Argentina and Brazil: from Military Nuclear Programs to National Atomic Energy

Argentina and Brazil were among the first developing countries that have undertaken the development of nuclear energy. In these largest South American States, the interest in atom was born in the depths of the military establishment and was spurred by the Argentine-Brazilian rivalry for leadership in the Latin American region, especially during dictatorial regimes. In those years, in both countries there were plans to develop its own nuclear weapons, determining their negative attitude to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and to the plans of making Latin America a nuclear-weapons-free zone. With the return to the democratic forms of government the projects to create their own nuclear weapons were withdrawn from the agenda, and the relations between Buenos Aires and Brasilia transformed into strategic cooperation, and engulfed the sphere of peaceful atom. In the international arena, the two countries came to oppose weapons of mass destruction and to support nuclear disarmament. It may be noted that, having passed a long way of mastering the power of the atom, Argentina and Brazil have found their own place in the global nuclear industry. Both countries have built research reactors and nuclear power plants, established enterprises of nuclear fuel cycle, conducted fundamental and applied research in the nuclear field. Argentina has exported nuclear technology and equipment, including modern low-power reactors, Brazil became the world’s only non-nuclear country building a nuclear submarine. To date, nuclear generation occupies but a modest place in the energy balance of these South American countries which, among other things, is due to other rich sources of energy in their possession. But the very logic of scientific and technological development pushes Argentina and Brazil to broader and more diversified use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes, encourages to increase their efforts in this regard, deploy national programs and expand the range of international interaction.