Poison Fire, Sacred Earth,
TESTIMONIES, LECTURES, CONCLUSIONS,
THE WORLD URANIUM HEARING, SALZBURG 1992
pages 105-106
About the nuclear power: The first thing I want to
tell you is about the big accident that occurred on
the 13th of September in 1987, five years ago, in
Goiânia, a city of Brazil, perhaps the
second biggest accident in the world after
Chernobyl, and the first accident in the Third World. In
that time, because of the total unknowledgement
of the people about the nuclear energy and their
elements, a person manipulated 18 grams of
cesium-137 from medical instruments which was
in a rubbish, and contaminated about 10,000
people, and four people died immediately. This
occurred because the state didn't provide any
security and information to the people. I think, an
event like that can occur all over the world,
mainly in the Third World, because the medical
instruments containing radioactive elements are
spread out everywhere. Now, the people from
Goiânia, the contaminated people from
Goiânia are without any assistance, and many
problems are going to happen yet with this and the
next generations. The contaminated people are
incapable for working and then with many
difficulties for living. . . .
In 1971, the government decided to buy a nuclear plant
to produce electricity from Westinghouse in the United
States, with 627 megawatts. . . . The Indians who had
lived in this place knew that it was a place where
should not be built anything. Then many problems have
happened because of it, the nuclear plants. Therefore,
Brazil became dependent on the United States
because it should buy the nuclear fuel from
the United States in that time.
Renato de Paes Cunha
Renato de Paes Cunha, Brazil. Member of
Grupo Ambientalista da Bahia (GAMBA).
Thank you, good afternoon! First, I want to say
thank you to invite me for this important
meeting here in Salzburg. And second, I want to
apologize about my English, it is not very well,
but I am trying to do my speech in English. I think
it's better.
Well, I am going to talk to you about the
nuclear program in Brazil in general. And my two
friends are going to talk about the particular
cases. Francis about the military program in Brazil and
Lucia Heimer about the uranium mining in Caétité
in the state of Bahia in Brazil, and she is going to
say finally our proposal about this matter.
Brazil is a big country with 150 millions
of people with many problems, social problems,
poverty, big cities without good conditions for
living, sanitation, housing, transportation, low
salaries, many diseases as cholera, and ecological
problems, industrial pollution, deforestation of the
Amazonas and Atlantic forests mainly, etc., and
now we have a very big political crisis, when the
President Collor de Mello built a scheme of
corruption and that is destroying the
country. Fortunately, the Brazilian society
is fighting against it, the people, the students,
the workers are in the streets peacefully in
struggle to get his impeachment and try to get
better everything in the country.
About the nuclear power: The first thing I want to
tell you is about the big accident that occurred on
the 13th of September in 1987, five years ago, in
Goiânia, a city of Brazil, perhaps the
second biggest accident in the world after
Chernobyl, and the first accident in the Third World. In
that time, because of the total unknowledgement
of the people about the nuclear energy and their
elements, a person manipulated 18 grams of
cesium-137 from medical instruments which was
in a rubbish, and contaminated about 10,000
people, and four people died immediately. This
occurred because the state didn't provide any
security and information to the people. I think, an
event like that can occur all over the world,
mainly in the Third World, because the medical
instruments containing radioactive elements are
spread out everywhere. Now, the people from
Goiânia, the contaminated people from
Goiânia are without any assistance, and many
problems are going to happen yet with this and the
next generations. The contaminated people are
incapable for working and then with many
difficulties for living. We have a document
about it, where you can see it better if you want.
Well, the nuclear program in Brazil, it
starts to be defined by the military governments,
as in Argentina and the other countries during the
'60s, when the governments imported a research
reactor from the United States. Today, we have
several of them in the country, in research centres,
universities, but controlled by the militaries.
In 1971, the government decided to buy a nuclear plant
to produce electricity from Westinghouse in the United
States, with 627 megawatts. That's "Usina Nuclear
Angra I", located near the city of Angra dos Reis,
very close to the big cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao
Paulo. The place where the plant was built is called
Itaoana(?), what in the indigenous language means
"rotten stone". The Indians who had lived in this
place knew that it was a place where should not be
built anything. Then many problems have happened
because of it, the nuclear plants. Therefore,
Brazil became dependent on the United States
because it should buy the nuclear fuel from
the United States in that time.
Everything we talked about, it was done
without any discussion with the Brazilian society
and even with the scientific community. It is the
same thing that occurred in many cases all over
the world. The NGOs have been fighting against
the nuclear programs, improved many campaigns
to fight against this program.
In 1975, a new step has been done to
reach a nuclear autonomy when the government
signed an agreement with Germany. And that
aimed to transfer the technology to dominate all
the nuclear cycles and to build all the eight
plants to produce electricity. The main point,
however, was to enrich the uranium, to enable
Brazil to produce the fuel for the nuclear plants
and then, perhaps, for the atom bomb. At least
that thing didn't happen very well up to now. We
just have one other plant almost ready, the Angra
II, and in the same place, and another one in
project, still in the same place, the Angra III. But
a lot of money was spent in this program and it is
indeed one of the causes of the great extent of
debts Brazil has now and the country's continued
dependence on Germany in this matter.
In 1979, the government started to
improve secretly another nuclear program to
develop enriched uranium for the army and the
navy, to build a nuclear submarine. Francis is
going to talk about it later.
To talk about energy, the country doesn't
need nuclear power. We have many other
natural resources you can use. We have been
using hydro-electricity, biomass as a renewable energy, and
we can improve the solar and wind energies. We
must work further in this matter in research and
education to reach an energy model for a
sustainable world. It is interesting to say that the
workers that work in the nuclear projects have
been organizing themselves to fight against the
nuclear program, to save themselves from an
unsafe job, to discuss the nuclear waste problems
and other things in that matter.
About the uranium mining that Lucia is
going to talk about more soon, I would like to say
that Brazil has several mines in several areas of
the country. You can see here the several mines
and proposals, potential areas where you can find
the uranium. Just one of them has been exploited
yet, it is the Pocos de Caldas, it is here. It is near
the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo as
well. They exploited about 1,700,000 tons from
1982 to 1988, when they stopped it because of
economical troubles and so on. In this place, it
has many nuclear wastes yet that they haven't
been doing anything about. Now they are
intending to exploit the mining in Bahia, the state
where I live, in the city of Caétité, called Lagoa
Real, it is here, and Lucia is going to talk to you
about it later.
Well, I want to finish saying that in
Brazil we have a movement against the nuclear
power, we've just created a Nuclear Brazilian
Network to improve our fights. In the Rio
Conference and the Global Forum that occurred
in Rio de Janeiro last June, the NGOs signed a
treaty about this matter, and it's nice if everybody
knows about it; you have a copy here of this
treaty. And like Raúl
Montenegro calls, you have
to improve a big movement all over the world
about this program, the exploration of the
uranium mines and so on.
Thank you, now I will pass it on to Francis