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Brazilian Site Could Produce Enough Enriched Uranium for Six Warheads Per Year, U.S. Researchers Say
Brazil’s uranium enrichment facility could produce enough weapon-grade material to build six nuclear weapons per year, U.S. researchers said Friday (see GSN, Oct. 21). “At its announced capacity, Brazil's new facility located at Resende will have the potential to produce enough uranium to make five to six ... warheads per year,” wrote Gary Milhollin and Liz Palmer of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control in an article published Friday in Science. That capacity could grow to upwards of 63 warheads annually by 2014 under planned upgrades for the plant, the researchers said. Wisconsin Project director Milhollin told Reuters that he does not believe Brazil aims to produce nuclear weapons. “What I am doing is giving the theoretical potential of the plant,” he said. “They would have to reconfigure the centrifuges, but they could do it with what they got, with the existing equipment” (Axel Bugge, Reuters, Oct. 22) Brazil has pledged that its nuclear program is being developed only to generate energy. Brazilian National Nuclear Energy Commission President Odair Dias Goncalves on Friday called Milhollin’s claims “frivolous.” “They can only be the result of misinformation or motivated by shadowy interests,” he said. “Both motives are incompatible with the tradition of such a prestigious magazine like Science” (Michael Astor, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Oct. 22).
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