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Kazakhstan’s international energy image is now that of one of the world’s rising oil exporters, an extraordinary feat given that, two decades ago its hydrocarbon output was beyond insignificant when the USSR collapsed. The vast Central Asian nation, larger than Western Europe, has now quietly passed another energy milestone.

Kazakhstan produces 33 percent of world’s mined uranium, followed by Canada at 18 percent and Australia, with 11 percent of global output. Kazakhstan contains the world’s second-largest uranium reserves, estimated at 1.5 million tons. Until two years ago Kazakhstan was the world’s No. 3 uranium miner, following Australia and Canada.

Together the trio is responsible for about 62 percent of the world’s production of mined uranium.

According to Kazakhstan’s State Corporation for Atomic Energy, Kazatomprom, during January-September, the country mined 13,957 tons of uranium. “The volume of uranium mining in the Republic of Kazakhstan (for January – September) comprised 13,957 tons, which is 11 percent higher than the same period last year.” Even more impressive, Kazatomprom’s revenues soared 72 percent year-on-year. Kazatomprom is the state-owned Kazakh national operator for the export of uranium, as well as rare metals, nuclear fuel for nuclear power plants, special equipment, technologies, and dual-purpose materials.

To put Kazakhstan’s accomplishment in context, a mere five years ago Kazakhstan produced 5,279 tons of uranium.

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The good news is that on 8 November the International Energy Agency released its 2011 “World Energy Outlook.”

While it will cheer nuclear advocates, overall the report makes for grim reading.

Pulling no punches, the report states at the outset, “There are few signs that the urgently needed change in direction in global energy trends is underway.”

Stripped of its cautious language, the IEA report essentially noted that should present trends continue, the world’s governments through a lack of progressive initiative embracing alternative energy sources would continue to rely on ‘tried and true” fossil fuels, resulting in increased pollution, more fossil-fuel dependency and increasingly upward energy prices.

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The worldwide implications for nuclear power advocates in light of the 11 March disaster at Japan’s Daichi Fukushima nuclear complex, battered first by an earthquake and a subsequent tsunami, are slowly unfolding.

Nations committed to nuclear power are being subjected to a relentless PR barrage by nuclear construction firms, who stand to lose billions if current contracts are suspended or, even worse, cancelled.

Despite the bland reassurances of the nuclear power industry that “it can’t happen here,” in Europe, Italy has canceled plans to construct nuclear reactors, while Germany’s Bundestag last month passed a resolution to close all 17 of the nation’s nuclear power plants. Seven NPP plants were immediately shuttered with the remainder to be passed out by 2022.

So, where to go for the juice? … Continue reading.