The land is empty awaiting the latest technical approvals and the arrival of the machines. Construction has not yet started, but everyone in the area is beginning to prepare for what will be 7 years of dizzying and intense movement in Zárate. There it is, in the town of Lima, and only an hour and a half from the center of the City of Buenos Aires, the Atucha Nuclear Complex.

It is a morning of full sun that decorates the landscape. Traffic is normal for a weekday on the Pan-American Highway and Route 9, the roads that lead to the place where early next year will start to build Atucha IIIthe fourth nuclear power plant in the country and which will be financed by China.

One meter after the welcome sign and upon entering the complex, a huge vacant lot can be seen on the right: “This is the place destined for the new plant”, they point out There is nothing, just grass and fence. The leveling has not even started, but the approval of some studies -such as the environmental impact- remains to be done.

The only thing that can be seen is an old workshop that was used for Atucha II, and will be used again in the coming months. “People in the area are very excited, at the peak of construction about 7,000 people will workof which many will be from Zárate”, he tells TN with a smile Alejandro Sandá, manager of the complex who has worked for more than 20 years in the place.

Getting to the place is easy, but income requires strong control. The property houses the Atucha I and II nuclear power plants and is managed by the state-owned company Nucleoeléctrica Argentina (NA-SA). In addition, the CAREM modular reactor is being developed in the complex, an Argentine energy commitment by the CNEA. In this context, security increases and care is maximized.

Currently, the Atucha Nuclear Complex has about 1,200 employees – this figure is expected to increase to 2,000 when the new nuclear power plant comes into operation. They all have to have their identification and private wardrobe that includes boots, helmet and glasses. The same goes for visits: accreditations, declaration of technological equipment and a list of precautions that they inform upon arrival.

All workers, authorities and anyone who goes to the property has to go through a scanner similar to the one at airports to detect metals and possible dangerous elements, to which is added another special system that assesses the level of radiation in the body.

“Stop there”, they order when passing through a kind of open box that anyone enters standing up. Green light, the machine did not detect anything, the body is clean. “This is done every day when entering and leaving, it is one of the many ways to control radiation levels,” explains Sandá.

The complex has more than 100 hectares and is constantly monitored. The first filter starts in the main control room, which is located meters from the core of the nuclear reactor and is the vital piece to avoid any inconvenience. It is a wide, light gray environment, about 50 meters by another 50, full of computers, numbers, levels of electrical activity, gas, pressure and many other elements. like in a movie.

Those in charge of the control room first go through at least two years of training in a simulator that is completely the same as the real thing, where they have to respond to risk situations and possible failures that can originate in any link of the sophisticated nuclear process that the plants have.

There’s no rest in these places. Work is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In the room there is always a shift manager, an assistant and 3 highly specialized technicians. Outside of her, another 15 people, among whom there is always a nurse. So important is the control of the nuclear reactor that the licenses to operate this equipment have to be renewed every two years by the national nuclear authority.

The monitoring does not end there, far from it. To the aforementioned radioactive detection system at the entrance -or exit- of the complex, a few small sensors located in the peripheries of the property They collect information from the ground and the air. With these data, the specialists carry out periodic reports to ensure that there was no radioactive loss that could reach the outside. There was never a serious problem.

The Atucha Nuclear Complex has been installed since the 1960s in this strategic area of ​​Buenos Aires. “It is located on the banks of the Paraná River, in an area where there is no downspout risk and it is not a seismic area”, explained engineer Sandá during a tour of TN for the place. Construction began there in 1968 of Atucha I, the first nuclear power plant in Latin America. 54 years later they begin to prepare everything to build the fourth.

Atucha III It will be located on a 70-hectare plot of land that will be released for the construction of a hypothetical new plant. It will be similar in size to the existing ones, although with greater power. The new plant will have a capacity of 1,200 MW, while the previous ones are 362 MW -the first- and 745 MW -the second-.

The Argentina signed a commercial contract with China in February to start building it at the beginning of 2023 and for 7 years. It is a turnkey type contract, budgeted at US$8.3 billion to be paid over 20 years, counted from the moment the plant is put into operation and begins to generate energy. During the construction, Chinese managers and professionals will come to participate in the work.

The Government negotiates to reach 100% of the financing of the work by China. At first it had been stipulated that it would be 85%, but now talks progress for a consortium of Chinese banks led by ICBC to take over the full financing, he confirmed to TN the vice president of Nucleoeléctrica Argentina, Jorge Sidelnik.

Some points remain to be resolved for the construction of the fourth nuclear power plant to begin in Argentina. Among the most important is the presentation of the environmental impact study, a definition of technology transfer and financing. The one that is already ready is the Atucha Nuclear Complex, a place that will be convulsed for 7 years until Atucha III is standing.

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