Opening of a new center in Resende means Brazil won't have to send its Uranium to Urenco in Europe for enrichment.
UPDATE: Austrlia looks 20 years ahead and sees something similar.
Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Environment, Energy, Politics, Technology, Economics, Brazil
UPDATE: Austrlia looks 20 years ahead and sees something similar.
Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Environment, Energy, Politics, Technology, Economics, Brazil
Comments
Isn't what Brazil has just done essentially the same thing that the United States is threatening threatening dire consequences for Iran over?
I don't mean to imply that I think the Brazilians intend to construct a nuclear weapon (though back in the days of the military dictatorship they apparently had plans to do so), or that I think Iran is just interested in the commercial reactor uranium enrichment business. However, I don't think you can run a global anti-proliferation system based on who the United States happens to be suspicious of, or friendly towards, at any particular time, because countries that are not particularly well-disposed towards the US will simply ignore it as a tool of "Western imperialists" or whatever the favoured insult at the time is.
I just wonder whether some reflection about the consequences is called for before applauding the spread of enrichment technology.
Writing about the Brazilian enrichment facility doesn't imply endorsement. In this case, I was simply passing along a news item for comment and discussion.
Take a look at our disclaimer sometime. I know it might be hair splitting, but I think it's important to remember.
Paul, it's difficult to get a straight answer on this in the public domain, but as I understand it the same centrifuges (assuming they are well designed) can be used to produce LEU or HEU; to produce HEU you either need to reconfigure the centrifuges into a bigger cascade, or run the uranium hexaflouride gas through the cascade several times. On Arms Control Wonk, a blog whose authors appear to be quite well informed about these issues, I asked this very question. One poster gave the answer above, and nobody disputed it. Furthermore, Iran's centrifuge designs are very closely based on the Pakistani designs shared with the world by A.Q. Khan, which proved perfectly adequate for Pakistan to make HEU for nuclear weapons.
For what it's worth, Paul, I think yours is a defensible position. After all, as was pointed out in The Guardian yesterday, deterrence works. But it doesn't seem to be one that the major powers, and particularly the present leadership of the United States, are prepared to accept with regards to Iran, and in the future possibly other states gaining capabilites that make constructing a weapon easier, at the moment.
But if nuclear power is as widely adopted around the world as many of the people on this blog hope, demands for indigenous enrichment facilities will continue to rise. A constant theme on this blog is the undesirability of the United States depending on unstable foriegn sources of fossil fuel. Guess what? Other countries might feel the same way about depending on foriegn sources of reactor fuel.
Anyway, as an issue that might seriously affect the global nuclear power industry's future, it's worth thinking about very carefully.