Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica, 08 Jul 2011.

Argentina and Brazil ratify the commitments that warrant the exclusively peaceful use of nuclear energy. The IAEA director attended the ceremony.

On July 18th, twenty years had passed since the signing of the “Agreement between the Republic of Argentina and the Federal Republic of Brazil concerning the peaceful use of nuclear energy” that resulted in the creation of a common system of accounting and control of nuclear materials and that established the Brazilian – Argentine Agency of Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials (ABACC).

Today, the ABACC is a worldwide unique agency and is considered as a model reference in terms of collaboration, strengthening warrants concerning the nuclear systems in both countries.

Therefore, the anniversary of the signing that originated the ABACC was celebrated with the presence of Yukiya Amano, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Julio De Vido, Planning Minister, Héctor Timeman and Antonio Patriota Foreign Secretaries, and Odilón Marcuzzo do Canto, General Secretary of the ABACC. An important delegation of the National Atomic Energy Commission ,CNEA leaded by its maximum authorities Norma Boero and Mauricio Bisauta, was also present.

The ratification of those policies consolidates the successful process started in 2006 with the relaunching of Argentina’s Nuclear Plan; and strengthens the bilateral partnership with Brazil that has been driven since then by both countries.

After the agreements sealed in 2008 by the president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and its pair Luis Ignacio Lula Da Silva, among others activities, the first bi-national nuclear seminar took place; the Nuclear Energy Bi-national Commission (COBEN) was created; and Argentina agreed –in the middle of a world crisis – to provide Brazil with the radioisotope Molybdenum 99 (Mo99), used in cancer diagnose and treatment.

ABAC, 20 years of commitment The National Atomic Energy Commission played an important role along the process that ended with the creation of the ABACC, with an active participation in every one of its phases, been part of the Permanent Committee, integrating the Argentine parties that negotiated the consecutive bilateral instruments agreed upon and performing a prominent role en the foundational phase of the ABACC.

The foundational milestone of the ABACC can be tracked back to the “Joint declaration on nuclear policy” expressed by the first authorities of both countries on November 30th, 1985 at Foz de Iguazú, within this frame the basis for the establishment of the Permanent joint Committee for the promotion of relationship in the area between the two countries were settled; the declaration was followed by presidential visits, in both countries, to the nuclear installations that involved the more sensitive political and commercial technologies that they had developed, both of which ended with a new presidential joint declaration that expressed the politic will to deepen the process.

It all allowed the establishment of a frame of reciprocal trust which lay its foundations in the mutual knowledge and the transparency of both nuclear programs, and in the signing of two important protocols on nuclear cooperation.

The strengthening of the bilateral trust eased that in 1990 both governments agreed the basis of a commitment that later transformed into the “Argentina – Brazil Joint Nuclear Policy Statement”, from November the 28th of the same year and signed also in Foz de Iguazú, that committed the establishment of a joint accountability and control system of every nuclear material in every nuclear installation in both countries, a commitment that ended with the signing, on July 18th 1991, of the already mentioned agreement on the pacific use of the nuclear energy that instituted the joint accounting and control system of nuclear materials and established the ABACC in order to implement it.

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