[en] During 2002, the National Congress of Argentina began discussing the 'Agreement between the Republic of Argentina and Australia on cooperation in the peaceful uses of the nuclear energy'. This document has revived the debate regarding development of a national nuclear industry. The debate was spurred by a commercial contract signed in 2000 by INVAP, an Argentinean company who sold a nuclear reactor to the ANSTO, Australian Nuclear and Technology Organization. More than sixty non-governmental organizations are opposed to the ratification of the agreement, because they interpret that the text leaves the door wide open for the transport and deposit of Australian nuclear waste to Argentina, to be processed in national territory. Article 41 of the Argentinean National Constitution, explicitly prohibits the generation of any income from 'radioactive residues'. Those who support the agreement say that it does not promote the deposit of nuclear waste in Argentina, and argue that environmentalists are hampering efforts of this advanced technological industry to flourish in Argentina. The point of conflict in the agreement lies in article 12, which states that Argentina will continue the process of reactor-driven irradiated fuel outside Argentina. Once the treatment is completed, the fuel conditioned and the resulting waste must return to the country of origin for their storage. The possibility of spent fuel being sent to Argentina lies in the hypothetical case that the French company Cogema, which currently holds treatment responsibility, stops treatment sometime within the next fifteen years, when the fuel must be treated. The non-ratification of the agreement on Argentina part will not imply any sort of impediment in the realization of the reactor, it will only put on hold the possibility that the Australians spent fuels will complete treatment in Argentina. The constitutionality of the agreement lies in the question of waste, but this too is not a simple question. The waste is divided into two categories: 'spent fuel' and 'radioactive waste', and which one of these if not both is a radioactive residue is currently being explored. There are national and international norms that determine what is and what is not a radioactive residue. Law 25.018 and law 25.279 by the Joint Convention on Security in the Management of Combustible Elements and on Security in the Radioactive Management of Waste both state that regulatory basis for considering a radioactive residue is that it has been utilized in reactor process or application, for which it does not have subsequent immediate use in the same installation. In this case the technical specification in itself does not define a residue, it seems in the end that politics defines these terms. (author)