August 15, 2007 (LPAC)--Speaking Aug. 15 in Zarate, Buenos Aires to inaugurate a key component of the Atucha II nuclear reactor, Argentine President Nestor Kirchner debunked the argument, put forward even by some members of his own government, that completing Atucha II, whose construction was halted for 17 years, was an "unproductive" investment.

Nonsense, Kirchner said. In announcing the reactivation of Argentina's nuclear program in 2006, the Argentine President recalled, "Thank God I stuck to my convictions, and to my belief that work, production, national industry, and nuclear energy are elements of development!"

In 1974, Gen. Juan Peron inaugurated Argentina's first nuclear reactor, Atucha I, Kirchner recalled. Atucha II was begun, but was shut down. By whom? "It was former Minister [Domingo] Cavallo who halted Atucha II's construction," Kirchner explained. The free-market ideologue who served throughout most of the 1990s as Finance Minister for IMF poster child President Carlos Menem, and dismantled Argentina's productive economy, Cavallo threw away the $1.8 billion that had already been invested in Atucha II and just shut it down.

"Never forget that!" Kirchner admonished, "because it will remind you of what the decade of the 1990s meant for all Argentines." Only because there were 100 skilled workers who lovingly watched over it, and protected it, during all those years construction was halted, Kirchner reported, can Atucha II now go forward, with Argentine capital, and be part of the program to improve the lives of millions of citizens.