Aqtau

This article describes the city of Aktau in the Mangghystau region of Kazakhstan. The article Aqtau (settlement) deals with the settlement of the same name in the Karagandy area .

Aqtau Ақтау ( kas. ) | Актау ( Russian )
coat of arms
Basic data
State :	Kazakhstan
Territory :	Mangghystau
Founded :	1961
Coordinates :	43 ° 39 '  N , 51 ° 9'  E Coordinates: 43 ° 39 '0 "  N , 51 ° 9' 0"  E
Height :	−8  m
Area :	76.4  km²
Residents :	188,791 (Jan 1, 2020)
Population density :	2,471 inhabitants per km²
Time zone :	WKST ( UTC + 5 )
Telephone code :	(+7) 7292
Postal code :	130000
License plate :	12 (old: R)
Äkim ( Mayor ) :	Nurdul Qilybai
Website :	aktau.gov.kz
Location in Kazakhstan

Aqtau ( Kazakh Ақтау - "white mountain"; Russian Актау Aktau ; from 1964 to 1991 Шевченко Shevchenko ) is a port city on the Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan . It is located in the west of the country on the Mangischlak peninsula about 380 kilometers north of Baku . The city is the administrative center and, with 188,791 inhabitants (as of January 1, 2020), it is also the largest city in the Mangghystau area .

geography

Geographical location

Aktau is located in the Mangghystau area (Маңғыстау облысы / Mangghystau oblysy ) on the large Mangyschlak peninsula in western Kazakhstan on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea . The climate here is continental with relatively cold winters and hot summers. The annual rainfall is only about 150 mm.

climate

Aqtau
Climate diagram
J F. M. A. M. J J A. S. O N D.     8th   2 -5     8th   3 -5     12   8th 0     13   17th 7th     11   24 13     8th   29 18th     7th   32 21st     5   31 20th     11   25th 15th     11   17th 8th     14th   10 3     13   5 -1 Temperature in ° C ,  precipitation in mm Source: www.weather-atlas.com

Average monthly temperatures and rainfall for Aqtau Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Max. Temperature ( ° C ) 2 3 8th 17th 24 29 32 31 25th 17th 10 5 O 17th Min. Temperature (° C) −5 −5 0 7th 13 18th 21st 20th 15th 8th 3 −1 O 7.9 Precipitation ( mm ) 8th 8th 12 13 11 8th 7th 5 11 11 14th 13 Σ 121 Hours of sunshine ( h / d ) 3 4th 5 7th 10 11 15th 14th 12 11 10 9 O 9.3 Rainy days ( d ) 6th 6th 6th 5 4th 4th 3 3 4th 5 6th 7th Σ 59 Water temperature (° C) 7th 5 5 9 14th 20th 24 24 21st 16 11 9 O 13.8 Source: www.weather-atlas.com

history

View of Aqtau

The city emerged because of its importance for the nuclear industry as a " closed city " in the late 1950s. From 1964 to 1991 the city was called Shevchenko (named after the Ukrainian poet of the 19th century Taras Shevchenko , who lived in exile in nearby Novopetrovskoye, now Fort Shevchenko ).

The expansion of exploration for uranium ore , crude oil and other raw materials in western Kazakhstan, as well as the construction of a large metallurgical industrial complex in the Shevchenko region, led to a sharp increase in population at the beginning of the 1960s due to immigration in an area that was otherwise very sparsely populated due to the climatic conditions.

In 1973 the first fast breeder worldwide working on an industrial scale went into operation in Shevchenko . The Aqtau nuclear power plant was used to produce plutonium . The energy generated was mainly used for desalination of seawater .

The privileged position of the city meant that the urban planning concept and its implementation in its entirety and in detail became objects of national and international specialist interest and high recognition at an early stage. The collective of architects and planners responsible for Shevchenko won the "Sir Patrick Abercrombie" award of the International Association of Architects ( UIA ) in 1975 and the State Prize of the Soviet Union in 1977 .

politics

mayor

Below are the mayors of the city since 1992:

• Nikolai Bajew (1992-1994)
• Leonid Burlakow (1994-1996)
• Serik Ospanow (1996-2004)
• Raschit Mustapayev (2004-2006)
• Wiktor Koch (2006)
• Sälimgerei Bekbergenow (2006-2010)
• Ospan Qasaqbayev (2010–2012)
• Jedil Shangbyrschin (2012-2015)
• Serikbai Turymow (2015-2017)
• Ghalymshan Niyazov (2017-2020)
• Nurdäulet Qilybai (since 2020)

Town twinning

Aqtau maintains the following city partnerships:

place	region	country
Changwon	Gyeongsangnam-do	South Korea
Elista	Kalmykia	Russia
Gorgan	Golestan	Iran
Ishimbai	Bashkortostan	Russia
Klaipeda	Klaipeda district	Lithuania
Makhachkala	Dagestan	Russia
Orenburg	Orenburg Oblast	Russia
Samara	Samara Oblast	Russia
Samsun	Samsun	Turkey
Sumqayıt		Azerbaijan

