almost none. Indústrias Nucleares do Brasil's Caetité operation is
currently inactive, Santa Quitéria in Ceará is in licensing, and the
country's two operating nuclear reactors rely primarily on imported
fuel. The gap between reserve position and current production makes
the continent.¹
estimated at several hundred thousand tonnes of contained uranium at
multiple deposits.¹ Top global producers — Kazakhstan, Canada,
nuclear-power demand.
idle in recent years. The Santa Quitéria project in Ceará, which would
combine uranium production with phosphate fertiliser output, has been in
the Brazilian federal permitting process for over a decade. The contrast
between reserve strength and production weakness is stark, and the
reasons are political and administrative rather than geological or
economic.
state-owned enterprise, a legal monopoly on uranium mining, processing
and enrichment. That monopoly, established in the Brazilian constitution
and elaborated in specific federal legislation, means that private
investment in Brazilian uranium is impossible under current law — and
the entire commercial path for uranium development depends on INB's
capacity and willingness to invest.
at modest scale through much of the 2000s and 2010s but has since been
idle, reflecting a combination of technical challenges, investment
constraints and political attention that has consistently been
elsewhere. Resumption of Caetité production has been announced multiple
times but has not yet been achieved at commercial scale.
for years. Proposals to allow private or foreign participation in
national-security constraints — have been floated multiple times but
have never advanced to legislation. The political economy of changing
the framework is complicated by the sensitivity of nuclear material and
by the institutional role INB plays in the country's broader energy and
defence establishment.
development-stage uranium opportunity in Brazil. The project is
structured as a joint venture between INB and a private
phosphate-fertiliser producer, with the commercial rationale being that
the ore carries both uranium and phosphate, and processing the two
together is more efficient than either alone.
decade. The project has advanced through multiple licensing phases but
has not yet received the final licences required for construction. When
it does commission, it could produce several thousand tonnes of U3O8 per
year — meaningful for Brazil, though still modest on the global scale.
self-sufficiency. Brazil's two operating reactors (Angra 1 and Angra 2,
with Angra 3 under construction) consume uranium in quantities that
production.
operating capacity of approximately 395 GW consumes roughly 65,000
tonnes of U3O8 per year, with about 55,000 tonnes coming from primary
mine production and the rest from secondary sources such as
decommissioned weapons and civil stockpiles.¹
countries have announced new nuclear-build programmes, small modular
reactor projects are advancing commercially, and the energy-transition
discussion has increasingly included nuclear power as a zero-carbon
baseload option alongside renewables. International Atomic Energy Agency
and World Nuclear Association projections suggest demand could reach
70,000-80,000 tonnes per year by 2030.
above US$100 per pound during 2024 and traded in the US$80-110 range
through 2025, substantially above the pricing environment that prevailed
through most of the 2010s. At those prices, Brazilian uranium projects
become progressively more attractive economically.
participation to enter the sector — the country could contribute
meaningfully to global uranium supply within the 2028-2032 window. The
reserve base is sufficient to support production comparable to mid-sized
global producers like Namibia or Uzbekistan over multiple decades.
most standard critical-minerals lists because nuclear fuel is treated
separately in national-security frameworks, but its strategic importance
is comparable. Building Brazilian uranium production would extend the
country's critical-minerals portfolio into nuclear-energy-transition
relevance, which no other Latin American producer can match.
actively seeking alternatives to Russian and Kazakh uranium supply
following the 2022 Ukraine conflict and subsequent sanctions
di