LEARNING AND DEMONSTRATION IN THE CASE OF NUCLEAR FUEL REPROCESSING BY THE ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION IN ARGENTINA (1962-1976)

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyse the trajectory of the reprocessing projects launched by the National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA) in Argentina between 1962 and 1976. It examines the motives, objectives and results of the successive projects and shows that they were the outcome of different co-production processes between a particular technology (reprocessing) and the context, not only organisational but also socio-political and geopolitical, of the CNEA at that time. It examines how reprocessing was initially considered to be a project with primarily a technical dimension that was set up to promote the development of skills and know-how in a new research facility but that it gradually became a more political project. In this form, it was designed to demonstrate that Argentina could master this technology and, in particular, that it could reprocess plutonium and thus “close” the “fuel cycle” of industrial-scale reactors.