RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The project, to be erected in the city of El Alto, located 4,000 meters above sea level, was put on hold in 2019 and is “unique and unparalleled in the world.”
According to Rosatom, the reactor site is the highest in the world in terms of nuclear installations.
The Russian corporation’s deputy general director Kiril Komarov said that the Nuclear Technology Research Center will begin operating in 2024. “The reactor, to start operating in 2024, is a technological miracle. It will include Bolivia in the list of innovative countries, of which there are not many,” Komarov said.
On March 6, 2016, the Bolivian and Russian governments signed an intergovernmental agreement for the construction of a nuclear research center. The project – valued at US$300 million – consists of a low-power nuclear research reactor.
It will also include a cyclotron and radiopharmacy center, a multipurpose irradiation plant and a research laboratory. The facilities will cover 15 hectares and are intended for energy, medical and agri-food research.
The construction of the center is part of the Bolivian government’s civilian peaceful atomic energy plan announced in 2014, also backed by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Source: Biobiochile