Uzbekistan’s new nuclear safety rules set a low alert line
Uzbekistan will put a future nuclear plant on emergency alert if monitors outside the site detect a rise of only 0.1 microsievert an hour above the natural background.
A reading of 20 microsieverts an hour would trigger a facility-level emergency — a level recorded tens of kilometres from Fukushima during the 2011 disaster, although it was far below the worst onsite spike.
The limits appear in a new nuclear safety instruction that took effect on 20 August. The document draws a sharp line between heightened readiness and an accident response. On the plant site and in its protected buffer zone, those thresholds are 2.5 and 200 microsieverts per hour. In rooms occupied permanently by workers, they rise to 10 and 600.
When safe operating limits are exceeded and doses of radiation reach 10 microsieverts per hour in areas where staff members are continuously present, a «emergency readiness» procedure is implemented. The threshold is 2.5 microsieverts per hour at the plant site and its sanitary protection zone, and the broader observation zone limit is 0.1 microsieverts above the natural background level.
Operators will also activate this preliminary state during severe external disruptions, including earthquakes, explosions, fires or flooding on the facility grounds.
Emergency state level
If conditions deteriorate, authorities will declare an «emergency state.» This severe classification applies when radiation reaches 600 microsieverts per hour in staff zones, 200 microsieverts on the immediate site or 20 microsieverts in the observation zone. The status is also mandated whenever severe accident management guidelines are implemented to prevent structural failures.
During the Fukushima disaster, monitors located 30 to 32 kilometres north-west of the plant recorded between 16 and 59 microsieverts per hour. A reading of 115 was recorded 21 kilometres away, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s accident log.
First ever nuclear power station
The new regulatory preparations coincide with the country’s broader push into atomic energy. Uzbekistan began construction on its first nuclear power plant in the Jizzakh region in June 2026.
The landmark infrastructure project features a hybrid design combining two large-scale VVER-1000 reactors with two 55-megawatt small modular units.
Working alongside Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom, the Uzbek government expects the 2.1-gigawatt facility to eventually cover a significant portion of the nation’s growing electricity demand and drastically reduce its historical reliance on fossil fuels.
