MIAMI, United States. – Inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) carried out “complementary access” to the premises of the unfinished Juraguá Electronuclear Power Plant (CEN) in the province of Cienfuegos, reported this week the Cuban News Agency (ACN).
The state media did not specify the exact date of the inspection. He did specify that the specialists checked the status of closure of the facility, according to the statements of Jorge Luis Paredes, of the Office of Environmental Regulation and Safety (ORSA) of Cuba.
This source indicated that the inspectors were accompanied by specialists from the Ministry of Industries (MINDUS) and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment (CITMA).
Likewise, it specified that the Integrated Directorate of Projects of the MINDUS plans the reconversion and fitting out of the place as national hazardous waste confinement.
The ORSA, of CITMA, is the national regulatory authority, responsible for implementing the control mechanisms that facilitate compliance with the international commitments assumed by the Cuban State in terms of nuclear safeguards, the ACN specified.
Cuba and the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics signed an agreement in 1976 to build two VVER-440 V318 nuclear reactors in the province of Cienfuegos, near the town of Juraguá, in the municipality of Abreus.
The initiative arose in 1974 from a visit by dictator Fidel Castro to the Electronuclear Power Plant in the Soviet city of Novo Vorónezh, on the banks of the Don River, where Cuban scientists were studying.
Initially, the plant was to meet up to 15% of the country’s energy needs and generate thousands of jobs. Next to it would rise the Nuclear City, in which houses and infrastructures were built to house the workers, many of them from the Soviet Union.
Construction of the first reactor began in 1983 and that of the second in 1985.
However, after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, Castro ordered a halt to the construction of the Juraguá Electronuclear Power Plant.
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