The reality, of course, is very different. In the United States, a flaw in a single weld would cause the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend operations. Moscow's representatives reportedly told Cuban officials they could not guarantee that valves installed in the first reactor's emergency cooling system would function under certain conditions. In tropical areas, such machinery must be stored in climate-controlled facilities to avoid serious corrosion and other damage. In addition, equipment designed for one specific function has been used for other purposes when the appropriate components were unavailable, a formula for failure.
Construction supporting components of the primary reactor contain numerous structural defects .
The first reactor's dome would not be able to contain overpressures associated with meltdown conditions. In the event one or more of these problems translated into a catastrophic accident should the Juragua reactors come on-line, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration has estimated that the prevailing winds could expose much of the U.S. eastern seaboard or southern United States to dangerous levels of radiation. By some official estimates the number of Americans that could be affected by a Cuban-originated radioactive plume may be as high as 50 to 80 million. These realities are now being acknowledged, at least implicitly, by the Russians. In point of fact, it seems improbable that a genuinely new facility will emerge given the immense investment already made in the Juragua complex .