Qualla: Atucha Nuclear Power Plant

Atucha Nuclear Power Plant: Introduction

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mrcukilo, CC BY-SA 3.0. In March 1973, the reactor was not yet finished when armed men walked into it. A guerrilla unit of Argentina's People's Revolutionary Army slipped into the half-built Atucha plant, seized a submachine gun and three pistols, then shot their way out past the police, wounding two officers. It was a bizarre overture for what would become a landmark of the atomic age: when Atucha I finally went online the following year, it was the first nuclear power plant to generate electricity anywhere in Latin America. The drama of its birth never quite matched the calm of the river it sits beside.

Image: Mrcukilo | CC BY-SA 3.0

Atucha Nuclear Power Plant: First in the Hemisphere

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Watsonpatricio, CC BY-SA 3.0. Construction began in 1968, and on the 19th of March 1974 Atucha I delivered its first power to the grid, with full commercial operation following that June. No other plant on the continent had done it. The reactor is an unusual machine even by nuclear standards: a German Siemens...

Image: Watsonpatricio | CC BY-SA 3.0

Atucha Nuclear Power Plant: The Long Wait of Atucha II

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CAREM CNEA, CC BY-SA 4.0. Its sister reactor is a study in patience and frustration. Work on Atucha II began in 1981 under another Siemens contract, then stalled in 1994 as money and political will ran out. The half-finished plant sat for years, its components in storage, a monument to ambition deferred. ...

Image: CAREM CNEA | CC BY-SA 4.0

Atucha Nuclear Power Plant: A Rare Breed of Reactor

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mcukilo, CC BY-SA 3.0. What makes Atucha genuinely unusual is its lineage. Almost every heavy-water reactor in the world descends from the Canadian CANDU family or its Indian cousins. Atucha's two reactors do not. They are among only a handful of heavy-water plants ever built to a different design, and...

Image: Mcukilo | CC BY-SA 3.0

Atucha Nuclear Power Plant: What Comes Next on the Paraná

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Basso Brovelli, CC BY-SA 4.0. The complex is not finished growing. In February 2022, Argentina signed a contract with the China National Nuclear Corporation for Atucha III, a Hualong One reactor expected to generate around 1,200 megawatts at a cost near eight billion dollars. It would be a break from the past...

Image: Basso Brovelli | CC BY-SA 4.0