MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

China to help Argentina build new nuclear power plant

Atucha III is known among Chinese leaders as “the Hualong project”

Argentina's National Committee of Atomic Energy (CNEA) and the Chinese National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) Tuesday signed a contract for the construction of the Atucha III Nuclear Power Plant, it was announced.

José Luis Antúnez, director of the state-owned Nuclear Power Plant Argentina (NA-SA), and CNNC Chairman Yu Jianfeng signed the agreement for the construction Argentina's fourth such power plant (Atucha III), a 1,200 MW reactor to be installed at the Atucha Nuclear Complex in the town of Lima in the province of Buenos Aires.

Due to sanitary restrictions, the signing of the contract was carried out in a virtual format with the “presence” of officials from both companies, in addition to Buenos Aires Governor Axel Kicillof, China's Ambassador to Buenos Aires Zou Xiaoli, Argentina's envoy to Beijing Sabino Vaca Narvaja; Argentina's Electricity Undersecretary Federico Basualdo and CNEA Vice Chairman Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, among others.

Antúnez stressed the importance of advancing in concrete actions “so that we can supply Argentina's electricity demand with basic, clean, safe and sustainable energy, and combat the effects of climate change that affects the planet.”

CNEA Chief Adriana Serquis stresses that “the signing of this contract between NA-SA and the CNNC gives us a great opportunity to be able to count on a new plant in a few years, with clean energy that will allow us to increase the energy matrix and reduce the emission of carbon dioxide.”

“On the other hand, for the National Atomic Energy Commission it represents the opportunity to carry out the technology transfer of an advanced fuel in the nuclear area,” she added.

Atucha III is expected to supply electricity to 11 million Argentines. The US$8.3 billion project will take around eight and a half years to be built and is known among Chinese leaders as ”the Hualong project.“

”Unfortunately, the government of Mauricio Macri (2015-2019) backtracked on the progress we had between Argentina and China,“ Kicillof explained.

He ”suspended everything and we lost those four years in which we could have made significant progress, but today we celebrate the signing of the historic contract between China and Argentina,” he went on.