The Reactor That Gave Up Its Turbine
- Site
- Juraguá Nuclear Power Plant, near Juraguá and Ciudad Nuclear, Cienfuegos Province, Cuba
- Era
- Agreed 1976. Built 1983 to 1992. Abandoned 2000.
- Material
- Soviet concrete, poured nearly to the top, a little over a third of the machinery inside
- Intended use
- Two 440 MW Soviet reactors, Unit 1 alone supplying 12% of Cuba’s electricity
- Actual use
- Work suspended in 1992; in 2004 the main turbine left to fix another power plant
- Status
- Cancelled and standing empty; the builders’ town, Ciudad Nuclear, is still lived in
CIENFUEGOS. 1976. Moscow agrees to supply two reactors. Work starts in 1983, near Cienfuegos.
The plan before that: twelve reactors, three sites.
Each reactor: a Soviet VVER-440, 440 megawatts.
Forecast for Unit 1 alone: 12% of the island’s electricity, and about a million tons of petroleum saved a year.
Next door, a town for the builders: Ciudad Nuclear.
September 1992: work suspended. Civil construction on Unit 1, by a GAO estimate: 90 to 97% complete. Equipment installed: 37%.
Invested, by Havana’s count: more than $1.1 billion.
A US congresswoman’s review: “a potential Chernobyl in our own backyard.”
Russian credit to mothball it: $30 million.
2000: Moscow offers to finish one reactor for $800 million. Havana declines.
2004: the main turbine is removed, to replace a damaged one at another plant.
The reactor never started. The turbine got a transfer.
.jpg){kind=link}