July 11, 1997

Cuba intent on finishing nuclear energy plant

HAVANA, July 10 (Reuter) - Cuba has not given up the idea of finishing its first nuclear power plant, on which construction stopped five years ago.

Prensa Latin reported on Thursday that the director of the nuclear energy information centre, Danilo Alonso, said there was no alternative to the low cost of nuclear energy for the hard-currency-starved socialist island ``and there is no motive to renounce that option.''

Construction of the Soviet-designed plant halted in 1992 after the Soviet Union's collapse. At the time the buildings for two 417 megawatt reactors were 75 percent finished and installation of equipment was 20 percent complete.

The U.S. government is on record as opposing completion of the plant although Cuban officials note that plans for the nuclear facility were approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency with approval of its U.S. representative.

Two Cuban American members of Congress from Florida, Republicans Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Diaz-Balart, have charged that construction at the plant in south-central Cuba is flawed and that it would be a danger to the United States, the Caribbean basin and Central America.

Alonso said nuclear energy would be cost-effective because ``Cuba has no big rivers to harness, lacks coal and petroleum which have to be imported and that solar energy ... cannot provide energy for big industries.''

Cuba, which failed to find foreign investors to help it finish the complex, say investors would make profits through the government's guaranteed purchase of the plant's power.

Alonso said Russia showed interest in finishing the plant but ``Washington threatens it with reducing its economic aid to the same degree that it invests in the Cuban nuclear project.''

Cuban experts claim the Soviet-designed plant will be reliable and include a triple safety backup system. They say the VVER-type Soviet reactors are much safer than those at the Chernobyl plant in the Ukraine, site of the nuclear disaster.

President Fidel Castro has called the island's energy crisis ``Cuba's Achilles heel.'' The reactors would provide 12 percent of the nation's electric energy and save around two million tonnes of oil a year.

Prior to the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Cuba imported 13 million tonnes of oil a year from Black Sea ports. Following the breakup of its main benefactor, Cuba has used its scant hard-currerncy reserves to buy about 6 million tonnes of oil a year on the world market.

16:24 07-10-97