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Brazilian Government Press Release On The Brazilian Nuclear Program

Issued on April 5, 2004

With regard to recent press reports concerning nuclear activities in Brazil, the Brazilian government provides the following information:

The Brazilian nuclear program is governed by a constitutional provision that establishes that all nuclear activities in the country must be conducted only for peaceful purposes. In addition, the program has been subject to the comprehensive safeguards of the Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials (ABACC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) since 1994. No doubts have ever been raised regarding our full compliance with the obligations set forth in the international mechanisms that regulate the issues of disarmament and non-proliferation, to which Brazil is a party, such as the Tlatelolco Treaty, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CNTBT), even though the latter is not yet in force as it has not been ratified by countries that have advanced technology, including nuclear weapons.

Brazil is building a commercial uranium-enrichment facility for producing nuclear power at Indústrias Nucleares do Brasil (INB) in Resende, Rio de Janeiro. The low-enriched uranium (under 5 percent) is to be used at the Angra I, Angra II and, in due course, Angra III nuclear power plants. The main pieces of equipment at the facility are ultracentrifuges built with Brazilian technology.

Although the new uranium-enrichment facility is not yet in operation, the Brazilian government is already discussing with the IAEA and the ABACC the safeguard procedures that will apply to the plant. No conditions that might interfere with the application of effective and reliable safeguard measures have ever been imposed by the Brazilian government. All the other Brazilian facilities have established procedures already in place, which are neither subject to dispute nor questioned by the AIEA. In the negotiations regarding the Resende facility, similarly to what has been done so far, Brazil has sought to ensure that the procedures to be adopted are in line with two principles established in the aforementioned treaties, i.e., that, on the one hand, they should allow the Agencies to have effective control over the nuclear material being used and, on the other, they should enable Brazil to protect proprietary rights of the technology it has developed and its ensuing trade interests.

A verification procedure is being negotiated, which will entail the adoption of measurements and inspection procedures to ensure that there will be total control over the nuclear material produced at the Resende facility, including its enrichment level. The methodology proposed has already been accepted by the ABACC and is currently being discussed with the AIEA.

The Brazilian government considers totally unacceptable­as they are completely groundless­efforts being made to establish parallels between the situation of Brazil, which has rigorously complied with all its obligations under the Guadalajara Treaty, the Quadripartite Agreement, the Tlatelolco Treaty and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and the situation of countries that have recently been forced to admit that they have conducted secret or undisclosed nuclear activities.

Given the lack of progress with regard to the various aspects of disarmament within the scope of the multilateral bodies in which the subject is addressed, the Brazilian government urges countries that are actively engaged in non-proliferation efforts to act in a manner fully consistent with the overall goals of nuclear disarmament. The Brazilian government fully abides by the goals of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and is actively taking part in the preparations for the 2005 Review Conference, which will review compliance with the non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament obligations adopted by consensus at the last conference, in 2000, with the aim of completely eliminating nuclear arsenals.