Lucas Heights reactor from 'Dodgy brothers'
BY JIM GREEN
The federal Coalition government has been embarrassed by revelations about Investigaciones Aplicadas (Invap), the Argentinean company contracted to build a nuclear reactor in the southern Sydney suburb of Lucas Heights.
Statements by Raul Montenegro, professor of evolutionary biology at the National University of Cordoba and president of the Argentinean environment group Funam, were featured in an August 17 Sydney Morning Herald article.
Issues raised by Montenegro included negotiations between Invap and Robert Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe regarding the transfer of nuclear technology, Invap's financial situation and legal proceedings against Invap for allegedly carrying out tests on a research reactor without obtaining the necessary authorisations.
On the same day as the SMH article, federal industry, science and resources minister Nick Minchin issued a press release that stated: "These allegations in the Australian media today are based on a plethora of false information and inaccurate statements by anti-nuclear activists."
Minchin rejected Sutherland shire councillor Genevieve Rankin's comment that the government was dealing with "the Dodgy brothers of the nuclear club".
However, articles in the August 19 SMH and subsequent information has made it clear that it is Minchin who has issued "false information and inaccurate statements". Minchin has made no further public comments about Invap since August 17.
Zimbabwe
Allegations about negotiations between Invap and Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe regarding the possible supply of nuclear research and power reactors led Minchin to say in the Senate on August 17, "I understand that Zimbabwe itself approached Invap but there were no negotiations entered into and there was certainly no formal proposal to Zimbabwe".
However, there were extensive negotiations and Argentina was an active partner. In September 1999, Mugabe visited Argentina to meet President Fernando De la Rua to discuss the possibility of purchasing a nuclear power plant from Argentina. De la Rua said he would have Invap work on a proposal.
According to the August 19 SMH, the Argentinean ambassador to Zimbabwe, Enrique Pareja, held meetings with at least six key Zimbabwean ministers in February to present a proposal for Invap to build a research reactor with a later view to building nuclear power plants.
A separate report in the August 19 Sydney Morning Herald suggests that nuclear power was on the short-term agenda. On February 4, Pareja gave Zimbabwean foreign affairs minister Stan Mudenge a set of documents which, Pareja later said, "outlined Invap's proposals to the government for the setting up of a nuclear power plant in the country".
Pareja told the media, "I'm now going to meet with several other ministries that would be involved and these include transport and energy, industry and commerce, agriculture, and health". Pareja told the ministers that the proposal could be worked into a fully costed proposal once Zimbabwe had decided whether to proceed with its nuclear program.
The chief executive of Invap, Hector Otheguy, says the negotiations have gone no further since the February meetings between Pareja and Zimbabwean ministers.
Invap hopes to develop relatively small "Carem" power reactors, but little progress has been made with the project and no export contracts have been secured. Zimbabwe was to be Invap's "guinea pig" according to Montenegro.
In addition to the environmental and public health risks, the potential for civil nuclear facilities to lay the foundations for a weapons program in Zimbabwe has also raised concern. "I think everyone would fear the consequences of a despot like Mugabe attaining such powerful nuclear capabilities", a British diplomat told the SMH's New York correspondent, Mark Riley.
Legal action
In 1997 and 1998, Montenegro was instrumental in taking a case against Invap and Argentina's Comision Nacional de Energia Atomica (CNEA), the state-owned nuclear agency which controls Invap, to Argentina's Federal Court of Justice for allegedly using an experimental reactor, known as RA-8, for tests related to the development of Carem power reactors without having the authority to do so.
Minchin told the Senate on August 17 that the case was dismissed in September 1998. However, according to Montenegro, the case was deferred and remains active on the court's list.
Invap's financial status is another issue under question. The company recorded its lowest sales last year, earning just US$26 million, down from US$47 million in 1996.
"Invap is a company which obtains most of its income from large projects, and a slight slump is normal after one such project has been completed", Invap's chief executive, Hector Otheguy, told the August 17 SMH.
Although it promotes itself as self-funding, Invap approached Argentina's government last year for a US$132 million grant to assist in the development of a Carem prototype power reactor. The request was rejected, in part because of strong opposition from the broader scientific community.
