“The nuclear power plants to be sold to Zimbabwe by Argentina´s Company INVAP are experimental. The offered “CAREM” prototype has never been built in Argentina due to scarcity of funds and parlamentarian opposition. Zimbabwe will be used as Guinea pig by INVAP. It´s a clear example of south-south nuclear colonialism” Said Dr. Raúl Montenegro, Professor of Evolutionary Biology at The National University of Cordoba in Argentina, and President of FUNAM. FUNAM is an internationally recongnized NGO which has Consultative Status at The Economic and Social Council of United Nations (ECOSOC).
Córdoba and Buenos (Argentina), Paris (France), February 23rd, 2000.- Non governmental organizations from Argentina were astonished by possible agreements between the nuclear argentine lobby and Zimbabwe to build nuclear power plants in this African country. According FUNAM, an internationally recognized NGO with consultative status in United Nations, “this agreement is non sense”. Dr. Raul Montenegro, President of FUNAM and Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the National University of Cordoba, explained that INVAP “usually offers a nuclear power reactor named ‘Carem’ of 60 MWe not yet built. Even in Argentina INVAP never obtained the requested governmental funds to build the Carem prototype. Ensuring a sale to Zimbabwe they also ensure a far away experiment, a foreign ‘guinea pig’. It’s a clear and innovative case of south-south colonialism. Here we know about this mistakes because Argentina was used as ‘guinea pig’ by Canadian dealers of nuclear technology during the last military government (1976-1983). We are still paying a high price in terms of unprecedented risks, radioactive leaks and accidents”. Montenegro also noticed that Argentina’s nuclear lobby “has never built commercial nuclear power plants in foreign countries. They only transferred experimental reactors for isotope production and training to Peru, Algeria and Egypt. These reactors don’t produce commercial electricity”
Dr. Montenegro underlined that INVAP and the Atomic Energy Agency of Argentina (CNEA) “were denounced in 1997 at the Federal Court of Justice for having illegally checked parts of the Carem in the existing experimental reactor RA-8”. According FUNAM claim, both nuclear organizations infringed the national regulation 24.804 and the provincial regulation 2.472.
More recently INVAP was involved in a national scandal when scientists from different fields learned that INVAP requested 132 million dollars of federal resources to build the Carem prototype, the same offered to Zimbabwe. This request was included in the “National Budget Proposal for the Year 2000”. A total of 43 renowned scientists from universities of Argentina strongly reacted against this request and denounced that “the parliament and the scientific community was never consulted”. As a result of public and NGO pressure this request was delayed.
FUNAM also reacted against the statements made by Argentina’s Ambassador in Zimbabwe, Enrique Pareja, to the newspaper “Financial Gazzete” of Harare (3 rd. February). According Pareja “Argentina had reactors similar to the ones that INVAP was offering to install in Zimbabwe” and that these “were generating 30 percent” of that country’s power needs. Montenegro disqualified this data, and explained that Argentina “has two operating nuclear power plants, Atucha I, an old German reactor to be closed in the year 2004, and Embalse, a Canadian Candu reactor which will be closed in the year 2014. Both have been imported during military governments when INVAP don’t existed”. Concerning the production of energy Montenegro added that “both nuclear reactors currently contribute with only a 10 percent to the national availability of electricity. They never contributed with the 30 percent mentioned by Ambassador Pareja”.
FUNAM remembered that nuclear power plants “are unsafe, expensive and ephemeral. The lifetime of each nuclear reactor is 30 years or less. For only 30 years of nuclear electricity a nuclear country could suffer unprecedented nuclear accidents like Chernobyl, and becomes exposed to tons of radioactive waste which remains radioactive and extremely dangerous during almost 100,000 years. In countries like Zimbabwe a nuclear accident degree 7, the worst, could destroy hundred of thousand lives and the entire national economy. Besides, the country becomes more sensitive to terrorist attacks. The building of a nuclear power plant in Zimbabwe seems a good business for INVAP and the argentine nuclear lobby, but a nightmare for generations of African people”.
FUNAM launched an international campaign to denounce the activities of INVAP in Argentina and his “south-south nuclear colonialism”. FUNAM also asked the NGOs, government and groups of citizens of Zimbabwe “to analyze the background of INVAP and the great radioactive pollution produced by years of nuclear industry in Argentina. Our files in FUNAM are entirely open”. Montenegro argued that Zimbabwe “is currently free of nuclear power plants and radioactive waste. This is an advantage, not a sign of progress. The needs of electricity can be progressively satisfied by sustainable sources like hydro and windpower, biomass or solar”.
FUNAM hasConsultative Status at ECOSOC (Economic and Social Council, United Nations). FUNAM is member of IUCN, ELCI (Environment Liaison Center International, BUN (Biomass Users Network), Minewatch, EarthAction, Social Forestry Network, Global 500 Forum, INFORSE, The NGOs Council of Cordoba (Argentina) and RENACE. FUNAM is Global 500 Award from UNEP (1987).
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