Ohn an outcrop above the Chubut River, one of the few to cut across the arid Patagonian steppe of southern Argentina, Sergio Pichiñán points across a wide swath of scrubland to colorful rock formations on a distant hillside.
“That’s where they dug for uranium before, and when the miners left, they left the mountain destroyed, the houses abandoned, and nobody ever studied the water,” he says, citing suspicions arising from cases of cancer and skin diseases in his community. “If they want to open this back up, we’re all pretty worried around here.”
Pichiñán lives in Cerro Cóndor, a hamlet with a sparse Indigenous Mapuche population due to the area’s harsh summers, cold winters and little rain. The National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA) mined uranium here in the 1970s and it is now in focus as President Javier Milei aims to shift Argentina’s nuclear strategy.
The remote region sees few visitors, but in November, a delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency visited as part of an Integrated Uranium Production Cycle Review. Cerro Solo, adjacent to the shuttered mines, is one of CNEA’s largest proven uranium deposits, and restarting mining of the ore is the first step in Milei’s new nuclear plan.
The others are to develop small modular reactors, use them to power AI datacentres, export reactors and uranium, and partially privatize Nucleoeléctrica, the state-owned nuclear energy utility.
Yet the plan is facing fierce criticism from both pro- and anti-nuclear voices. Argentina’s non-military nuclear program is 75 years old. It exports research reactors that produce isotopes for medical radiology and science, and its three nuclear plants – Atucha I and II and Embalse – provide about 5% of the country’s electricity.
Uranium production in Chubut declined in the 1980s, and the mines were closed in the 1990s; Since another closed in Mendoza in 1997, Argentina has imported uranium, so many see restarting uranium extraction as a strategic move.
Adriana Serquis, a nuclear physicist, is not so sure. She was president of CNEA until 2024 and was recently elected to congress. She says: “The plan doesn’t seem oriented toward supplying our own plants, but rather exporting uranium directly to the US. It would appear the objective is to satisfy others’ needs while destroying our own capabilities.”
Dioxitek, a state-run subsidiary of CNEA, processes imported uranium into uranium dioxide for use in Argentina’s power stations, but signed a commitment in August last year with the US-based Nano Nuclear Energy to supply it with uranium hexafluoride. As Argentina’s reactors run on natural or low-enriched uranium oxide rather than uranium hexafluoride, it is likely that any uranium extracted in Argentina would be exported to the US rather than be used for local energy production.
In parallel, Nano Nuclear Energy signed a memorandum of understanding with the British-Argentinian company UrAmerica, which has large holdings in Chubut and plans to mine uranium. One of the stated goals of the agreement is “strengthening US energy security by sourcing materials for nuclear fuel from a reliable partner”.
Diego Hurtado, ex-president of the national nuclear regulatory authority and former CNEA vice-president, says Argentina’s proven uranium reserves would fulfill domestic demand for about 70 years, though less if nuclear energy were expanded.
“Argentina doesn’t have extra uranium,” he says. “Exporting uranium isn’t an Argentine nuclear plan; it’s banana republic-style mining: ‘I’ll sell you raw materials so you can use them to generate employment and industrial capacity in your country instead of here.’”
The nuclear plan signifies a realignment towards Washington by Milei, who has declared his country to be an “unconditional ally of the US”. In September, the far-right president signed Argentina up as the first Latin American member of the US Foundational Infrastructure for the Responsible Use of Small Modular Reactor Technology (First) program.
Hurtado says Argentina has little to gain from the arrangement. “Since the late 60s, the US has systematically tried to undermine Argentina’s nuclear development,” he says. “They treat Latin America as their back yard and don’t want competitors for their technology here.”
During his tenure at CNEA, Hurtado met US nuclear specialists who put pressure on Argentina to reject the Chinese Hualong One reactor, which was lined up to be the country’s fourth nuclear power station. Milei has suspended this project.
Serquis, at a recent forum on national sovereignty in Patagonia, said of the situation: “The hegemonic model of countries like the US or European countries, that have achieved certain technologies, says ‘Once I’ve gone up the ladder, I knock it down so no one else comes up.’”
Other parts of the plan have also drawn criticism. Small modular reactors (SMRs) are at the forefront of nuclear energy development. To date, there are only two in operation – one in China and one in Russia.
Argentina has been developing an SMR, known as Carem, for decades, with construction under way since 2014. In 2024, the OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency surveyed 52 SMR projects worldwide and listed Carem as among the four most advanced. Argentina has invested more than £560m, and estimates show the project is about two-thirds complete.
