NARRATOR: It's been called the Cuban "Chernobyl". A ticking time bomb, 150 miles off our shores. A clear and present danger to the United States. Why is Cuba building a nuclear reactor? When, if ever, will it be completed? We took our cameras to Cuba with a team of Americans to find the answer to the question -- Is there a "Chernobyl" in Cuba?  

ADM. CARROLL: "Welcome to America's Defense Monitor, I'm Admiral Eugene Carroll, and in November I took a group of military, nuclear, and diplomatic professionals to Cuba to look at conditions there six years after Russia withdrew its military and economic support. We took a hard look at Cuban efforts to build a nuclear power plant at Juragua, and today we take you there to see conditions first hand."  

NARRATOR: Since the Cuban revolution in 1958, US relations with Cuba have been marked by hostilities -- the U.S. backed  invasion at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the mass exodus of 100,000 refugees during the Mariel boat  lift in 1980, and the shoot down of two Cuban exile planes by Cuban MIGs over the Florida Straits in 1996.  
Today, a new confrontation looms over an unfinished nuclear power plant in Juragua, Cuba. At issue is the construction of a Soviet-designed nuclear plant on the south central coast of Cuba -- less than 200 miles from Florida.  

ROBINSON: "I think that it's fair to call the Juragua nuclear complex a Chernobyl-like disaster waiting to happen in our back yard, as has often been said  by critics of this project, I'm one of them."  

NARRATOR: Roger Robinson was the former director of International Economic Affairs in the National Security Council under President Reagan.  

ROBINSON: "the two VVER-440 reactors that Russia has been seeking to complete in Cuba since the early 1980s, if they were brought on line and fueled, I think that they would represent a clear and present danger to the American mainland."  

NARRATOR: Controversy has surrounded the Juragua project since construction began in 1982. At the time Fidel Castro dubbed it the "Project of the Century" and saw it as a means of further developing Cuba.  

ALVARADO: "Cuba began construction with the help of the Russians in the early 1980's, ostensibly to lessen Cuba's dependency on imported oil."  

NARRATOR: Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado, a researcher with the Center for International Trade and Security at the University of Georgia, is a leading expert on the Cuban nuclear program. He has conducted extensive interviews with Cuban nuclear energy officials during his field work.  

ALVARADO: "Cuba had relied on imported oil to fuel its economy since the beginning of the modern period and so the Cubans were very interested in trying to get away from that dependency."  

NARRATOR: It was the deadly explosion and fire in 1986 at a Soviet reactor in Chernobyl, Ukraine, that focused U.S. attention on the Cuban nuclear project.  

ALVARADO: "People in this country knew that Cuba was attempting to build a nuclear reactor and hadn't paid much attention to it. After the Chernobyl accident people started to focus on what was going on in Cuba because of the concern that something similar could happen in Cuba."  

NARRATOR: But in 1992, after 10 years of construction, Fidel Castro suspended work at Juragua. The collapse of the Soviet Union had left Cuba without money and assistance to continue the project.  

ALVARADO: "The Russians were demanding $200 Million dollars from the Cubans to install the instrumentation and control, one because the Russians no longer had that kind of money to be throwing around with the Cubans, and they weren't going to be able to do it themselves. They were going to contract to probably a Western European firm to come in and do it and that would have to be done on a cash basis."  

NARRATOR: Since 1992, Havana has kept the prospect of finishing the Juragua alive. Cuba has actively sought Western partners with money and technical assistance to complete the project. But so far there are no takers in sight. If completed, the reactors could provide modest relief to an island country struggling to cope with a severe energy crisis, brought on by the loss of Soviet aid, and a forty year long U.S. imposed economic trade embargo.  

ALONSO: The country has great needs in the area of energy, energy for its development."  

NARRATOR: Danilo Alonso Mederos is director of the Center for Energy Information, a Cuban government agency.  

ALONSO: With the collapse of that market we needed to adopt a whole package of energy saving measure, for more controlled energy use, in order to maintain projects for our economic development, to survive in spite of the cruel, inhuman blockade imposed upon us which to threatened to wipe us out."  

NARRATOR: The signs of Cuba's energy crisis are clearly visible on the streets of Havana. Traffic jams are non-existent.Bicycles are a major mode of transportation. Large tractor trailers, nicknamed "camels" for their humps, have been converted into mass people movers. And come evening, it is not uncommon to find sections of Havana in darkness due to electrical brownouts. Cuba still depends heavily on imported oil to meet its energy needs. As imported oil drains the country of much needed hard currency, Cuba has made it a priority to find alternative sources of energy.  

