ASTANA. June 29 - A bill on the Semipalatinsk nuclear safety zone with corresponding amendments has passed its second, final reading and was adopted at a plenary meeting of the Kazakh Senate on Thursday.
The Kazakh Assembly (lower house) adopted the bill earlier. It is now deemed adopted by parliament and will be submitted to the president in order for it to be signed into law.
"The bills regulate the creation and functioning of a special zone at the former Semipalatinsk nuclear test range. The range has a total area of over 1.8 million hectares. Comprehensive environmental surveying detected areas with excessive radiation levels and the potential spread of radioactive substances at the range. Therefore, a nuclear safety zone with special legal regulations will be created on the former range's territory," Olga Bulavkina, secretary of the Committee on Agrarian Issues, Nature Management and Rural Development, said at the meeting.
Chairman of the Kazakh Assembly's Environment and Nature Management Committee Edil Zhanbyrshin said earlier that the primary bill and the supporting bill amending and augmenting certain Kazakh laws relating to the Semipalatinsk nuclear safety zone were submitted to parliament in May 2021, and passed their first reading on April 13, 2022.
While working on the document, MPs made amendments to clarify the procedure for designating reserve lands as part of the nuclear safety zone, he said.
Other amendments banned transactions involving lands of the nuclear safety zone and adjusted the Code of Taxes and other Obligatory Payments to the Budget to regulate the use of lands of the nuclear safety zone in accordance with tax, land and environmental laws.
Both bills were submitted to the Senate on June 21.
The world's biggest nuclear test range operated in Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, between 1949 and 1989. About 500 nuclear tests were conducted there over 40 years. The range was officially shut down on August 29, 1991.
The Kazakh Energy Ministry proposed in 2021 to create a nuclear safety zone with corresponding regulations at the former Semipalatinsk nuclear test range. According to a preliminary estimate, the nuclear safety zone will encompass 6,000 square kilometers of the East Kazakhstan region, 2,600 square kilometers of the Pavlodar region, and 800 square kilometers of the Karaganda region. The zone will solve a number of problems relating to the former nuclear test range, where land could be used for economic needs.