COMMUNICATION STRATEGY ABOUT THE PROJECT OF THE NUCLEAR POWER PLANT IN KAZAKHSTAN

Abstract

Over the last two decades, the Kazakhstan government has discussed constructing a Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) to pursue an energy security agenda and, more recently, carbon neutrality. However, government communication on this topic has been inconsistent and intermittent, and in the past four years, we observed an increase in communication conducted by the government. The NPP, being a grand project with multiple stakeholders and complex implications for the country, deserves close attention and careful consideration from the country as a whole. Thus, this paper aims to study the communication strategy regarding the construction of NPP in Kazakhstan. A modified Laswell model is used as a conceptual framework to analyze communication in terms of “Who, Says What, in Which Channel, to Whom, with What Feedback,” where the last category replaces measuring the effectiveness of communication due to its recency. Semi-structured interviews with two groups, representing government officials responsible for the communication and the expert community and civil society activists providing feedback on the communication strategy, contributed to the findings of this research. In addition, documents related to the PR campaign, the results of sociological research, and the social media pages of the primary stakeholders in communication were analyzed. The two key stakeholders responsible for the communication are Kazakhstan Nuclear Power Plants (KNPP) LLP and the Ministry of Energy (MoE). The themes they cover are energy deficiency, experts’ opinions on the NPP, peaceful nuclear, and other materials informing the population about the benefits of nuclear energy. However, the second group is quite negative about the reasons provided by the KNPP, MoE, and the government, emphasizing the lack of addressed risks and concerns. The paper ends with the relevant recommendations that seek to improve the communication strategy of the MoE and KNPP on the project of NPP.