BRAZIL-ENERGY: Government Resumes Nuclear program

By Fabiana Frayssinet Reprint | | Print |

Fabiana Frayssinet

SAO PAULO, Sep 28 1996 (IPS) - Brazil, a signatory to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty at the United Nations this week, neverless is pushing ahead with a comprehensive nuclear program – in the military and civilian sectors.

The Brazilian Navy’s Technological Centre, located at Sao Paulo University, is developing the prototype of a reactor for a nuclear submarine which, if as predicted, it receives sufficient funding could be installed in a vessel at the beginning of next decade.

The government of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso is also making strides in the field of nuclear energy and has resumed construction of the “Angra 2” nuclear power plant, and announced the installation of a third plant, “Angra 3.”

The budget of the National Committee for Nuclear Energy, which last year was only 43 million dollars, is expected to swell enormously in the coming fiscal year. Among other projects of “social importance” – like the production of radio-isotopes for medical use – the Committee is being given resources resources to establish a plant for uranium powder and pills in Resende, in the state of Rio de Janeiro.

The new “social face” that the Office for Strategic Affairs is trying to put on Brazil’s nuclear program has not convinced Crados’s political opponents.

“We defend the research and the application of nuclear energy to some areas of medicine and conservation in Brazil, but we are against the fact that this entire parallel nuclear program is connected to the Armed Forces,” said Carlos Minc, of the leftist Workers’ Party (PT).

“Why not appoint civilian experts in science and technology to head the research on nuclear energy? Why does the military control the cycle of uranium enrichment?,” he asked. “For us this means that the military is in control of the nuclear program in Brazil.”

Navy Minister, Mauro Rodrigues Pereira, offered a justification for the need for a nuclear submarine, which is twice as fast as a conventional vessel and doesn’t need to surface to refuel.

“Brazil is not working on the assumption of a war, and I think that is the case in most countries. Nobody can name a specific enemy and say: we are assuming that there will be a war,” said Pereira said in a recent interview. “But if one studies history, we see that although humanity is always improving, we are far from being perfect and interests do not always coincide. That is why we need to be prepared to defend what is ours. And that is why we need the military.”

As an example of recent history, Navy officers cited the war between Argentina and Britain over the Falkland Islands in 1982.

“If Argentina had had just one nuclear submarine, (former Prime Minister) Margaret Thatcher would never have embarked on the adventure of approaching the coasts of Argentina,” said one Brazilian captain.

Although Brazil occupies the fourth place worldwide in terms of uranium deposits, the process required to enrich the mineral and supply the nuclear plants with energy has until now been conducted for the most part in Europe.

The naval project, however, as been able to develop the entire cycle, from the so-called “yellow paste” – the first step in the processing of uranium – to its final phase: the uranium pellets that fuel the nuclear reactor.

The Navy Minister revealed in an interview with a U.S. TV network that with this technology, Brazil would soon be in a position to purify uranium to the degree necessary for the fabrication of nuclear weapons.

Pereira stressed, however, the government program did not iclude making any nuclear weapons.

“We do want to make an atomic bomb because we just don’t want to make it,” he said. “We only want to defend ourselves, and for that, we don’t need any nuclear artefacts.”