President Javier Milei’s push for the partial privatisation of Nucleoeléctrica Argentina SA (Na-SA), the state-owned operator of the country’s three nuclear power plants: Atucha I, Atucha II and Embalse, has added a new chapter to a frenetic national policy.
The decision arrives in parallel with formal adherence to the United States’ FIRST programme (promoting peaceful use of nuclear technology by partner nations) and the freezing of other projects, including the proposed Atucha III and Atucha IV plants negotiated with Chinese financing.
These moves can be construed not only as a “trademark” economic adjustment but also as a response to the geopolitical shift introduced by the La Libertad Avanza government since taking office in December 2023.
The shift – driven by Milei with the direct advice of Damián Reidel, his star advisor in technological and nuclear matters – has been interpreted by some specialists, former officials and lawmakers as “relinquishing technological sovereignty.”
Critics of the ruling party point out that both the sale of Nucleoeléctrica Argentina and the halting of CAREM, the flagship modular reactor of the National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA in its Spanish acronym), are not isolated events. With the geopolitical reading, they mean abandoning years of local development to subordination to the US technology “buyers’ club,” they say.
The decision has revived diplomatic tensions with both China and the United States. After years of negotiations with Beijing, which offered financing for the Hualong plant and a massive currency swap as back up, plans have changed. A decade on, the libertarians in the Casa Rosada are putting into practice their total alignment with Washington. Under the administration of Donald Trump, the US has relaunched its nuclear programme for civilian use, challenging Russian and Chinese leadership in the sector.
In that vein, the September 19 visit by United States Embassy chargé d’affaires Heidi Gómez Rapalo to Southern Argentina and the headquarters of INVAP space and nuclear technology institute was a supportive gesture. The cherry on the cake, however, came three days later, when the United States announced that Argentina had become a “contributing partner” – the first in Latin America – to sign up to the FIRST programme, former US president Joe Biden’s scheme to ensure US leadership in the budding market of small modular reactors (SMRs). Trump has kept the policy going.
“With the FIRST programme, we join the flock, the queue to buy US technology which we had been developing ourselves and then halted. It’s an outrage,” Diego Hurtado, former Science & Technology Planning secretary, told Perfil in an interview. “It’s about joining a future buyers’ club.”
The Milei government talks of “efficiency,” “modernisation” and an “opening to private capital” but in the domestic nuclear ecosystem, it is a different diagnosis, with complaints of institutional erosion, loss of strategic autonomy, a brain drain and a submission to Washington, which wants to revitalise its presence in the regional nuclear industry.
In the meantime, within the local nuclear system there have been multiple resignations and a brain drain of professionals, the result of an atmosphere of uncertainty about the future of the sector.
CAREM – the only modular reactor under construction in Latin America with an Argentine patent – was halted outright, sources from the plant explained to Perfil. Meanwhile, the state plans to install four ACR-300 reactors, patented by INVAP in the United States, but still at a design stage. Foreign investment has been promised without any clear implementation deadlines.
Argentina’s nuclear map
Argentina’s nuclear map has always been something of a rarity, at least when it comes to Latin America. An articulation between state, science, industry and geopolitics, it made historic breakthroughs, including milestones such as being the first country in the Southern Hemisphere to operate a research reactor (1958), exporting reactors to countries such as Algeria or Australia via the INVAP institute, and planning the construction of CAREM, the first SMR to be designed nationally.
The nuclear ecosystem was sustained by four pillars: the CNEA (Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica), Nucleoeléctrica Argentina, the INVAP space and nuclear technology institute and the CAREM project. Today, three of those are on hold or lack financing. The fourth, Nucleoeléctrica, is on the road to partial privatisation.
CAREM, in particular, is a national symbol: a power plant of 100 percent Argentine technology, assessed in 2023 as being among the five most advanced in the world by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog. Its civil engineering construction in Lima, Buenos Aires Province, was at 85 percent completion, with over US$400 million already invested. Its projection grew in parallel with the progress of Artificial Intelligence and the growth of cryptocurrencies, which for some has created an “endless” market for safe and clean electricity.
Today, the project has been halted. According to some, staff are forbidden from even mentioning it.
Ex-president Alberto Fernández’s Frente de Todos administration (2015-2019) “began expelling staff from the scientific and technological system and with Milei there was a huge qualitative leap. The standstill seen today is unprecedented. The project has been completely halted,” said a source speaking on condition of anonymity.
The heart of the conflict is not only economic or commercial, but strategic. CAREM, developed by the CNEA since 2010, is one of the most state-of-the-art SMR projects in the world.
“We were among the top five reactors in the world, according to the IAEA,” Adriana Serquis, the president of the CNEA until December 2023, told Perfil in an interview. “It’s not unviable,” she said, alluding to Reidel’s phrase. “85 percent of its civil engineering works had been completed and its estimated completion date was 2028, before the remaining international competitors,” she added.
“At Nucleoeléctrica it was even forbidden to use the word CAREM,” she added, in reference to the gag orders against officials who want to be on good terms with Casa Rosada.
From Bariloche visit to FIRST
Argentina’s official adherence to the FIRST programme in September was announced enthusiastically from the US Embassy in Buenos Aires and was coupled with strategic visits, including Gómez Rápalo’s visit to Bariloche.
