BRAZIL: Using Nuclear Power for Self-Sufficiency in Energy

By Fabiana Frayssinet Reprint | | Print |

Fabiana Frayssinet

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 23 1998 (IPS) - Brazil is getting ready to produce enough enriched uranium to generate all the energy it needs.

The Brazilian navy confirmed recently that talks were underway on the acquisition of an unspecified number of ultracentrifuges by the state-owned Brazilian Nuclear Industries (INB). For the past 10 years, the navy has been using these machines in uranium- enriching experiments – which use local technology – at its technological center in Aramar, near Sao Paulo.

INB President Roberto da Franca said his company had already made room for the machines at its Resende plant, 160 kms from Rio de Janeiro, where other phases of the nuclear cycle are carried out, such as producing uranium powder and pellets.

“We want the machines in order to meet our domestic demand for fuel,” said da Franca, who explained that they would go to “the 650-megawatt Angra I nuclear power plant and the Angra II plant, which will start up next year, generating 1,300 mw”.

Brazil, a party to the Tlatelolco Treaty – which declares Latin America free of nuclear weapons – and the U.N. Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty – has at least 300,000 tonnes of uranium reserves, the world’s fifth largest uranium stock.

However, it is forced to hire the services of the Urenco Corporation in order to enrich the uranium needed to supply the fuel requirement of Angra I. Urenco accounts for 36 percent of the total expenditure of the electricity-generating process.

Now, with the imminent opening of Angra II and the plans to build a third plant in the municipality of Angra do Reis – on a beach 150 kms southeast of Rio de Janeiro – the nationalization of the entire fuel production process no longer seems a distant dream.

In less than ten years, Brazil will be able to eliminate its dependency on Urenco, saving 35 million dollars each year and becoming one of the few countries in the world able to complete the entire nuclear cycle.

“This will certainly reinforce the image of Brazil in the eyes of the world as a mature country capable of utilizing nuclear energy for peaceful ends,” said Everton Carvalho, a spokesman for the Brazilian Nuclear Energy Association.

The main objective of Brazil’s nuclear-energy programme, designed in 1969 and hinged on the building of eight atomic power plants before the year 2000 in conjunction with Germany, was to achieve this national self-sufficiency in terms of technology and the production of everything needed to generate nuclear energy.

Nonetheless, the programme moved at snail’s pace amid all kinds of financial difficulties until the cooperation agreement with Germany was interrupted, limiting that country’s participation to one or maybe two plants.

However, a nationalist group within the navy developed a parallel programme which remained secret for many years, and which was able to develop uranium-enrichment technology using ultracentrifuges at the Aramar Center.

This opened up new possibilities and the government of resumed the original programme, including the possibility of using nuclear energy as a source of electricity, agreeing to build Angra II and probably Angra III.

But, according to the environmental organization Greenpeace, building six more nuclear power plants to reach the original goal of eight is not feasible.

Greenpeace executive director Roberto Kishinami, a physicist, feels the industrialization of uranium fuel production is not economically justifiable. Brazil’s nuclear industry is “a sort of corpse which insists on continuing, even though it is more than obvious that it has no future,” he maintained.

“The investments needed would be so high that many plants would be needed and they simply are not available here. Even if we were to pool the plants in Brazil and Argentina, that would not justify this move,” the environmentalist argued.

The production costs of hydroelectric and thermoelectric energy are much lower, according to Guy de Gois, a specialist in nuclear issues for Greenpeace. “In addition to the investment capital, the production of nuclear energy has added costs stemming from the security mechanisms that need to be set up to avoid risks,” he argued.

These include the cost of managing nuclear waste, dismantling plants at the end of their lifespans – 34 years – and cleaning up sites. Morever, there is no technology for eliminating radioactive materials, he pointed out.

Carlos Minc, a state legislator from Rio de Janeiro and member of the Environmental Commission of the Workers Party, also pointed to the fact that between 60 and 70 percent of Brazil’s hydroelectric potential in the Amazon is still unutilized.

The country can also turn to wind-produced energy as well as solar power, like that being developed in the states of Minas Gerais and Ceara.

For now, the cost of these alternatives is high, but it is “nothing compared to the possible effects of a nuclear accident,” since “a major leak at the Angra plant would spread radiation throughout the state of Rio de Janeiro,” he argued.