The President of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, said his country will budget approximately $540 million for its nuclear program.

The money will be spent over eight years on various aspects of nuclear technology such as uranium enrichment and perhaps a nuclear submarine.

Brazil has said its nuclear program is peaceful and it has no intention of pursuing nuclear weapons.

Silva, the President of Brazil, frequently speaks about nuclear power as a way to diversify Brazil’s energy generation and he often talks about nuclear power being a way to fulfil growing demand for energy in Brazil, South America’s largest economy.

At present, Brazil has two operating reactors, Angra 1 and Angra 2, which have a capacity of roughly 2000 megawatts. According to the Mines and Energy Ministry, an additional reactor, Angra 3 would raise the energy capacity to 3,300 megawatts. Angra 3 would cost around $3.6 billion to build.

Recently, the Brazilian government gave a preliminary approval to build two dams in the Amazon that would cost about $10 billion to $14.7 billion and produce 8 percent of current electricity demand about 6,450 megawatts.

Hydro Power is probably the only power source at the moment that is a better options than nuclear energy. However with the Brazilian government moving forward with both hydro and nuclear power, we are confident that Brazil will build more nuclear power plants and therefore will have to purchase more uranium, increasing the U3O8 spot price and the value of our uranium stocks.