CENTER’S ROBINSON URGES CONGRESS TO THWART THE COMING CUBAN CHERNOBYL NUCLEAR CRISIS
(Washington, D.C.): In a riveting testimony before the House
International Relations Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere
yesterday, Roger W. Robinson, Jr., laid bare the fatal flaws
afflicting the Soviet-designed Juragua nuclear power complex near
Cienfuegos, Cuba. Robinson — the former Senior Director for
International Economic Affairs at the National Security Council
under President Reagan and a founding member of the Center for
Security Policy’s Board of Advisors — also spelled out the exact
past, present and future U.S. security challenges associated with
this ticking time-bomb roughly 150 miles from U.S. shores.
Although the Cienfuegos plant was essentially
“moth-balled” in April of 1992 just eleven months after
its existence became public, reports from Havana indicate that
completing this impending nuclear disaster remains a high
priority for Fidel Castro. He evidently intends to obtain
taxpayer underwritten supplies and financial assistance by
involving European and Latin American firms and governments. In
his effort to complete the Juragua project, Robinson testified
that “the Juragua complex is even more frighteningly flawed
and unacceptable today — given the passage of time and corrosive
exposure to the elements — than it was some three years
ago.”
As the attached testimony excerpts
show, the Congress must act now using any
and all means necessary to ensure that these unfixable,
Soviet-era VVER-440 reactors never come on-line. In addition
to posing the danger of a Chernobyl-style nuclear catastrophe off
the U.S. coast, the Center for Security Policy has long argued
that the creation and completion of the Cienfuegos plant would do
irreparable harm to a proper U.S. policy toward Castro’s regime,
to the Cuban people and to the environment.
moreover, that it would also send the signal to the rest of the
“wannabe” nuclear powers that the United States will
idly sit back while they acquire such dangerous capabilities.
To prevent just such a situation, the Center for Security
Policy urges Congress to heed Robinson’s policy recommendations,
including: “Those European and Latin American companies and
financial institutions working to advance completion of the
project should be subject to swift and decisive penalties from
the Congress. U.S. import controls should probably be the
sanction of choice for private sector Western entities supplying
Juragua, requiring a decision by the management of these firms
between doing business in the American market or
in the Cuban market.” Click here for a copy of Roger Robinson’s
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(1) See, for example, the Center’s Decision
Briefs entitled Cienfuegos — ‘A Hundred Fires’: Muchas
Gracias Moscow, But No American Chernobyls (31 May
1991, No. 91-P 44), A
‘Ticking’ Anniversary Present: Will Russia Give Us A Chernobyl
Ninety Miles Off The U.S. Shore? (23 April 1992,
Potemkin Nuclear Shutdown: Chernobyl at Cienfuegos Still in
Prospect (10 September 1992, No.
92-D 108).
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