Brazilian officials I interviewed say that enrichment capability is important for two main reasons. The first is strategic. Brazil has the world's eighth largest uranium reserves [see table, "Where Is the Uranium?"], and enrichment would give Brazil nuclear fuel autonomy. The second reason is economic. About 90 percent of the world's nuclear power plants—397 of a total of 441—depend on enrichment services to get their fuel. It's a US $5-billion-a-year global market, in which Brazil hopes to participate sometime in the future.

"Brazil has large uranium reserves, and it now has enrichment technology. We can't ignore this opportunity," says Samuel Fayad Filho, director of nuclear fuel production at Nuclear Industries of Brazil (INB), the state-owned company that has the monopoly to mine uranium and produce nuclear fuel. In an interview this past June in his office in Resende, a 2-hour drive from Rio de Janeiro, Fayad said that the goal is to produce 20 to 30 metric tons of enriched uranium per year, or about 60 percent of domestic fuel requirements, by 2008 or 2009, possibly reaching 100 percent by 2010.

But quite a few analysts find it difficult to understand why Brazil is putting so much effort into enrichment capability. At the moment, they say, there's plenty more supply than demand for enrichment services, and for the scale of the Brazilian nuclear energy program it would be cheaper to buy enrichment services abroad.

Brazil currently operates two nuclear power plants [see map, "From Mines to Reactors"]. These reactors, named Angra 1 (657 megawatts of electrical output) and Angra 2 (1350 MWe), provide 4.1 percent of the country's electricity. Today Brazil ships its uranium to be enriched in Europe. By doing this processing at home, Brazil expects to save at least $12 million per year. It's not much compared with the 400 million reais (about $180 million) INB is putting into the plant, not to mention its operational costs.

Whether Brazil's bet on uranium enrichment will ever pay off depends on the world supply of nuclear fuel and also on the extent to which nuclear power generation grows in industrializing countries like China and in developed countries like the United States. As world energy needs continue to rise rapidly, and with concerns over oil prices and greenhouse gas emissions, there's been talk of a nuclear power renaissance, and some analysts foresee a substantial increase in the demand for enrichment services.

The Brazilian government has recently completed a major review of its nuclear program. According to that study, a possible scenario is that Brazil will finish the 1300-MWe Angra 3 reactor and will build one new 1300-MWe plant and two Brazilian-designed 300 MWe plants, at a total cost of $6.1 billion. With that many plants, Brazil says it would make sense for the country to make its own fuel.

Brazil's Centrifuge Plant [see photo "Atomic Autonomy"] is the newest addition to the Resende nuclear complex, which since the late 1980s has been operated by the INB as a reactor fuel fabrication facility. The 6-square-kilometer site resides in the vicinity of the lush green jungle of the Itatiaia National Park, a pocket of native Brazilian forest where you can find toucans, marmoset monkeys, and possibly even the endangered guará wolf. At the entrance to the complex, with its well-manicured lawns, you may well think you're approaching a country club. While I was visiting the enrichment plant last year, its first linked group of centrifuges—called a cascade—was undergoing a final round of tests. Outside, a troop of construction workers was putting up new buildings to house thousands of centrifuges in nine more cascades.

The centrifuges that are being installed at Resende were developed by the Brazilian navy, which manufactures and installs them for the INB. After nearly three decades perfecting the machines, Brazilian navy engineers say they significantly improved on previous designs. Their centrifuges, which they say use 100 percent Brazilian technology, include a novel feature: their rotors—the spinning cylinders that are the heart of this type of machine—levitate, spinning frictionlessly, thanks to actively controlled electromagnetic bearings. All other centrifuges operating commercially have rotors that spin on metal pin bearings. The electromagnetic mechanism, the Brazilians say, makes their machines more efficient and durable.