BUENOS AIRES CAN PRODUCE NUCLEAR ARMS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100140003-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 3, 2012
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: December 12, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

S1 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100140003-6
fiiTICLE APPEARED
011 PAGE C/
Buenos Aires
Can Produce
Nuclear Arms
While bombs are exploding in the
Middle East, a time borpb is ticking
in Argentina. And it has nuclear in-
gredients.
The new Argentine president,
Raul Alfonsin, will face one of the
most important decisions of any
world leader during his six-year
term: whether Argentina will ' pro-
duce the first Latin. American nu-
clear bomb.
Can the Argentines do it? They
sure can.
The most recent CIA report on
Argentina's nuclear capability, clas-
sified "Secret," estimates that the
Argentine government could have a
bomb by the end of next year if the
project were given top priority, and
in three years without a crash pro-
gram. By 1986 Argentina will have
all the necessary material and pro-
duct-ion facilities on its own soil.
U.S. intelligence agencies were
caught by surprise recently when
Adm. Carlos Castro Madero, long-
time head of the Comision Nacional
de Energia Atomics, announced that
the commission had already devel-
oped the technology to make en-
WASHINGTON POST
12 December 1983
riched uranium, a crucial ingredient
in nuclear weapons.
Alfonsin vowed during his election
campaign that if he discovered the
military constructing a nuclear bomb
he would have it dismantled imme-
diately-Some analysts suspect Cas-
tro Madero's announcement was a
last-minute effort -by the outgoing
military regime to undercut Alfon-
sm's promise.
From sources in Buenos Aires,
classified intelligence reports, and
CIA, State Department and congres-
sional sources, my associates Dale
Van Atta and Lucette Lagnado
pieced together. the story of Argen-.
tina's ambitious-and unsettling-
hope of joining the nuclear club.
There are two ways to make a
bomb: with enriched uranium or plu-
tonium. The CIA has been especially
concerned about Argentina's pluto-
nium program Plutonium can be
manufactured by reprocessing the
fuel rods in nuclear reactors. Argen-
tina already has two nuclear power
plants in operation, and by the end
of the century it will have six.
Argentina has refused to sign ei-
ther the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty or the Treaty of Tlateloco,
which bans nuclear weapons in Latin
America.
But. so far, the Argentine nuclear
plants cannot be used to make plu-
tonium because the fuel rods are im-
ported under contracts forbidding
reprocessing`, into plutonium. If the
Argentines decided to go the pluto-
nium route they would be breaking
the contracts and there would be
serious international repercussions.
Even if they haven't been secretly
squirreling away plutonium for
weapons, as some sources suspect,
the Argentines will be able to repro-
cess fuel rods at their Ezeiza atomic
plant by 1986, giving them the abil-
ity to produce a nuclear bomb with-
out dependence on foreign suppliers.
Meanwhile, Adm. Castro
Madero's announcement of Argen-
tina's enriched-uranium success con-
stitutes an embarrassing failure by
U.S. intelligence agencies. Only three
weeks before his statement, one in-
telligence source stated positively
that "the Argentines can't use en-
riched uranium for a bomb because
they don't have a program for it."
Although most sources suggest
that Argentina has not seriously
been trying to build a bomb but is
pursuing its nuclear energy program
as a matter of prestige, the Reagan
administration is concerned about.
the possibility of a Latin American'
nuclear power.
A secret White House directive
has ordered U.S. intelligence agen-
cies to "maintain close contact with
the Argentine nuclear program and
be alert to all possible ways of influ-
encing Argentina to pursue a course
which would not lead it to the point
of developing a nuclear explosives
capability." ;
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100140003-6