Peru - Nuclear Power Plant - Huarangal - Lima

Few are aware that Peru has a nuclear reactor dedicated to research. Moreover, this is the most powerful of its kind in Latin America.
The Huarangal Nuclear Center, inaugurated on December 19, 1988, was presented as the largest science and technology complex in the history of Peru. The center has an area of ​​125 hectares and is located in the town of Huarangal, in the District of Carabayllo, 42 km from the City of Lima with a height of 400 m above sea level.

The most important utility that the Nuclear Center has is in the radioisotope production plant that are used to perform scans, which facilitate medical diagnosis, as well as greater precision in the study of human body tissues.
In addition, the nuclear center has laboratories for oil well logging, aquifer interconnection, reservoir leakage testing, and the detection of welding faults. In agriculture, to optimize the use of fertilizers, among other applications.

The RP-10 nuclear reactor, named for being the only Peruvian-and Latin American-reactor with a power of 10 megawatts, is the main star of the nuclear center Racso.
But what does this Nuclear Research Center do? The reactor is basically focused on the production of three types of radioisotopes: iodine 131, technetium 99 and samarium 153. Radioisotopes are the different forms of the same element determined by the number of neutrons that have received radiation.

These radioisotopes pass to a second plant where they are used as raw material to generate radiopharmaceuticals. These are chemical compounds containing radioactive substances intended for biomedical applications, mainly related to oncological diagnoses and treatments.