Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Sep 8 2011 (IPS) – While the tendency in the industrialised world in the wake of the Mar. 11 nuclear meltdown in Japan is to abandon plans for further nuclear energy development, in Argentina the capacity of existing plants is being strengthened, and new reactors are being built.
Germany announced that it would start its nuclear power programme; Switzerland will make a ban on nuclear reactors permanent; and more than 94 percent of voters in a referendum in Italy rejected the government s plans to restart the nuclear programme abandoned in the late 1980s.
But that is far from happening in Argentina. The government of Cristina Fernández signed contracts in late August to extend the useful life of one of the country s two nuclear plants, announced that a third plant is about to start operating, and said a fourth reactor would be built by 2020.
These plans are going forward even though a majority of people in Argentina are opposed to further investment in this risky, costly form of energy, according to a survey commissioned this year by .
In the poll, 66 percent of respondents said nuclear energy was dangerous or very dangerous , 74 percent said it should be eliminated, and only 16 percent said nuclear power generation should increase in this country.
In an interview with IPS, engineer Ernesto Boerio of Greenpeace pointed out that the nuclear energy plan, which was stalled in the 1990s, was revived in 2006 and is expanding fast despite the impact of the March earthquake and tsunami on the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan.
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Because of the need for electricity, the government is moving forward on all fronts, but in Argentina the nuclear power industry has clout, and manages to continue influencing the political leadership, to keep investments up, he said.
Argentina is one of three Latin American countries the others are Brazil and Mexico that have developed nuclear energy programmes. And although the programme is solely for peaceful uses, it emerged in the military sphere, with the aim of gaining expertise and know-how in the nuclear industry.
The 370-MW Atucha I, located just 100 km from the capital in the eastern province of Buenos Aires, has been functioning since 1974, and the 648-MW Embalse, in the central province of Córdoba, began to operate in 1984.
Work on Atucha II, on a site next to Atucha I, resumed in 2006, and the plant is set to become operational in 2012, producing 745 MW.
In addition, negotiations are underway for construction of a fourth plant, to generate 1,000-MW by 2020.
Nuclear energy currently accounts for between five and seven percent of total electricity in this South American country. When Atucha II comes on stream, that share will rise to 12 percent.
A new small-scale nuclear reactor prototype has also been designed in Argentina. The Carem reactor is small, with an output of 50 MW or less. But according to Boerio, the prototype could be used to set up power plants.
The Federal Planning Ministry and other government agencies plan to invest 1.36 billion dollars in nuclear energy, 440 million dollars of which involve contracts with foreign firms, to prolong the useful life of the Embalse plant and boost its production capacity.
The , based in Córdoba, where the Embalse plant is located, protested that the government s plan is illegal, as the group s director, Raúl Montenegro, told IPS.
Not only has there been no environmental impact study, but no public input process or consultation has been carried out. It s as if this kind of oversight and control mechanism were mere decoration when it comes to nuclear energy, he said.
The activist, who received the so-called Alternative Nobel prize in 2004, said Argentina s nuclear programme still has the same component of authoritarianism and secrecy with which it was born during the era of military governments.
It s as if democracy hadn t reached the nuclear industry. Instead of democratising, the nuclear industry has managed to convince constitutional governments to maintain secret procedures, and to not carry out consultations, he added.
Montenegro does not rule out the possibility that there are government officials who have a genuine good faith belief in nuclear energy as a symbol of development. But he said the paltry five to seven percent share of total energy supplied by the nuclear plants is far out of proportion to the cost of the industry.
In Argentina, the nuclear industry didn t originally develop with the idea of producing electricity, he said, maintaining that not only did the government allow itself to be swayed by the nuclear lobby, but no broad public debate on the issue has ever taken place.
The activist said Embalse is particularly dangerous because it was built on a seismic fault line where quakes of varying magnitude have occurred over the past century.
He also pointed out that a number of incidents have occurred at the plant due to design flaws.
However, it is not only the plants themselves that are a cause for concern, but also the storage casks containing spent nuclear fuel next to the plants, which remain hazardous for 240,000 years. That threat will only grow as a result of the extension of the useful life of Embalse, Montenegro said.
The authorities say seismic studies will be carried out at Embalse, as part of the agreement to prolong its life. But Montenegro stressed that this is not the only source of danger. Other threats, he said, are internal incidents, terrorist attacks, or aircraft crashing into the plant.
FUNAM warns that the local residents near Embalse and Atucha are not prepared for an accident. Drills are only carried out within a 10-km radius, but in the case of an accident, radiation exposure can be a problem up to 500 kilometres away, Montenegro said.
They don t prepare people, because they don t want to make waves. But the risk is there, and it s terrifying, the activist said.
Rosario, for example, the third most populated city in Argentina and the largest city in the province of Santa Fe, faces risks on various fronts because it would be in the path of radiation from Embalse as well as the Atucha plants, which will form a complex like the one at Fukushima.
