Argentina's government has cancelled the Atucha III nuclear plant, a project built on Chinese technology and financing, according to minutes of a Nucleoeléctrica shareholders' meeting seen by Página/12.
The meeting, held on Wednesday, September 23, brought together the shareholders of Nucleoeléctrica Argentina (NA-SA), the state company that runs the country's nuclear plants. The assembly decided to "leave without effect" the Candu (Canadian) and Hualong (Chinese) reactor projects that a 2021 assembly had told NA-SA to build, citing "lack of allocation of economic resources and material impossibility of compliance" under the public emergency declared by Law 27,742, Milei's 2024 Bases Law.
In their place, the minutes declare the site "of business interest" and authorize the board to approve tender documents for a public call to build a reactor with an estimated investment of US$1.203 billion, "100% private capital, without public funds or guarantees." That would require surface rights over 12 hectares of the land reserved for Atucha III, and NA-SA could operate and maintain the plant.
The figure matches a proposal the government did publicly announce. On July 2, Economy Minister Luis Caputo said on X that Meitner Energy, a company of the US-based Ansari Group, 40% owned by Argentina's state-run engineering firm Invap, had presented a plan for a modular reactor at Atucha, "the first of its type worldwide". The plan is for a 300-megawatt reactor and an investment of US$1.2 billion, still subject to Economy Ministry approval and licensing by the nuclear regulator, with Meitner paying a fee for surface rights.
Atucha III's future has been unclear since at least late 2024. Infobae reported in December 2024 that Milei planned to move ahead with it, and the negotiating period with China had been extended to April 2025. Argentina has since pitched nuclear technology exports at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.
The cancellation ends a project valued in 2024 at US$8.3 billion, most of it to be financed by China. NA-SA's board is now authorized to approve the tender documents for the call.