Controversial German-Brazilian nuclear agreement turns 50 – DW – 06/27/2025

DW

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On June 27, 1975, Germany and Brazil signed a treaty on cooperation in the field of nuclear energy. Despite Germany's nuclear phase out, it still applies today.
The agreement on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, which almost nobody in Germany knows about, will be half a century old at the end of June. It has defied the German anti-nuclear movement, survived the nuclear disasters of Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011, and even the nuclear phase-out in 2023 with the shutdown of Germany's last three nuclear power plants.
The treaty aimed to construct eight nuclear power plants, a uranium enrichment plant and a nuclear reprocessing plant in Brazil by Siemens, including training for scientists.
The signatories were the German coalition government of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) under Chancellor Helmut Schmidt on the one side, and the Brazilian military dictatorship headed by President Ernesto Geisel on the other.
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"It was celebrated in 1975 as the biggest technology agreement of the century, the enthusiasm was huge on both sides," recalls 73-year-old German-Brazilian sociologist Luiz Ramalho in an interview with DW. Ramalho is chairman of the Latin America Forum in Berlin and has been a critic from the very beginning.
He has made terminating the treaty, which is only possible every five years, his life's work. At the end of 2024, he thought he had almost reached his goal with the center-left government the SPD, environmentalist Greens and FDP.
There were talks in the ministries at the time, and a termination was examined, especially in view of the notice period on November 18. But then the government fell apart in November 2024.
The Green Party has long wanted to end the German-Brazilian nuclear agreement. After all, the Greens are the party that evolved from the anti-nuclear protests in the 1980s.
In 2004, the then-Green Federal Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin tried unsuccessfully to convert the nuclear agreement into one for renewable energies. Ten years later, the Greens' urgent motion in opposition to terminate the nuclear agreements with Brazil and India failed due to resistance from the coalition government of the conservative Christian Democrats, its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU), and the SPD, under Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU).
For Harald Ebner, member of the Bundestag for the Greens, the outcome of the cooperation is sobering. "Even at the drawing board, six of the eight nuclear power plants stipulated in the agreement failed. But the other two are also anything but a success: Angra-3 became a 40-year unfinished construction site, and a single block, Angra-2, was finally connected to the grid in 2000 after 24 years of construction as the world's most expensive nuclear power plant at the time," he wrote to DW.
However, Angra-2 is susceptible to earthquakes, landslides and flooding, while more and more hazardous nuclear waste is accumulating on the site, for which there is no solution, says Ebner. In other words, there is nowhere to store the nuclear waste produced there. His conclusion: "Brazil and Germany were both on the wrong track with the agreement, which failed in many respects."
For Ebner, nuclear power belongs in the past, but not everyone sees it that way. On the contrary: it is experiencing a renaissance worldwide. According to a study by the International Energy Agency (IEA), more than 40 countries are striving to expand nuclear power in order to meet the growing demand for electricity.
In Brazil, nuclear power accounts for just 3% of electricity generation. However, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who used to be rather critical of nuclear energy, expressed great interest in Russia's experience with small nuclear power plants at a meeting in Moscow with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, a few weeks ago.
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And even in Germany, the debate on the use of nuclear energy, which was thought to be dead, has picked up speed again. Although former Chancellor Angela Merkel pushed through the German nuclear phase-out in 2011 shortly after the nuclear reactor disaster in Fukushima, Japan, during the last Bundestag election campaign, Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder, among others, called for the reactivation of three decommissioned nuclear power plants.
The new Minister of Economic Affairs, Katharina Reiche from the CDU, also appears to be open to the use of nuclear power. She recently met with colleagues from the so-called European Nuclear Alliance, an association of countries such as France, Sweden and Poland that are committed to greater use of nuclear energy.
What does this mean for the German-Brazilian nuclear agreement? Thomas Silberhorn, CDU member of the German Bundestag and long-time member of the German-Brazilian parliamentary group, told DW: "The agreement is an early example of technological partnership and therefore a milestone in our bilateral relations. Today, the focus of cooperation is on hydrogen and renewable energies. But openness to new technologies and energy policy independence remain relevant for Brazil and have also regained importance in Germany and throughout Europe."
However, the future of the half-century-old nuclear agreement could depend on the SPD in government. Nina Scheer, energy policy spokesperson for the SPD parliamentary group in the German Bundestag, wrote to DW: "The coalition agreement provides for an intensification of the strategic partnership with Brazil. Due to the importance of the energy transition for strategic and sustainable development potential, this also involves replacing the German-Brazilian nuclear agreement with partnerships in the transition to renewable energies.This includes ending the nuclear agreement."
Miriam Tornieporth will undoubtedly be happy to hear that. She works for the German anti-nuclear organization "ausgestrahlt e. V.", which was founded in 2008 and has been campaigning for the termination of the German-Brazilian nuclear agreement for years. "This cooperation is simply totally out of date and does not include, for example, any safety aspects that should be included from today's perspective," Tornieporth told DW.
The controversial agreement has become particularly explosive due to the latest geopolitical developments, more specifically the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. This is because the French nuclear company Frematome produces fuel rods for nuclear power plants in Lingen, Lower Saxony, in cooperation with Rosatom. The state-owned Russian nuclear industry company has, in turn, concluded an agreement with Brazil for uranium supplies in 2022.
"We assume that Russian material is processed both at the Gronau uranium enrichment plant in North Rhine-Westphalia and in Lingen and sent from there to Brazil. In contrast to other forms of energy, the Russian nuclear industry is also exempt from sanctions," says Tornieporth.
"As Germany has shut down its nuclear power plants, it would be logical also to shut down the plants in Gronau and Lingen to complete the nuclear phase-out."While you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter, Berlin Briefing.