The history of nuclear energy is littered with rumors and feints. At the tail end of 1957, the industry’s American trade journal offered up this snippet:
The Argentine government is studying an offer to build an $80-million, 280-Mw nuclear power station for the city of Buenos Aires, Nucleonics has learned; Burns & Roe of New York would do the engineering on the project in cooperation with the Argentine Technical Institute for Light and Power. The offer was first presented last July, and is still under consideration. It was presented by the J. Christensen Financial Corp., a firm with Argentine officers incorporated in New York in July 1956 to promote investment of U.S. capital in Argentina. Type of reactor or fuel would be decided in a preliminary study; the plant would be built in 30 months. Christensen would operate it at no profit for a 15-year amortization period, selling power to the government at a price not to exceed the mean cost of conventional power, after which the plant would be turned over to the government
Nucleonics. 1957. “Argentina has A-plant offer.” Nucleonics 15 (Jun.): 26.
This was at a time when Argentina was about to start up its first teensy weensy research reactor. Students were being trained, locally and overseas, for nuclear work. The nation was not even close to properly considering power reactors. The idea that a sizable reactor, of hitherto unexamined design, could be built in under three years and financed at no cost beyond what a conventional power plant would entail … well, it is ludicrous. Unsurprisingly, I’ve never heard of J. Christensen Financial, before or since.