Argentine President Launches Atucha II Nuclear Reactor · VIDEO INCLUDED
Philippine LaRouche Society (PLS)
Argentine President Launches Atucha II Nuclear Reactor · VIDEO INCLUDED
CLCK HERE for the video of Cristina's speech at Atucha II with English subtitles. [1]
On Sept. 28, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner inaugurated the Atucha II nuclear reactor, the country's third, in an event which had not been previously announced, but which drove home the key political point that the development of nuclear energy, the fight against the IMF, and the defense of national sovereignty are one and the same fight.
You can imagine the stink from Wall Street and the City of London as enraged bankers fill their pants. Under vicious attack by the IMF, which finds the Argentina-Greece comparison "odious," the stupid Obama Treasury Department, and its allied vulture funds, President Fernandez pulled off a kind of coup.
The speech was a fervent statement of Argentina's national identity as a country dedicated to scientific and technological advancement. "The best fuel we have is the Argentine people... and with this incredible nuclear reactor, I feel we are starting up the machine which our country Argentina was, which knew how to be a leader in all fields in Latin America—nuclear, aeronautics, building railroads, automobiles, scientific matters... Look at what a country we have been!"
The speech was also a moving tribute to her late husband Nestor Kirchner, President of Argentina from 2003-2007. She stated that in inaugurating the plant, she felt like she did in 2007, when her late husband and President "decided to put an end to the debt with the IMF, when we decided to also restructure our debt in 2005 and last year [when a second restructuring occurred], to put an end to that sword of Damocles which had continuously hung over the growth of the Argentine Republic." We are paying off "historic debts, generated over decades of abandonment, mistakes, bad policies, or also of foreign interference so that Argentina would not have nuclear development. We have restored the will and the decision that the country should govern itself."
President Fernandez was unapologetic in tone, never once stooping to "defending" nuclear energy nor answering "green" arguments. In feisty response to the Obama/IMF insanity, she noted that Argentina has the second highest economic growth rate in the world, after China.
The event took place at the site of the reactor surrounded by thousands of workers, engineers, scientists, and others, many of whom served as "guardians of national sovereignty" during those years of paralysis when the plant was mothballed, before Nestor Kirchner revived the nuclear program in 2006. When they decided to complete Atucha II, they found "owls and rats" inside the structure.
88% of the plant, she said, was "made in Argentina"—our money, our workers, our technicians (some of whom returned from abroad). And she outlined the next nuclear goals: to complete extending the useful life of the existing Embalse plant, for another 25 years; build Atucha III; and also build the small CAREM reactor, of 25 MW, that can be used in locales of the interior to generate electricity.
See Thursday night's World in Review for video excerpts of de Kirchner's speech. [2]