ALONSO: "Right now we are basically working to make more efficient use of our existing energy resources. We are trying to get more energy out of the sources that we have. No alternative has been counted out, not one alternative. Our priority is to produce energy for development. For that reason no alternative has been discarded. It all depends on the moment, the circumstances, the possibilities which arise, but no alternative has been counted out."  

NARRATION: Because of this pressing need for a new energy source, and the resources already invested at Juragua, Cuba is reluctant to abandon the nuclear power plant.  

PLANT MANAGER: "We have never abandoned it. At one time in 1992 we froze the project temporarily, but we secured more support for it, the program has been maintained and preserved and all manner of work has continued to finish it. It has to be done."  

NARRATOR: When work on the plant stopped in 1992, Cuba managed to secure a $30 million dollar loan from Russia to "mothball" the project until both countries could resume work at a later date. But the prospect that Cuba might someday revive its nuclear power project continues to generate concern in the United States.  

ROBINSON: "These reactors are irretrievably flawed in both their construction and their design. The Cubans don't have a safetyculture or operating expertise for the complexity of those reactors. But I think it's the defective materials that have been used and poor welding and the like that would have closed down any Western reactor very quickly, but in the case of Cuba, they're pressing on."  

NARRATOR: Critics predict that if Juragua is completed, its questionable safety could lead to a nuclear accident. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration has suggested that a meltdown might produce a radioactive cloud that could contaminate a wide swath of the United States from Texas to Washington, DC. Although US officials have had questions about the safety of Juragua almost since work began at the site, several factors have made it difficult for the US to deal with the issue.  

ALVARADO: "I think its been difficult to assess the safety concerns at Juragua because it has mostly been handled by legislators and journalists, and policy advocates as opposed to being handled by scientists and technicians who could give you a definitive answer as to what's happening there."  

NARRATOR: News reports continue to refer to the halted project as "a ticking time bomb" and a "Cuban Chernobyl" for sensational effect. Politicians have also "played up" the potential nuclear threat to influence US foreign policy with Cuba.  

SEN. JESSE HELMS: "My problem with that nuclear reactor is that it is almost exactly like Chernobyl, with all of its dangers. The reason I worry about that kind of reactor is that it is 90 miles from our shore."  

ALVARADO: "there really is a lot of disinformation, misinformation going around about the reactor program. I think a primary example of that would be that many people say that this is a Chernobyl type reactor...the reactors that are under construction in Juragua right now are VVER or pressurized water reactors - completely different they have containment domes, a lot of the science that goes behind the generation of electricity is completely different"  

NARRATOR: Cuba's rationale for pursuing nuclear energy has become more controversial because the Juragua plant has now become part of the larger political debate over US-Cuba relations. Anti-Castro Cuban exiles and their allies in Congress, who favor a hardline stance towards Cuba, have passed laws which heighten fears about Juragua for political purposes.  
The Helms-Burton law, passed by Congress in 1996, which strengthens sanctions against Cuba -- states that Washington considers the completion of a nuclear reactor in Cuba "an act of aggression which will be met with an appropriate response." In 1997, Congressman Robert Menendez from New Jersey, sponsored legislation that ordered the Pentagon to build a $3 million dollar "nuclear fallout detection system" in Florida. Some policymakers have even gone as far as to suggest that if Cuba does complete the power plant the United States should carry out surgical air strikes, like those used in the Gulf War, to destroy the Cuban reactors.  

ALVARADO: "I think that people that would try to say that the Cuban nuclear program is a vital national interest or national security interest are wrong. There is no nuclear fuel on the island. Cuba doesn't have many of the nuclear materials needed to finish construction, nor do they have financing. At a minimum we are talking three years if they were to get financing today to a point where they might finish construction."  

NARRATION: Further clouding the issue is the fact that few US officials have visited Juragua or talked with Cuban engineers, making it extremely difficult to judge the true state of the plant.  

ALVARADO: "The civil construction at the unit number one at Juragua is about 70% complete -- and this just means cement structures and such. The more important instrumentation and control systems within the nuclear reactor are only about 20% complete. And this is where it stands and it has stood this way since 1992."  

NARRATOR: Dr. Tom Cochran, a nuclear physicist and researcher with the Natural Resources Defense Council, is one of a handful of Americans who has toured Juragua and met with Cuban energy officials.  

COCHRAN: "The Cuban nuclear industry people that we met both in October or 1997 and February of 1996, I thought they were a very dedicated group of people working under very adverse conditions mainly no money."  

