IAEA Team to Visit Brazilian Plant Today

A three-member International Atomic Energy Agency team is expected to visit the Resende uranium enrichment plant in Brazil today to determine how to conduct inspections without revealing trade secrets about centrifuges at the site, according to Agence France-Presse (see GSN, Oct. 18).

“We agreed on the details of the visit, which will allow them to say whether our plant conforms with the blueprints and design information that we sent [the] IAEA before construction,” said Oldair Gomes dos Santos, local head of the National Nuclear Energy Commission.

The U.N. agency and Brazilian officials agreed yesterday to develop a process by which the uranium enrichment plant could be inspected to see if it meets agency regulations without allowing inspectors to view the uranium enrichment process itself, AFP reported (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Oct. 19). 

“We are very optimistic that they will accept (our proposal),” said National Nuclear Energy Commission President Odair Dias Goncalves. “Then in a couple of weeks they will send inspectors and hopefully we’ll start commissioning the plant. That would take about six months” (Andrei Khalip, Reuters, Oct. 18).

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