EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

History of Nuclear Power in Brazil

Luiz Pinguelli Rosa
Additional contact information
Luiz Pinguelli Rosa: Graduate School of Engineering (COPPE), Rio de Janeiro Federal University (UFRJ)

Energy & Environment, 2006, vol. 17, issue 3, 485-495

Abstract: The 1973 energy crisis prompted the United States to suspend supplies of enriched uranium to the reactor being built in Brazil, Angra I. In 1975, the Brazil–Germany Nuclear Agreement was announced. The Programme was a failure. Today the Angra II nuclear reactor has been completed, the only reactor completed under the agreement with Germany. Brazil's last military President implemented the Parallel Nuclear Programme, which included uranium enrichment with the justification of developing the technology that had not been transferred through the Nuclear Agreement with Germany. In 1986, the existence of a deep shaft drilled by the Air Force was revealed. A Technical Report concluded that it had all the characteristics and dimensions required to test a nuclear bomb. Some years later, the Civilian Government acknowledged the existence of an underground nuclear explosion facility and symbolically sealed this shaft. The situation in Brazil has improved recently. Brazil ratified the Treaty of Tlatelolco on the denuclearisation of Latin America and established ABACC, an agency handling mutual inspections of nuclear facilities in Brazil and Argentina. Brazil also signed the Nuclear Weapons Non-Proliferation Treaty. The uranium enrichment activities are being transferred to a civilian industry. More importantly, I do not believe that the uranium enrichment project is intended to endow Brazil with the capacity to produce nuclear weapons.

Keywords: Brazil; energy environment; nuclear; technology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1260/095830506778119380 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:engenv:v:17:y:2006:i:3:p:485-495

DOI: 10.1260/095830506778119380

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Energy & Environment
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:sae:engenv:v:17:y:2006:i:3:p:485-495