NARRATION: The American groups that toured Juragua in 1996 and 1997, investigated Cuba's attempts to preserve the state of the plant.  

COCHRAN: "that they had actually done a considerable amount of work in maintaining the status quo of the plant, and bring in big pieces of the hardware into the second containment, and putting them in place. Painting exposed metal. Going through an inspection program to ensure the maintenance and quality of these particular pieces of equipment."  

NARRATOR: There were issues that raised Dr. Cochran's concern over the integrityof the plant.  

COCHRAN: "The problems that would make this plant less safe than say a Western plant go to the lack of quality insurance in the construction. The fact that they may end up with a lot of Russian hardware, particularly the control systems, the valves and so forth."  

NARRATOR: While Dr. Cochran has doubts about the quality of construction and Cuba's regulatory oversight, he is not convinced that the plant poses an imminent danger to the United States.  

COCHRAN: "The plant doesn't represent a safety threat to the United States. In my view it would represent a threat to Cuba if they completed the plant, but the United States is far enough away that the amounts of radioactivity that would reach the mainland would be quite small and wouldn't represent a significant threat under sort of reasonable scenarios about wind patterns and so forth."  

NARRATOR: Although Dr. Cochran sees legitimate safety concerns with the plant, he feels the dangers to the United States have been overblown for political purposes.  

COCHRAN: "Well this plant is being used by Cuban Americans and their supporters in an effort to undermine the Castro regime by making it appear as a threat to the United States and I think that's utter nonsense. The plant won't come online anytime soon, and in my view probably will never come online."  

NARRATOR: Further adding to confusion about the state of the plant has been the "on again" and "off again" status of financing for the Juragua project. Completion of the half finished plant hinges on many factors, not the least of which is raising an enormous amount of money during a period of severe economic austerity in both Cuba and Russia. Although Cuba hasn't abandoned its ambition to operate a nuclear power plant, a lack of money could put their plans on hold indefinitely.  

ALONSO: "We have not counted out the option of producing energy from nuclear sources. One option which is being maintained is the nuclear plant. As you know, in 1992 for financial reasons this project was brought to a halt. Since then it has been frozen, preserved for the moment when we receive adequate investment to finish it."  

NARRATOR: In 1995, with neither Russia nor Cuba able to finance the completion of Juragua, the two countries announced plans to seek third parties to finish the project. To date there has only been speculation that a third party would want to invest in the plant.  

ROBINSON: "I believe that you could pull together a consortium, Russian led of course, of for example British, German, French, Italian and Brazilian suppliers who could come up with that kind of money. Russia itself might surprise us by its commitments increasing, once things get rolling, and we could have this disaster off our shores within 18 months to 24 months."  

NARRATOR: But others feel differently.  

ALVARADO: "In my estimation it would be very difficult in 1998 for Cuba to find the means to complete this project. Cuba's credit rating in the international markets is poor if not abysmal and they are not going to be able to find any ready resource to come in and help them at this point."  

NARRATOR: In 1995, the Cubans contracted a foreign firm to determine how much money was needed to complete the plant.  

ALVARADO: " At that time it was estimated that it would take $800 million dollars for the Cubans to complete the project. This is significantly more than the $200 Million that the Russians were asking for in 1992, and some experts place that cost at even higher, more than Billion dollars, and that would be just to complete the construction. We're not talking about any of the testing that would have to go on at the facility and operation."  

NARRATOR: Another "turn off" for investors has been the prospect of poor returns on the investment.  

ALVARADO: "the Russians have experienced very, very bad results in their on domestic energy sector. They have tried to sell their electricity to the public and they have only been able to collect 1 cent on the dollar. I don't see anyone willing to spend more than a Billion dollars to only get a penny back on that dollars investment so it doesn't really look at this point as if the Cubans can complete the project."  

NARRATOR: Aside from the $1.2 Billion that Cuba and Russia have already sunk into the project, both parties have incentives to at least claim that the project is ongoing.  

COCHRAN: "The Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy has a strong incentive to ensure that the Cubans don't walk away from this plant at least in the near future. They do not want it to look like one of their major nuclear plants that they've exported is collapsing it would damage their efforts to export other plants. Cuba likewise, the nuclear industry in Cuba has an incentive to maintain the status quo. If they walk away from this plant they are out of business essentially."  

NARRATOR: The extended delay in construction at Juragua has made nuclear energy a lower national priority for Cuba.  

