Sydney & Washington

Building up: Australia's planned research reactor is its largest-ever scientific facility. Credit: ANSTO

Plans for Australia's largest-ever scientific facility — a research reactor to be built at Lucas Heights near Sydney — could be thrown into disarray because of Argentina's economic crisis, critics of the project claim.

Environmental groups in both Australia and Argentina say that INVAP, the publicly owned Argentine company contracted to build the facility, will not receive sufficient funds from its cash-strapped government to allow it to complete the five-year project.

But INVAP's chief executive, Héctor Otheguy, says that the company is financially sound and that this month's devaluation of the peso (see Nature 415, 104; 2002) leaves INVAP in a stronger position. “As a company based on exports, the devaluation will be a plus, not a minus,” he says, adding that the project is running on schedule. Costing A$290 million (US$150 million), the research reactor is scheduled to open in 2005.

Brendan Nelson, Australia's new science minister, agrees. “INVAP's activities under the contract are fully funded by the contract payments and are therefore not dependent on cash flow from the Argentine government,” he says.

But Raúl Montenegro, president of the Environment Defense Foundation, a pressure group based in Argentina, claims that INVAP relies on the Argentine government for cash flow, which is now drying up. “INVAP has no capacity for self-funding,” he says.

A decision to license the reactor's construction is due next month after the project has been examined by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency. One aspect the agency must consider is the viability of the plan to dispose of the reactor's spent fuel, which would be reprocessed by INVAP and stored at an unspecified site in South Australia.