Brazil plan for Self Sufficiency in Uranium Enrichment

Brazil plans to spend 3 billion reais to build two plants enabling the country to carry out uranium enrichment completely within its borders, Mines and Energy Minister Edisao Lobao said in an interview published Friday in business daily Valor. “We estimate we have 1.1 million tons in uranium reserves. With those massive reserves, we must perform all the treatment and enrichment steps in the country,” he told the newspaper. Brazil, which has the world’s sixth-major uranium reserves, currently relies on Canada and France to exchange the ore into gas, a vital part of the enrichment process. The uranium gas returns to Brazil, where Brazilian proprietary technology transform it into fuel capsule for the giant South American country’s two nuclear power services.

The new processing plants will make state own Industrias Nucleares do Brasil self enough in uranium enrichment for power generation. Work is previously under way on a third power reactor, Angra 3, that is supposed to be process in 2015, and the government needs to build another four nuclear power facilities. The government is also prepare legislation require private mining companies to directly inform authorities if they encounter uranium while take out other minerals, Lobao said. “If the uranium deposit is bigger than that of the mineral that firm is use, we could pay them compensation or we could offer a partnership” to extract the uranium, the minister said.