FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

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Bolivian Nuclear Agency Head Insists, Developing Nuclear Energy Is Real Sovereignty

May 21, 2018 (EIRNS)—Speaking during the May 13-15 Atomexpo Forum in Sochi, Russia, Hortensia Jimenez, head of the Bolivian Nuclear Energy Agency (ABEN), discussed President Evo Morales’ conception of nuclear energy as a means to achieve complete economic, scientific, and educational sovereignty.

This is not an issue of simply purchasing technology, Jimenez told El Universal, but “advancing in our own capabilities, educating our young people, and promoting our own specialists’ research.” She also emphasized that the development of science and technology

“is not a matter of private investment but of sovereignty and public policy which conceives of the role of science and education as the primary promotors of our nation’s development.”

Jimenez detailed the construction that is underway for three nuclear research centers in Bolivia, one for nuclear medicine, one for food irradiation and agricultural research, and one containing a research reactor. Comparing Bolivia’s progress to that of Russia, Turkey, Egypt and Belarus, Jimenez pointed to an international apparatus which she said is at work surreptitiously to sow fear and suspicion about the safety of nuclear energy. Morales’s conception, she said, is that science is as important “as [national] territory or the economy to be able to discuss sovereignty. Without science and without knowledge, we can never be a truly free nation.”