Yet the Milei administration has declared it a failure and in effect mothballed it. The new plan focuses instead on a new SMR project, the ACR300, at only 1% of development, just patented by an Argentinian state-run company but through its subsidiary in the US.
“Not only have they stopped investing in the project, but all the engineering and research teams are being dismantled,” Serquis says. “They say they’re going to have four SMRs built in five years, and that’s just fiction.”
All this comes in the context of Milei’s chainsaw-style dismemberment of public research and environmental protection agencies. “Milei took office with a potent discourse of stigmatizing science and technology, and rapidly defamed them across the board, from CNEA to the National Water Institute to the National Weather Service to public universities,” Hurtado says. “It’s catastrophic.”
Trade unions claim that between 80% and 90% of CNEA workers receive salaries below the poverty line – increasing emigration and brain drain. In 2024, the country’s secretariat for innovation, science and technology only spent 7% of its allocated budget. Public universities have seen budgets slashed.
Partially privatizing the public nuclear utility, Nucleoeléctrica, sets off other alarm bells. The plan, formally launched by the economy ministry in November, aims to sell 44% of the state company to a private investor. Although not holding an absolute majority, the buyer would have the largest stake, giving them decision-making control.
Demian Reidel, Milei’s lead on nuclear matters, was the chair of the council of presidential advisors until being appointed as head of Nucleoeléctrica, where he is now facing a scandal about the company’s procurement and alleged overpricing of service and software contracts.
He did not respond to requests for comment, but has described the privatization as “what any normal company does to attract investment”.
Nucleoeléctrica, however, is one of the few state companies in Argentina that runs a budget surplus, posting a record 17.2bn pesos (£8.6m) in the first quarter of 2025. Opposition parties in congress proposed a bill to declare Nucleoeléctrica a strategic priority and prevent privatization, but they are likely to lack the two-thirds majority to override Milei’s presidential veto.
Isidro Baschar, a former member of the company’s directorate, says Argentina risks losing strategic capabilities and reaping no benefit from privatization, noting that nuclear power worldwide is overwhelmingly state-run (though most commercial plants are privately owned in the US).
“Nuclear energy combines critical infrastructure, extremely long-term investments, highly specialized licensing and international commitments regarding security and non-proliferation. None of that can be sustained through market logic alone,” he says.
Serquis, Hurtado, and Baschar all highlight nuclear power, alongside the solar potential in the high, dry provinces of the north-west and Patagonia’s strong winds, as key elements for meeting emissions-reduction goals and fighting the climate crisis.
Milei is a known climate denier, calling global heating “a socialist lie”, and wants new nuclear plants not to replace fossil fuels but to attract more demand. He and Reidel have visited Silicon Valley and various industry conferences to pitch Argentina, and Patagonia in particular, to investors as a prime site for nuclear-powered AI datacentres.
Baschar says: “Projecting datacentres, or ‘nuclear cities’, in Patagonia seems attractive in the ideas lab, but it’s politically non-viable. (Patagonia) is the region of the country with the strongest popular rejection of these endeavours.”
Chubut has a broad-based and deeply entrenched grassroots anti-mining movement. A 2003 referendum on open-pit gold-mining received an 81% “no” vote, leading to a law prohibiting the practice throughout the province. In 2021, lawmakers tried to open the central steppe to mining but withdrew after protesters blocked highways, swarmed the capital and set fire to government buildings.
The anti-nuclear movement goes back to the 1980s, when a radioactive waste dump was proposed near Gastre, a remote village in central Chubut. After years of popular opposition scuttled the project, cities and towns across Patagonia passed anti-nuclear ordinances banning the presence or transit of nuclear materials.
Now, near the old mine sites in central Chubut, tens of thousands of tonnes of old uranium tailings sit behind only a chain-link fence and a sign that says “Restricted Area”.
Orlando Carriqueo, spokesperson for the Mapuche-Tehuelche parliament of Río Negro, an Indigenous organization in another Patagonian province, says public opinion in the region is concerned about the consequences of uranium mining for fuel production and about waste management. “We’re being turned into an energy colony,” he says.
Reports by CNEA over the past three administrations show no radiation monitoring at the site. Less than a kilometer away, the Río Chubut flows past on its way to supply drinking water to the towns of Trelew, Gaiman and Rawson on the Atlantic coast.
Pichiñán, riding his horse past the abandoned mines, says he fears that future generations could be deluded by the same broken promises of the past. “What happened back then, when they told us we were going to be rich? Where’s all that wealth? Where are the people who were going to have work and money?” he asks.
“I don’t want my child to be 30, 40 years old one day and have to show them this kind of abandonment,” he says. “Whatever happens, we can’t let them do this.”
The CNEA declined to comment.
