The new attempt to develop nuclear energy in the country answers to the “needs of large scale mining, mainly multinational corporations, agroindustry and big business and high income sectors in the cities”, the social movements and organizations warn in a public release of January 27. This is not a development “for social welfare, education, health, culture and the Chilean society’s entertainment”, they add.

Piñera’s administration said they are considering the nuclear energy possibilities in the country, and that a nuclear plant will not be built. The Chilean Law on Nuclear Security currently in force, enables the regulated use of nuclear energy.

The law contemplates a process of authorization for the building, operation, closing down and dismantling of nuclear plants.

There are two experimental or research nuclear reactors in Chile in charge of the Chilean Commission of Nuclear Energy, which depends on the national government. The Nuclear Reactor La Reina has 5 thermic megawatt power and it is placed in Las Condes municipality in the Metropolitan region of Santiago. The Reactor Lo Aguirre has a capacity of ten thermic megawatts and it is 28 kilometers from Santiago, the country’s capital.

The Chilean commission of Nuclear energy says in its official website that “the nuclear energy option in our country is viable”, although it points out that a project like that one needs at least six to ten years to start operating.

Several Chilean social organizations are on the alert. They do not regard the government’s insistence in the “preliminary assessment” of developing nuclear energy and including the subject in the agenda of Piñera’s meeting with Obama.

They claim “Chile is not undergoing an energy crisis and the estimates of energy demand for the next years and decades are those of an unsustainable and unfair development”.

Some of the signing organizations are Colectivo VientoSur, Latin American Observatory of Environmental Conflicts, the National Association of Rural and Indigenous Women, la Vía Campesina Chile and the World March of Women Chile.

“So far the country and its citizens have stayed away from the nuclear energy threat. This new attempt to introduce nuclear energy in the political agenda answers to economic interests, such as those who manage the supply and demand in the current Chilean energy system”.

The Chilean social movements and organizations highlight that the risks and environmental and social impacts of nuclear power are widely documented and disseminated, especially those related with uranium processing, radioactive waste disposal and power generation.

The signatories of the public statement believe Chile does not need nuclear energy and that the urban and rural communities of the country need truly clean and just energy. Energy should be managed with a criterion of public welfare and territorial sustainability, with a central role of the state and the communities.

“We reject this new nuclear attempt, supported by the US diplomacy, which is at the service of its global economic interests. We say to the US president that the Chilean people do not want nuclear energy in their territory”.

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