Exports
While the negotiations between Argentina and Zimbabwe appear to have ended, Invap has been involved in several nuclear transfers to countries suspected of, or known to be, pursuing covert nuclear weapons programs.
According to a document posted on the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) web site on June 8, Invap remodelled an research reactor in Iran in the late 1980s to allow the use of low-enriched uranium instead of the weapons-usable highly enriched uranium previously used. "So the work was of proliferation relevance — it reduced the risk of proliferation", ANSTO says.
However, the nuclear connections between Argentina and Iran go much deeper. In 1987, Invap concluded an agreement to construct a pilot-scale fuel fabrication plant in Iran. Five years later, the project was cancelled by Argentina's President Carlos Menem following pressure from the United States.
Argentina was also ready to sell Iran a uranium dioxide conversion plant in 1992, but last-minute pressure from the US stopped the shipment.
From 1987, CNEA joined a consortium that was to complete the Bushehr nuclear power reactor in Iran; the deal was suspended in 1995 before the project was finished.
According to a 1995 report by Kenneth Timmerman from the Middle East Data Project, Iran began mining uranium, with help from Argentina, in 1989. Timmerman says it is unclear whether all shipments of nuclear equipment to Iran from Argentina stopped in 1992.
Invap supplied the Algerian regime with a small (one megawatt-thermal) reactor fuelled with low-enriched uranium in the late 1980s. Algeria was not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty at the time, nor was the reactor subject to any other safeguards agreement.
The reactor itself was of little significance in terms of weapons proliferation, but it was a stepping stone for more dangerous facilities. All the more so because, as Invap notes on its web site, the project involved "genuine transfer of technology", with more than 50 Algerian professionals and technicians and a number of Algerian firms involved in the project.
Uranium enrichment
ANSTO's June 8 statement said, "It has been implied that there is something illegitimate about Invap's involvement in the enrichment of uranium. The Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty does not proscribe uranium enrichment, for very good reason. For uranium to be usable as nuclear fuel in a reactor, it needs to be enriched. Given Argentina's nuclear power industry, it is not surprising that they enrich their own uranium."
Not all power reactors use enriched uranium and, more to the point, both of Argentina's power reactors use non-enriched uranium. A third power reactor, under construction for many years, will also use non-enriched uranium if it is ever completed.
Argentina's gaseous diffusion enrichment plant was built in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the military junta in control of Argentina was actively pursuing a covert nuclear weapons program. The existence of the secret enrichment plant was announced by the military junta in 1983.
With its previous exports shrouded in controversy, and with its precarious financial situation, the Australian contract has been enthusiastically welcomed by Invap and sections of the Argentinean state. They clearly hope that the Australian contract will bring other export contracts in its wake, and that the Australian deal will give the organisation the momentum required to develop and export Carem power reactors.
Much of the media commentary on Invap in recent weeks has missed the point that the other short-listed tenderers — Technicatome from France, Siemens from Germany, and Atomic Energy Canada Limited — have equally problematic records.
France supplied Israel with a research reactor used to produce the plutonium for its nuclear arsenal. France also supplied a similar research reactor to Iraq, which would have been used for the same purpose except that Israel bombed the reactor to oblivion in 1981.
France has supplied numerous other countries which were pursuing — with greater or lesser vigour and success — covert nuclear weapons programs, including Brazil, Iran, South Africa and Pakistan.
Much of the plutonium in India's weapons arsenal came from a research reactor supplied by Canada. Taiwan also purchased a research reactor from Canada, and also planned to use it to produce plutonium for weapons but was constrained by pressure from the US.
Germany's 1975 agreement to supply extensive nuclear fuel cycle facilities to Brazil was largely responsible for reinvigorated efforts to develop nuclear weapons in Argentina in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Germany also supplied Argentina, South Africa and Iran with nuclear technology.
Fewer countries are now pursuing nuclear weapons programs than between the 1960s and 1980s, and export controls are stricter. But as the recent revelations about Invap's negotiations with Zimbabwe demonstrate, the profit motive is alive and well in the nuclear industry.
In fact, with more suppliers and less demand than in previous decades, the temptation for nuclear exporters to supply would-be weapons states is acute.
[For more information about the Invap revelations visit Jim Green's web site at <http://www.geocities.com/jimgreen3>.]