Where Would Marina Silva Take Brazil’s Nuclear Policy?
ASSOCIATE - NUCLEAR POLICY PROGRAM
Carnegie Endowment
for Peace, OCTOBER
2, 2014
SUMMARY
Brazil has one of the most advanced nuclear
programs in Latin America, but presidential hopeful Marina Silva’s stance on
nuclear energy and diplomacy is far from clear.
Brazilian politics are famous for their
unpredictability, and Marina Silva’s sudden emergence as a presidential
front-runner is the latest example. But how she would lead as president should
she win the October 5 election is not clear. “Marina is a big question mark,”
observed a Brazilian foreign policy analyst. Predicting her choices on specific
policy questions is difficult at best.
This is particularly true, and
particularly important, when it comes to nuclear issues, both domestic and
international. Brazil has one of the most advanced nuclear programs in Latin
America, but the presidential hopeful has said remarkably little on the subject.
And what can be gleaned is far from a clear picture.
A REMARKABLE RISE
Even those Brazilians who do not plan to vote
for Marina in the presidential election on October 5 admit that she has an
incredible story. Born in the Amazon rainforest, illiterate until the age of
sixteen, and having experienced poverty with her parents struggling to feed her
and her siblings, Marina went on to become an internationally known
environmentalist, a high-ranking official in the government of former president
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and a candidate with an impressive 20 million votes
in Brazil’s 2010 presidential elections.
She entered the 2014 election campaign as the
number-two on the ticket of Eduardo Campos of the Brazilian Socialist Party.
Until late summer, the Campos-Silva team held third place in the polls behind
the incumbent, Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party, and Aécio Neves of the
Brazilian Social Democratic Party.
But then Eduardo Campos died tragically in a
plane crash in August while on the campaign trail. The Brazilian Socialist
Party nominated Marina as its new presidential candidate. Since then, the polls
have consistently shown Marina Silva and Dilma Rousseff neck and neck in the
upcoming vote.
Amid the excitement surrounding her remarkable
rise, the potential president’s positions on nuclear issues have been largely
missing. Marina’s proposed government program does not contain a single
reference to nuclear energy, nuclear disarmament, or nuclear nonproliferation.
What Brazil’s nuclear policy will be under the next president is not a trivial
matter. Brazil is one of only three countries in Latin America to produce
nuclear energy, one of a few countries in the world able to produce nuclear
fuel, and the only non-nuclear-weapon state to be developing a nuclear-powered
submarine.
NUCLEAR ENERGY
Brazil is currently highly
reliant on hydro-resources to serve its energy needs, though the role of
nuclear power in the country has increased over time. As of 2014,roughly 3 percent
of Brazil’s electricity comes from nuclear plants—Angra 1 and Angra 2.
After a twenty-year interruption, Brazil restarted work on its third nuclear
power plant, Angra 3, which is expected to become operational in 2018.
Proponents of expanding the country’s use of
nuclear energy argue that Brazil’s reliance on hydro-resources makes the
country vulnerable to an energy crisis. Disruption in electricity generation during
droughts jeopardizes the country’s projected development growth.
Until the 2011 disaster at Japan’s Fukushima
Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, the Brazilian government
seemed to agree that the use of nuclear energy needed to be significantly
increased, and it planned to construct up to eight new reactors. After the
Fukushima accident, all references to new reactors beyond Angra 3 disappeared
from government planning documents.
The nuclear industry has been
trying to influence the presidential hopefuls’ positions on the issue of
nuclear energy expansion. The Brazilian Association for Development of Nuclear
Activities, a nonprofit organization of companies in the nuclear power sector,
developed a program, “Defining Brazil’s
Nuclear Program: A Need for the Country’s Development,” specifically geared toward the candidates. The document argues
that the government needs to build at least four additional nuclear power
plants by 2030, or eight by 2040. And that in order to start adding capacity in
time to meet future demand whoever wins the 2014 election needs to make
decisions on new nuclear power plants in early 2015.
Marina Silva has long been
critical of nuclear energy. Serving as Brazil’s minister of the environment in
Lula’s cabinet between 2002 and 2007, she resigned from the post in protest
over a number of issues, including the government’s decision to resume
construction of Angra 3. In 2012, together with Archbishop Desmond Tutu of
South Africa and over 50 organizations and individuals, she signed a letter
urging world leaders to move away from “expensive and
dangerous nuclear power.”
As a presidential candidate,
Marina has reaffirmed her views. Her official campaign website reminds voters
that she was the only one on the National Energy Policy Council to vote against
restarting Angra 3 construction.
In Marina’s words, “one of the largest problems
with nuclear energy is that nobody knows what to do
with the waste.”