Gómez Rápalo, serving as chargé d'affaires until the formal arrival of incoming US ambassador Peter Lamelas arrives, toured the Instituto Balseiro, INVAP and met with Río Negro Province Governor Alberto Weretilneck while in the south.
According to an official release, Argentina has joined “a distinguished group of contributing partners like Japan, South Korea and Canada” that want to accelerate the global deployment of SMRs under safety and non-proliferation standards.
However, sources consulted by Perfil warn that adherence to FIRST will lead to the freezing of national projects and priority given to US development.
Milei’s “Plan Nuclear Argentino” – unveiled by the President and Reidel on December 20, 2024, with the support of Rafael Grossi, head of the IAEA – is, to some former officials, stage-managed.
“I prefer to call it the Reidel Plan rather than ‘Argentine.’ It’s based on a reactor which it’s still a patent: INVAP’s ACR-300,” Hurtado added, highlighting the time it will take for them to become operational (some five years).
The idea is that these four reactors, explained the expert, replace the fourth plant, made with Chinese capital or investment, which is currently frozen by order of the Casa Rosada. In his eyes, what is serious is that, in addition to the dismantling, CAREM “is no longer mentioned at technical meetings” and that its name has become taboo.
Behind the scenes, voices close to Reidel stated that CAREM was halted given its “lack of commercial viability.” It is acknowledged that the goal is to “sell nuclear know-how,” rather than to build reactors.
Yet from within the project, a source describes a different reality “It’s a costly thing, poorly managed by all governments,” he said, stressing that the debacle started with the Fernández government.
China: from desired to discarded
China, the other great player in this drama is silent, but far from minor. But Beijing has gone from a desired partner to a discarded one.
In 2014, during the second term of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s, Argentina signed an agreement to build two plants (Atucha III and Atucha IV respectively): one with technology using a national patent (CANDU-like, natural uranium, heavy water) and another with Chinese technology (Hualong, enriched uranium). Back then, the agreement was seen as a bold play to obtain infrastructure and funds, while also preserving local design capacity and industry.
That balance was lost with the arrival of ex-president Mauricio Macri and Cambiemos to power in 2015. It has faded away for good with Milei’s administration – according to Federico Basualdo, former electric energy undersecretary in Fernández de Kirchner’s government, the U-turn is not technical, but ideological.
“The association with China was not political, it had to do with trade,” he said to Somos Radio AM 530 in an interview, cautioning about the weakness of Argentina’s position, given the scarcity of funds for the nuclear sector (and the need to find them abroad).
Hurtado agrees. He described the manoeuvre conducted to complete the project back then: China would provide funds in exchange for the sale of the Hualong plant, the first of those characteristics to be installed in the “prestigious” Latin American nuclear power.
“Argentina couldn’t provide the agreed-upon 15 percent, while China was left waiting. [Former strategic secretary] Gustavo Béliz didn’t ask for it. It was halted,” said the expert.
“After Béliz’s exit, it wasn’t unblocked either. I think Fernández’s government was sensitive to pressure from the US. He had a weak foreign policy; he invested but there was no converging nuclear policy.”
Privatisation: axis of the ‘Plan Reidel’
Opposition to Milei Presidential Decree 695/2025 – which authorises the sale and privatisation of 49 percent ownership of Nucleoeléctrica Argentina SA, 44 percent via international tender with five percent for employees – traverses the political divide. The decision has triggered alarm even in sectors traditionally favourable to private firms.
Julián Gadano, a former official in the area during Mauricio Macri’s Presidency, argued in a thread on the X social network that “the timing and method chosen are inadequate.”
Although Gadano considers the concept of “sovereignty” relative for a company which “does not design or export any technology,” he believes the operation, as it currently stands, may end up at a “ridiculous price,” given the lack of real incentive for investors without any stockholding control.
However, the point of contact is once again the paradox that is CAREM, a point where ther views of sectors Kirchnerismo and Macrismo converge.
“The idea is to generate the conditions to attract capital and sell know-how, design. That’s why it’s necessary to complete construction,” said a source close to Macri, adding that during the former president’s administration there was a US$400-million investment by the State.
Reidel, upon taking office, made it clear that there would be no additional state investment on the basis of Milei’s “chainsaw” austerity. “The financing [of the plants] will come from a foreign equity fund,” he stated.
Yet, almost a year after the announcement of the “Plan Reidel,” which included halting CAREM and freezing the fourth nuclear plant, there is no sign of these investors promised by the figure who blinded Milei with his Silicon Valley connections.
In the meantime, resetting and relaunching Argentina’s nuclear agenda under the United States umbrella is not only a geopolitical restructuring, but a deep redefinition of the state’s role in strategic sectors. In the name of the fiscal deficit, some report that national technology still under development is being halted, while the government – as a “contributing partner” of the US nuclear programme – will allocate resources aimed at positioning the US as a global supplier.
With a private sector still reluctant to invest without any guarantees of profitability or specific infrastructure, Argentina’s nuclear plan, for the time being, sounds more like a marketing promise than state policy.
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