13 Jul (NucNet): Brazil has proposed the potential construction of up to eight nuclear power plants over the next eight years, with a short-term target of constructing four plants within the next five years.
The recommendation was made on 1 June 2007 by the National Council on Energy Policy, an advisory body to the president.
The government has also tentatively budgeted 1.8 billion US dollars (1.3 billion euro) for the completion of Angra-3, a 1,224-megawatt pressurised water reactor, where work was put on hold in the 1980s because of a lack of funds. Angra-1 and Angra-2 on the same site are Brazil’s only commercially operational reactor units, providing about 1.4 percent of the country’s electricity.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, about 70 percent of the design work for Angra-3 has been completed and 70 percent of the imported major equipment already manufactured and stored on site.
In a statement on 11 July 2007, Brazil’s president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Brazil has the luxury of being one of the few countries in the world that can dominate the nuclear fuel cycle, including uranium mining and enrichment.
Brazil has the world’s sixth largest uranium reserves with a total of about 309,000 tonnes of measured and inferred U3O8.
>>Related reports in the NucNet database (available to subscribers)
Brazil Takes Key Step Towards Completing New Power Reactor (Business News No. 81, 23 October 2002)
Brazil Preparing To Start Tests On Enrichment Plant (News No. 147, 8 July 2004)
