Argentina president inaugurates enriched uranium plant

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez inaugurated a plant to produce enriched uranium for manufacturing fuel for nuclear plants in the country, the media reported on Tuesday.

"We are the only Latin American country with this degree of advancement, which was halted during the late 1980s and which we are restarting," Fernandez said during the inauguration on Monday.

The uranium enrichment plant is located in Pilcaniyeu in the southern Rio Negro province and is administered by the National Atomic Energy Commission, Efe news reported.

Argentina had produced uranium on an experimental scale in Pilcaniyeu during the 1980s when the country developed the enrichment process but production was later stopped.

"We (Argentinians) will never allow external demands to limit our autonomy and our scientific development because we can really attest to the fact and reassure the world that the nuclear energy we produce, that the enriched uranium we produce are not going to bombs to destroy lives. On the contrary, they are going to energy and nuclear medicine," said Fernandez.

The ministry of federal planning said in a statement that the uranium will be supplied to operational nuclear plants as well as three proposed plants and thirteen nuclear medicine centres throughout the country, eleven of which are under construction.