MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina planning a “nuclear powered” submarine with conventional weapons

Defence minister Arturo Puricelli says a nuclear reactor will be installed in conventional German Thyssen subs

Argentina is considering the development of “nuclear propulsion” for its diesel-engine submarines, according to Defence minister Arturo Puricelli. The initiative follows a request from President Cristina Fernandez and is closely linked to Brazil’s construction of a first nuclear powered submersible with French technology.

“President Cristina Kirchner has requested us to come up with a nuclear propulsion development project for our submarines” revealed Defence minister Puricelli during a conference. He added that Argentina has the “capacity to develop nuclear propulsion for submarines”.

“This means that when the submarine ARA Santa Fe, which has been waiting for some years leaves the shipyard she will not do it with its original propulsion but with nuclear propulsion developed in Argentina”, pointed out the Ministry in an official release following the minister’s announcement.

Puricelli also revealed that another submarine, ARA San Juan is already half re-furbished, “after spending years virtually idle and non operational”.

The Argentine project for a “Submarine with nuclear propulsion and conventional weapons” was actually launched a year ago when it was anticipated that Argentina was working on the possibility of developing a nuclear reactor to install in submarines.

Argentina’s National Atomic Energy Commission and the National Institute for space and nuclear technology apparently have already finished designing the CAREM reactor so that it can be adapted to the prototype of the future submarine, the TR model, one of the three that were purchased by Argentina in the eighties from Germany’s Thyssen.

Still partly in crates in the Domecq García shipyard, the ARA Santa Fé apparently has been 75% assembled after spending over two decades “resting” in dozens of containers. Latest estimates are that it should be ready as a conventional platform for 2015, and from then on efforts will be concentrated in the instalment of the nuclear reactor.

However there have been warnings from undisclosed Argentine naval sources which consider the project ‘pharaonic and disproportionate’ given current budget resources for Defence plus the fact that the TR hull is “unviable in space and density to lodge a nuclear reactor”.

Nuclear power allows submarines to move faster and have greater autonomy than those propelled by the conventional diesel-electric engines.

In mid July Brazil formally announced the beginning of the construction in Rio shipyards of the first of four conventional French Scorpone submarines, at a cost of 565 million dollars each, which should be operational by 2016.

Following on the conventional units Brazil will begin the construction of its first nuclear powered submarine with French technology, as a result of the nuclear cooperation agreement signed by President Nicholas Sarkozy with his peer then, Lula da Silva.

Brazil is beefing up its naval (surface and submersible) and air resources in anticipation of the development of its massive offshore hydrocarbons resources.