Vladimir Putin and Shavkat Mirziyoyev held a call this week to assess progress on bilateral infrastructure initiatives, with nuclear energy taking center stage. The Kremlin's press service confirmed the leaders reviewed joint ventures spanning atomic power, industrial manufacturing, and transport logistics.

For engineering teams monitoring global power capacity, the specifics are significant. Concrete pouring commenced this week on a new nuclear power plant in Uzbekistan, following a foundational agreement signed with Rosatom in September 2025. The facility will integrate two high-capacity VVER-1000 generation 3+ reactors paired with two RITM-200N small modular units, each rated at 55 MW. Full operational status is targeted for 2035.

In parallel, the Almalyk Mining and Metallurgical Complex activated its third copper enrichment plant on March 16. The facility runs on equipment supplied by major Russian manufacturing firms. While primarily industrial, these developments underscore a broader trend: regions are securing baseload power to support heavy digitization and automated production lines.

Reliable energy remains a prerequisite for scaling compute infrastructure. As data centers increasingly compete for stable electricity, the deployment of mixed-reactor architectures offers a case study in grid resilience. The combination of large-scale generation with modular units could inform future distributed energy resources for high-density computing zones.

Though current outputs target traditional industry, the 2035 completion window mirrors long-term infrastructure roadmaps used by tech planners. Stable grids in Central Asia may eventually open new corridors for distributed workload hosting, provided energy availability matches the growth in computational demand.

Source: RIA Novosti