ABSTRACT
Since the early 1980s, Cuba has been attempting to develop a domestic nuclear energy capability. With assistance from the former Soviet Union (FSU), Cuba envisioned a network of nuclear-powered electrical generation stations across the island. This would alleviate its dependence on external sources of fuel for energy and provide it with a shining example of the success of the Cuban Revolution. Indeed, a nuclear complex designed and built by Cuban hands would give some measure of credibility to Cuba’s revolutionary model of development. Yet in the period since the “Project of the Century” was conceived in the late 1970s, Cuba has been forced to deal with a series of setbacks that have the potential to relegate this grand infra-structural objective to the “dustbin of history.” The Cuban nuclear project has suffered from design deficiencies, construction delays, and, finally, in 1992, the loss of financing from its partners, then the Soviets, and now the Russians. 1 Compounding Cuba’s woes have been shortages in the energy supply because of reduced levels of imported oil during the “Special Period in a Time of Peace,” shortages causing a significant reduction of the energy supply on the island. The reduction in the energy supply has devastated Cuba’s industrial output; it is estimated that economic activity in Cuba declined by almost 85 percent in the two years following the collapse of the Soviet Union. 2 It is also estimated that the Cuban economy has conflated by more than 35 percent in the period since 1991. 3 In addition, there has been a steady stream of allegations decrying the potential of a “Cuban Chernobyl from a nuclear accident at the reactor site in Cienfuegos province” spewing radioactive particles upwind from millions of Americans in the southeastern United States. 4 As of early 1999, the Cuban nuclear energy program was only partially complete with nearly 75 percent of the civil construction and only 20 percent of the instrumentation and control systems complete on the first unit at the Juragua site in Cienfuegos Province. 5 Cuba remains mired in a difficult situation because it is estimated that the country has been able to generate only 30 percent of the energy required to meet the domestic consumption demand. The severely diminished output has resulted in rolling blackouts, disrupted services, and the shutdown of factories and other industrial installations throughout the island. 6
