A massive blackout affected millions of Argentines in various provinces and parts of Buenos Aires for at least two hours on Wednesday afternoon, in another day marked by the heat wave that is plaguing the country. A fire that started in some fields affected power lines in the coastal area and disconnected a nuclear power plant.
Parts of the capital Buenos Aires and the central provinces of Santa Fe, Neuquén, Córdoba and Mendoza were affected, according to a statement from the energy ministry.
The first outages occurred after 4:00 p.m. local time. In the capital, the traffic lights went out, as well as entire neighborhoods and several metro stations, whose service was interrupted. Commuter rail services also suffered alterations.
“The blackout is significant, it affects several provinces. In a very hot period like the current one in a large part of the country, the demand from the electricity sector was 25,000 megawatts and the cut took about 9,000 megawatts,” said the Undersecretary of Energy Santiago Yanotti on the C5N channel.
The origin of the outage would be a fire that broke out on an island in the delta of the Paraná river, in the town of Campana, 60 kilometers from Buenos Aires and near the high voltage lines, which are connected to the nearby nuclear power plant. Atucha 1, according to Yanotti. “Due to this external problem, Atucha 1 was put out of service, in safety shutdown mode,” reported Nucleoeléctrica, the national nuclear electricity agency. This in turn affected the supply of large areas of the country.
The Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa, asked to “investigate, prosecute and, where appropriate, arrest those responsible for very serious events”, while expressing his “certainty” that the fire was intentional.
This failure occurred in the context of the ninth heat wave of this summer in Argentina, like the 36 degrees on Wednesday in Buenos Aires. The capital is experiencing the hottest summer in its history according to the meteorological service.
