BUENOS AIRES, Sept. 17 (UPI) -- Argentina is moving forward with a long-term strategy to expand its nuclear program that includes the building of a new plant and refurbishment of existing heavy-water reactors.
Argentina and South Korea this week signed a memorandum of understanding that will see Korean expertise being deployed in both new and existing nuclear power installations to bolster the national grid.
Widely seen as an answer to Brazil's revival of its nuclear industry, including enrichment and defense-related technologies, Argentina's nuclear program will aim to push forward President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner's aim of putting the country on the map as a nuclear power, a strong contender for regional nuclear supremacy.
Brazil's nuclear industry is more advanced than Argentina's, but the Argentine nuclear activities in the dictatorial period of the 1980s included a nuclear weapons program known only to U.S. and other Western nuclear watchdog bodies.
So advanced was the Argentine program of acquiring weapons of mass destruction in that period that it required U.S. intervention to secure cancellation or deferment of a long-range missile project. The aim of the program was to secure political pre-eminence for the dictatorial regime.
Argentina scrapped the 620-mile Condor 2 missile project under U.S. pressure but remained vague about the Alacran missile project. Military analysts suspect Alacran remains very much an "active" project, though few reliable details have come to light.
UPI