Economy and Infrastructure

oil

After the cessation of uranium mining and processing and the shutdown of the nuclear power plant in February 2001 (with US financial support of approx. US $ 3.8 million), the oil industry is now the economic backbone of the city and the region. The port also plays an increasingly important role in the export of oil. In Aktau has with Mangghystaumunaigas headquartered one of the largest oil companies in Kazakhstan. A consortium made up of Kazmunaigaz (51%), Mubadala Development Company and ConocoPhillips (both 24.5%) are planning the first test wells about 30 kilometers south-west of Aqtau in 2010. The project is called "N-Block" (where N should stand for Nursultan) and is expected to start oil production from 2016.

port

The Aqtau port on the Caspian Sea , built in 1963, serves both business and passenger traffic. There are ferry connections to Olia ( Russia ), Baku ( Azerbaijan ) and Nowshar in Iran . In April 2005, the authorities announced plans to invest up to 150 million US dollars in the expansion of the port by 2009, including additional loading capacities for oil tankers. Kazakh grain deliveries , for example to Azerbaijan, are also shipped from the port of Aktau by the merchant fleet of the state-owned company Kazmortransflot . In November 2006, Kazakhstan's Transport Minister Serik Akhmetov also announced the launch of a train ferry between Aktau and Makhachkala in the Russian Republic of Dagestan .

Nuclear power plant

In December 2007, Russian President Putin and Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev presented the possibility of building a nuclear power plant in Aktau at a press conference in the Moscow Kremlin . The building would be one of the “3. Generation “and based on the technology known from Russian submarines. Rosatom (Federal Agency for Atomic Energy of Russia) was named as the executing company . Timur Shantikin, head of the Atomic Energy Committee of the Ministry of Industry of Kazakhstan, told the press in May 2010: "The first [sic!] Kazakh nuclear power plant is to be built in Aktau in the southwestern part of the country by 2020." The Aktau location was from 1973 By 1999 a nuclear power plant for electricity production and seawater desalination was already in operation. The nuclear power plant at that time was of the type BN-350 , i. H. a sodium-cooled fast breeder reactor .

National Security & Defense

Aqtau is the home base for large parts of the Kazakh Navy. This has been steadily expanded and expanded since 2001, and in 2010 it was assumed that there were around 5000 members of the Navy. The naval equipment for Kazakhstan is given as 10 combat aircraft, two smaller coast guard ships, three Mi-8 and six Mi-2 helicopters; most of this equipment is stationed in Aktau.

traffic

Airport

Aqtau Airport is 26 kilometers away . Regionally, the city is connected daily with the Kazakh capital Nur-Sultan , Atyrau and Almaty by Air Astana . The SCAT airline serves the cities of Aqtöbe , Oral , Qysylorda and Shymkent in Kazakhstan . Internationally, Aqtau is connected with the capitals Baku , Tbilisi , Yerevan , Kiev and Moscow as well as with Istanbul , Astrakhan , Makhachkala , Mineralnye Vody and Krasnodar .

Trunk roads

Aqtau is connected to the Kazakh trunk road network by the A33 . The A35 begins in the city.

Sports

The football club Kaspij Aqtau is based in Aktau . The basketball club BK Kaspij Aqtau plays in the Kazakh National League.

sons and daughters of the town

• Nuraly Älip (* 1999), soccer player
• Jelena Iljinych (* 1994), Russian figure skater
• Alexei Kuleschow (* 1987), beach volleyball player
• Bachtygul Samalykowa (* 1993), beach volleyball player
• Murat Sujumaghambetow (born 1983), football player

See also

• List of cities in Kazakhstan

literature

• Henning Büchler, Ingo Zasada: Modern Heritage - Perspectives on how to deal with the preservation of monuments with the evidence of socialist urban development using the example of Aktau / Kazakhstan . ( ISR gray series booklet 15). Institute for Urban and Regional Planning, TU Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-7983-2092-5 ( full text )

Web links

Commons : Aktau  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official website of the city of Aktau (English, Kazakh and Russian)
• fz-juelich.de - A project by Forschungszentrum Jülich on the subject of "Radiation exposure of the population in the Aktau region, Caspian Sea"
• kasachstanprojekt.de - 'Shevchenko / Aktau The heritage of an ideal socialist city'

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Численность населения Республики Казахстан по полу в разрезе областей и столицы, столицы, столицы, анколицы, столицы, городоав, областей и столицы, анкония, горойцы, коники, городоав,. ( Excel ; 96 KB) stat.gov.kz, accessed on July 19, 2020 (Russian). 
2. ↑ Twin cities. aktau.gov.kz, accessed on June 19, 2019 (English).
3. ↑ Kazakhstan to close nuclear power plant . In: IPR Strategic Information Database . September 5, 2000
4. ^ First Exploration Well at Kazakhstan's N Block Slated for Drilling in Q3 2010 . In: IHS Global Insight Daily Analysis . January 22, 2010
5. ↑ Kazakh Port Seeks to Double Oil Export Capacity . In: WMRC Daily Analysis . April 21, 2005
6. ↑ Azerbaijan to open new grain terminal for Kazakh grain . In: Prime-TASS News . December 6, 2006
7. ^ New railway ferry in the Caspian Sea . In: Deutsche Verkehrszeitung . November 14, 2006
8. ^ Rosatom to build NPP in Agtau, Kazakstan . In: SKRIN Newswire . December 21, 2007
9. ^ Economy - Russia - Kazakhstan - Atomic Agreement . In: ITAR-TASS German Language Service . July 5th, 2010
10. ↑ Russian website comments on militarization of Caspian . In: BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union . February 27, 2010