafted. The reserve is meant to work at several levels along the whole fuel chain, from deposits left in the ground to physical stockpiles and fuel ready for loading into reactors.
That structure means the 100-year label is a planning horizon rather than a single warehouse. Much of the reserve could stay underground as deposits the state declines to mine, which costs nothing to store but depends on policy holding for decades. The agency’s own announcements appear on its press page on gov.kz, where the framework is expected to surface once drafted.
The framing matters politically as well as technically. Tokayev presented the reserve as a follow-on to the referendum decision, not a separate industrial policy, and the Atomic Energy Agency’s 2050 date puts a long fuse on it. A target set 24 years out will pass through several governments and several uranium price cycles, and the reporting so far contains no mechanism for protecting the reserve from being drawn down if prices rise.
Kazakhstan’s weight in the uranium market
The scale of the producer explains why a domestic reserve draws attention abroad. The country holds about 14% of world uranium resources and has been the largest producer since 2009, with output of about 25,839 tU in 2025, roughly 40% of world production. The World Nuclear Association keeps a country profile on Kazakhstan tracking production and plans.
A 150,000-tonne reserve is roughly six years of Kazakhstan’s current annual output, a rough comparison drawn from the agency’s target and the 2025 production figure. Locked away, it would be a sizeable claim on the supply chain, though none of the reported material says how much would be physically stockpiled versus left as unmined resource, or how quickly the target would be funded.
For the producer, the proposal arrives at a point when its output is already large. Kazatomprom’s role in the exploration programme suggests the company expects to be the supplier, but the six exploration areas and the Kyzyltu area are described only by size, not by estimated uranium content, so the briefing gives no tonnage that could be set against the 150,000-tonne figure.
The unanswered points are the reserve’s legal form and its budget. Until the Atomic Energy Agency publishes its conceptual framework, the only firm figures are the 150,000-tonne minimum and the 2050 date given by Satkaliyev. Beyond them, buyers of Kazakh uranium would be watching for signs that stockpiling could tighten the volumes Kazatomprom sells, a question the reporting does not address and officials have not answered in public.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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