Next week, the United States will host the tenth in a series of secret meetings in which high-level representatives of the U.S. and Russian governments strive to find ways to advance the bilateral relationship. Such an agenda has become all the more essential within recent days. Soviet advisors reportedly told Cuban officials they could not guarantee that valves installed in the reactor's emergency cooling system would function under certain conditions. In a number of cases, equipment designed for one specific function has been used for other purposes when the appropriate components were unavailable. This sort of jury-rigging increases the chances of systemic failures.
Construction supporting primary reactor components contains numerous structural defects.
The first reactor's dome would not be able to contain overpressures associated with meltdown conditions. As many as fifteen percent of the 5,000 welds in the reactor's auxiliary plumbing system, containment dome and spent fuel-cooling system are known to be flawed. According to Vladimir Cervera, the senior engineer responsible for overseeing quality control at the Juragua reactor, X-rays showed welded pipe joints weakened by air pockets, bad soldering and heat damage. Bear in mind that, if a single weld in a U.S. reactor were suspected of being defective, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would suspend its operations. Cuba's human and technological infrastructure is inadequate to build and operate this nuclear facility.