Brasília, 4/6/2004(Agência Brasil) - Yesterday the Ministry of Foreign Relations released an official note on the country's uranium enrichment plant.
"Brazil's nuclear program, as the Brazilian constitution requires, is exclusively for peaceful ends and has been in compliance with safeguards established by the Brazil-Argentine Accounting and Control Agency (ABACC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) since 1994. Doubts have never been raised about Brazilian compliance with international norms and treaties dealing with these matters and to which Brazil is a signatory nation: the Tlatelolco Treaty and the Non-Proliferation Treaty, as well as the Nuclear Test Prohibition Treaty, although the latter is no longer in effect because it was not ratified by all nations possessing nuclear weapons.
Brazil is building a commercial uranium enrichment plant in order to supply nuclear fuel for a company in Resende, Rio de Janeiro (Indústrias Nucleares do Brasil (INB)). The uranium enriched in this plant does not reach a high level of concentration; on the contrary, the concentration level of enrichment is only 5%. The resultant enriched uranium will fuel the Brazilian nuclear power plants, Angra 1 and II, which are now operational, and a third power plant, Angra III, under construction. The main equipment in the plant are ultra centrifuges which were developed domestically.
Although the Resende uranium enrichment plant is still not operational, Brazil is presently engaged in discussions with the ABACC and AIEA regarding safeguards for it. The Brazilian government is not imposing any conditions that would make adequate application of effective, reliable safeguards unfeasible.
Other Brazilian installations already have established safeguard procedures and do not have any outstanding problems with the AIEA.
With regard to the Resende plant, Brazil wishes to guarantee that the safeguard procedures adopted will respect two principles established in the above-mentioned agreements: on one hand, make it possible for regulatory agencies to exert effective control on the nuclear material used, and, on the other hand, to ensure that Brazil can protect technological secrets and its commercial interests.
At this moment negotiations for verification procedures which will guarantee the complete control of the material produced at the Resende plant, including the level of enrichment, are underway with the AIEA . The proposed procedures have already been accepted by the ABACC.
The Brazilian government considers it unacceptable to attempt to compare Brazil with other countries that have recently been found engaging in secret or undeclared nuclear activities. Brazil has rigorously complied with the Guadalajara Agreement, the Four Party Agreement, the Tlatelolco Treaty and the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
In view of the fact that there has been an absence of progress in disarmament, the Brazilian government calls on those countries actively involved in non-proliferation to be coherent with the general objectives of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and prepare for the 2005 conference that will review non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament progress made since the last conference in 2000 with the objective of eventually achieving complete elimination of atomic arsenals."
