Ülken, Kazakhstan — In the semi-abandoned village of Ulken on a giant steppe, Anna Kapustina, a mother of five, hopes controversial plans to build Kazakhstan’s first nuclear power plant will breathe life into her ailing hometown.
On the shore of the huge Lake Balkhash and lined with empty buildings, Ulken is at the centre of a raging debate in Kazakhstan — scarred by massive Soviet-era nuclear testing — on whether construction should go ahead.
Between 1949 and 1989, the USSR carried out around 450 nuclear tests in Kazakhstan, exposing 1.5 million people to radiation.
The Central Asian country is holding a referendum on the plant this weekend, with President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who is pushing for construction, promising to “take important decisions with the support of the people”.
The campaign in the authoritarian state has been one-sided, with the vote largely designed to give an air of democracy.
In Ulken, which people left in droves after the fall of the Soviet Union when plans to build a thermal power plant were abandoned, many of the 1,500 remaining residents hope prosperity — and work — will return.
“We are waiting for our village to come back to life,” said Kapustina, whose husband works as a miner in Aktobe, around 2,500 kilometres (1,550 miles) away.
While rich in oil and the world’s biggest uranium producer, Kazakhstan faces chronic electricity shortages, which authorities are hoping to solve.
Kapustina said she was used to having to resort to candles. She hopes a nuclear plant will bring “cheap, uninterrupted electricity”.
Amid a huge state-backed campaign, most of Ulken’s residents support the project.
But some are weary, fearing for the safety of the Balkhash, the second-biggest lake in a region that already struggles with access to drinking water.
Standing in the yellow fields of a steppe outside the village, engineer Sergei Tretyakov has been “dreaming” about a nuclear plant in Ulken since being sent by the Soviets to help build the abandoned thermal plant.