Yet, confusingly, the initial
draft of the government program that Marina Silva’s campaign released in late
August said the share of nuclear energy in Brazil’s energy mix should be
increased. Only hours later, however, Marina’s staff issued a statement blaming
a technical error for the nuclear energy reference. Marina’s revised program
calls for the “realignment of
Brazil’s energy policy to focus on renewable and sustainable
sources.” A mistake likely caused by accepting contributions from multiple
authors exposed a campaign struggling to deal with the pressure of impending
elections.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is
considered to be reluctantly accepting of nuclear energy. Dilma’s government
continues to finance Angra 3 construction, but she does not openly support the
nuclear energy industry, and the government does not seek to expand the
production of nuclear energy beyond the third power plant.
All told, if Marina becomes Brazil’s new
president, industry might have even less support from the top political
leadership than it has now.
NUCLEAR DIPLOMACY
When it comes to international issues, it
appears that Marina’s camp hasn’t given much thought to any questions related
to nuclear diplomacy, such as Iran’s enrichment program or nuclear
nonproliferation and disarmament. This is not entirely out of the ordinary, as
nuclear issues have taken a backseat to other agenda items during Dilma’s
presidency as well.
But this is a shift from the ambitious years
of Lula’s government, when Brazil’s foreign policy shined brightly. Lula
enjoyed the international spotlight and engaged in active presidential
diplomacy. He also allowed Brazil’s able diplomatic corps, led by then minister
of external relations Celso Amorim, to confidently and actively pursue various
foreign policy agendas.
One of the more daring and
controversial attempts to influence the international debate took place in 2010
when Lula and Amorim, together with Turkey’s leaders, attempted to resolve the
impasse over Iran’s nuclear program. They negotiated a trilateral agreement—the Tehran
Declaration—that was meant to pave the way for negotiations
between the West and Iran.
While that particular episode did not result
in a breakthrough and was rejected by the West, it did prompt short-lived
anticipation among international observers that Brasília could become an interesting,
new player on the global nuclear scene. This, however, did not happen.
It now appears that Brazil’s ambitious foray
into the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program was a fluke made possible by
multiple factors—including the unusual tandem of Lula and Amorim—that are
unlikely to be repeated in the foreseeable future.
Under Dilma, Brazil’s foreign ministry has
lost its luster and has been relegated to being just another ministry. While
Lula reached out to then Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and counted on
Brazil’s soft power to resolve the impasse over Tehran’s nuclear program, Dilma
distanced herself from the regime, citing its poor human rights record.
Marina, meanwhile, is expected to return
Brazil’s foreign policy establishment to some of its former glory. Two weeks
before the election, while visiting Washington, DC, Marina’s campaign
coordinator Maurício Rands criticized the foreign ministry’s lack of prestige
under the current government.
But Marina will likely be
similar to Dilma when it comes to nuclear issues and keep her distance from
Iran and its nuclear program. She criticized then
president Lulain 2010 for his active engagement with
Ahmadinejad.
Marina might distinguish herself from both
Lula and Dilma on one noteworthy nuclear issue. For years, the international
nonproliferation community and Brasília have been at odds over the enhanced
nuclear safeguards codified in the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA)
Additional Protocol.
Brazil is already implementing nuclear
safeguards that are designed to provide the international community with
confidence that it only uses nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. However, as
a country with an advanced nuclear program, Brazil is subject to outside
pressure to allow IAEA inspectors even greater access to its nuclear facilities
under the Additional Protocol.
Brazil has insisted over the past decade that
it will not sign the IAEA Additional Protocol. Brasília refuses to accept
additional nonproliferation obligations while nuclear-weapon states do not
demonstrate sufficient progress toward nuclear disarmament. Opponents of the
Additional Protocol also argue that Brazil is doing enough to provide
confidence that its nuclear activities are peaceful. Some critics in Brazil are
concerned that granting greater access to Brazil’s nuclear facilities would
make the country vulnerable to industrial espionage, a claim that international
safeguards experts deem unfounded.
In contrast to Lula and Dilma,
Marina Silva criticized Brazil’s reluctance to adhere to more stringent
safeguards. In 2010 she publicly argued that the country should
sign the IAEA Additional Protocol because not signing had put Brazil into a “rather delicate
situation” and looked strange since Brazil only pursued nuclear energy for
peaceful purposes. Yet, whether Marina would follow her own advice and push for
Brazil’s adherence to the IAEA Additional Protocol should she become president
is an open question.
For the most part, Brazil’s presidential
campaign has been focused on domestic economic and social questions. That focus
is natural, and the absence of nuclear policy from the discussion is not
surprising. Yet, whoever wins the election should surely devote time and effort
to thinking about these issues given the country’s prominent role in the global
nuclear system.
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