- ANGRA DOS REIS, Brazil (AP) - Visitors to the Angra 2 nuclear plant stroll by
posters of Galileo and Leonardo da Vinci put up as reminders of the age-old
conflict between science and skepticism.
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- "The work you do today will be recognized
tomorrow," the posters proclaim in Portuguese.
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- At least that's what the government hopes.
So far, the power plant has been a public relations nightmare, delayed
for more than a decade by cost overruns and safety concerns.
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- Now, Angra 2 is being finished and is
scheduled to go into operation in July. For workers, there is a sense of
vindication.
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- "This is the energy of the future,"
Jose Eduardo Brayner Costa Mattos, the construction site manager, said
while waving a hand at an electricity generator stamped with the date 1988.
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- Critics say Brazil is out of step in
rediscovering nuclear power. They note that no U.S. utility has ordered
a reactor since the late 1970s and that Germany's new government and others
in Europe are moving to phase out nuclear power.
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- The gray concrete sphere of Angra 2 on
Itaorna Beach, 100 miles west of Rio de Janeiro, seems like a relic from
another age.
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- "It will be a problem for generations
to come," said Roberto Kishinami, executive director in Brazil for
the environmental group Greenpeace. "There's no place to put the waste,
and the environmental impact report is vague."
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- Those weren't big concerns in 1975, when
President Ernesto Geisel signed an agreement with West Germany's Kraftwerk
Union, a subsidiary of Siemens, to build as many as eight, 1,300-megawatt
pressurized-water reactors to generate electricity.
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- For Brazil's ruling generals, the deal
was part of its "Big Brazil" development drive. It also gave
them a reactor that could produce fuel for an atomic weapons program, something
they didn't get with Angra 1, a 626-megawatt plant then being built by
Westinghouse Corp.
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- Right away there were problems.
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- Angra 2's first foundation was built
on crumbling stone instead of bedrock, and almost the entire budget went
into sinking additional support columns. Residents said it was a mistake
to build at Itaorna, a Guarani Indian name usually translated as "rotten
rock."
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- Angra 1 didn't inspire much confidence,
either. It broke down so often that Brazilians dubbed it "the lightning
bug," because it kept going off and on.
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- In the 1980s, with Angra 2 way behind
schedule, Brazil went broke and plunged into recession. With no money and
less need for energy, the plant was not a priority.
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- In 1987, a year after the Soviet reactor
meltdown at Chernobyl, Ukraine, a Brazilian junk dealer found a lead capsule
containing radioactive cesium 137 in the ruins of an abandoned medical
clinic and broke it open with a sledgehammer. Brazilians panicked after
radiation poisoning killed four people and sickened 103. So Angra 2 was
kept in limbo.
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- It stayed there until 1994, when a new
government economic plan ended hyperinflation. With a strong currency,
consumers went on a buying spree - and suddenly needed more energy for
new freezers, air conditioners and microwave ovens. President Itamar Franco
gave go-ahead for Angra 2.
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- Some 4,500 workers are laboring around
the clock to finish the plant. Machinery, vacuum-sealed in special foil
and warehoused for a decade, is unwrapped and installed.
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- "It's 94 percent done," said
Costa Mattos, the site manager.
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- A "hot" test of all systems
but without fuel is set for April. The final step is to load the reactor
core with 236 zircon alloy rods containing the uranium oxide fuel.
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- Greenpeace is campaigning to block the
licensing of Angra 2. However, 16 years late and at a cost of some $9 billion,
it is expected to go on line in July.
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- Over the years, Brazil's priorities have
changed. Civilian rule returned in 1985, and the government signed the
nuclear nonproliferation treaty and scrapped the military's secret nuclear
weapons program.
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- Electronuclear, the government nuclear
company, knows any slip-up at Angra 2 could sink its plans to finish Angra
3, today just a $1 billion hole in the ground.
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- "The design is old, but it has the
same upgrades as in Germany. So I would say it is First World," said
Heini Schroer, a Siemens computer technician from Erlangen, Germany.
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- The pressurized-water reactor is the
safest reactor made and environment-friendly as well, Costa Mattos said.
Angra 2 won't heat the seawater much or emit methane or other "greenhouse
gases," and radiation levels will be checked periodically around the
countryside, he said.
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- For now, the spent reactor fuel rods
that remain deadly for thousands of years will be kept in a pool at the
plant, but in 20 years the pool will be full. After that, no one is sure
will happen.
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