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Brazil and weapons of mass destruction

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Through Missile, Pará and Iraq

Brazil is one of many countries (and one of the last) to forswear nuclear weapons under the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It is also a nuclear latent State — a country with the technical capability to develop nuclear weapons, without having pursued that possibility.

Nuclear program

In the 1950s, President Getúlio Vargas encouraged the development of independent national nuclear capabilities. At that time, the United States worked actively to prevent Brazil from acquiring the centrifuge technology that could be used to produce high-enriched uranium for nuclear weapons.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Brazil and Argentina embarked on a nuclear competition. Through technology transfers from the West German company Kraftwerk Union (a subsidiary of Siemens), which did not require IAEA safeguards, Brazil pursued a covert nuclear weapons program known as the "Parallel Program," with enrichment facilities (including small scale centrifuge enrichment plants, a limited reprocessing capability, and a missile program). Brazil also reportedly bought highly enriched uranium from China in the 1980s. In December 1982, then-president of the National Nuclear Energy Commission (CNEN), Rex Nazaré, headed a mission to China with the objective of purchasing enriched uranium from his Chinese counterparts at the China National Nuclear Corporation. Sources have indicated that, a few years later, Brazilian cylinders of hexafluoride were transported to China containing natural uranium. They returned to Brazil in a container that, supposedly, carried porcelain purchased by the First Lady Dulce Figueiredo during the presidential trip. In 1987, President José Sarney announced that Brazil had enriched uranium to 20%.

In 1990, President Fernando Collor de Mello symbolically closed the Cachimbo test site, in Pará, and exposed the military’s secret plan to develop a nuclear weapon. Brazil's National Congress opened an investigation into the Parallel Program. Congress members visited numerous facilities, including the Institute of Advanced Studies (IEAv) in São José dos Campos. They also interviewed key players in the nuclear program, such as former President João Figueiredo and retired Army General Danilo Venturini, the former head of the National Security Council under Figueiredo. The congressional investigation exposed secret bank accounts, code-named "Delta", which were managed by the CNEN and used for funding the program. The congressional report revealed that the IEAv had designed two atomic bomb devices, one with a yield of twenty to thirty kilotons and a second with a yield of twelve kilotons. The same report revealed that Brazil's military regime secretly exported eight tons of uranium to Iraq in 1981.

In 1991, Brazil and Argentina renounced their nuclear rivalry. On 13 December 1991, they signed the Quadripartite agreement, at the IAEA headquarters, creating the Brazilian–Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials and allowing fullscope IAEA safeguards of Argentine and Brazilian nuclear installations.

Brazil officially opened the Resende enrichment plant in May 2006. Brazil's enrichment technology development, and the plant itself, involved substantial discussions with the IAEA and its constituent nations. The dispute came down to whether IAEA inspectors would be allowed to inspect the machines themselves. The Brazilian government did not allow the inspection of the centrifugal cascade halls, arguing that this would reveal technological secrets (probably relating to the use of a magnetic lower bearing in place of the more common mechanical bearing). The Brazilian authorities stated that, as Brazil is not part of any "axis of evil", the pressure for full access to inspection - even in universities - could be construed as an attempt to pirate industrial secrets. They also claimed that their technology is better than that of the United States and France, mainly because the centrifugal axis is not mechanical, but electromagnetic. Eventually, after extensive negotiations, agreement was reached that while not directly inspecting the centrifuges, the IAEA would inspect the composition of the gas entering and leaving the centrifuge. Then–U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell stated in 2004 that he was sure that Brazil had no plans to develop nuclear weapons.

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