ALVARADO: "in January of 1997 Fidel announced that they were not going to solely focus on the development of nuclear energy any longer than they were going to try to seek alternative options to developing energy in the country. This has been lost on a lot of people in the United States, not very many people if they heard it paid attention to it, or it did not register with a lot of people."  

NARRATOR: Havana has experimented with renewable sources of energy such as solar and wind power, because they are years away from developing potential off shore oil deposits. But Cubans see these alternative energy sources as a complement to nuclear energy, not as a substitute. One possible, less risky energy source may already exist for Cuba in great quantities! A by-product of sugarcane production called  
"biomass".  

COCHRAN: "We argued to Fidel that and to his ministry officials that they would be far smarter to invest in improving the electricity production capabilities at their sugar mills....they take the leftovers from the sugar cane after they've squeezed the sugar out of it and burn that in a boiler and they can heat water, make steam, drive turbines, produce electricity at the mills."  

NARRATOR: With over 100 sugar mills on the island, some predict that if Cuba could upgrade its current steam turbines, it could produce twice the amount of electricity from sugarcane as it currently does from imported oil.  

COCHRAN: "This would take a major investment, that's not in the cards right now under the current economic situation, and the with the embargo they can't get any Western support for this. But that's a far better solution in terms of increased electricity production than building a nuclear plant."  

NARRATOR: Although the future of the project at Juragua is uncertain, Cuba remains committed to its pursuit of nuclear energy.  

ALONSO: "We are preparing for when the nuclear energy project is completed. Everything will be done under international standards, as long as that plant is operating they will operate under established international standards, and we are little by little establishing our own measures to ensure that that happens. We have been preparing personnel and authorizing programs legally to ensure that this is so."  

NARRATOR: Unlike some countries that have pursued secret nuclear energy projects, Cuba has cooperated fully and openly with the International Atomic Energy Agency or IAEA.  

PLANT MANAGER: "a few years ago, our program began to apply the regulatory standards which the International Atomic Energy Agency had established to our personnel, training, and quality assurance systems. For all these years our work and our laws have conformed to the established IAEA requirements for building this facility."  

NARRATION: In further efforts to reduce fear and suspicion about the Juragua plant, Cuban energy officials have offered to exchange information with US scientists.  

ALONSO: "If we are talking about international technical cooperation and exchanges, and if we are talking about this kind of exchange the best thing to do would be to have the technicians and scientists talk to each other through an established exchange program. The best way for them to do it would be to come to Cuba directly, these scientists and technicians, and then our scientists and technicians could exchange information and ideas regarding nuclear energy."  

ALVARADO: "They know that they have a ways to go before they would be considered up to speed and be able to meet and be in compliance with all international standards. And they kind of think it to be a little ridiculous that we're sitting here, a mere ninety miles across the straits of Florida casting aspersions at them, when what we should be doing is sending our best people down there. If they're completely wrong that will come out, but they would much rather have it come out in a sober scientific and objective manner."  

NARRATOR: As for the future of Cuba's "Project of the Century", it looks like it may become the project of the 21st century.  

COCHRAN: "I think that because Russia and Cuba and the nuclear industry in Cuba have a strong interest just to maintain the status quo that they will in fact do that, and they can do that very cheaply with very low staff level. And I expect that they will continue to do that make minor improvements at the site, but I don't expect this reactor to be ever completed."  

ALVARADO: "My prediction for Juragua is that most likely will never see a day of operation. It has sat around far too long to satisfy the concerns of anybody who would be interested in doing work there at this point. That doesn't eliminate the possibility that the Cubans might not find another way of trying to generate electricity using nuclear energy."  

ADM. CARROLL: "You have seen the beginnings of a nuclear power plant in Cuba and heard experts describe the problems which must be resolved before it can be completed. Do you think we have a Chernobyl in Cuba? If we do there is a very effective remedy, the door is wide open for the United States, in cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency to lead efforts to insure safety there. If it ever becomes possible to resume construction, during the many years needed to complete the plant, we can be an active participant in the process in order to insure all safety standards are met before the first atom is split. U.S. participation with Juragua would not only be a way to guard against another Chernobyl, it could lead to a more cooperative and constructive relationship with a nation eager to be a good neighbor and a friend. For America's Defense Monitor I'm Eugene Carroll."  

NARRATOR: Funding for this program was generously provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Christopher Reynolds Foundation, Inc.  

Produced by the Center for Defense Information   
Scriptwriter: Stephen Sapienza   
Segment Producer: Stephen Sapienza   
Show Number: 1123   
Special Funding Provided by The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Christopher Reynolds Foundation, Inc.