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Summary of article Part 2
Brazil is home to the world's sixth-largest uranium reserves, and developing its uranium enrichment facilities makes economic sense since the global nuclear power plant business is making a comeback in many countries, and it is growing with potentially large commercial global markets as more countries build new nuclear power plants.
Besides the 20 new nuclear power plants, Brazil should invest part of the money in a state-of-the-art nuclear waste reprocessing plant instead of having to find a place to store the spent nuclear fuel. The French already have been using such reprocessing technologies for many years.
Used nuclear fuel (often called spent nuclear fuel) is nuclear fuel that has been irradiated in a nuclear reactor (usually at a nuclear power plant) to the point that it is no longer useful in sustaining a nuclear reaction. If not reprocessed to retrieve the remaining usable uranium and plutonium, it is a form of radioactive waste.
Nuclear reprocessing separates any usable elements (e.g., uranium and plutonium) from fission products and other materials in spent nuclear reactor fuels. Usually the goal is to recycle the reprocessed uranium. It is the process that partially closes the loop in the nuclear fuel cycle.
Use of breeder reactors combined with reprocessing could extend the usefulness of mined uranium by more than 60 times.
The technology for making reprocessed uranium fuel is well established, and there is no technical reason limiting its adoption. And nuclear reprocessing is a much better choice than the one the United States decided to adopt where used nuclear fuel is currently planned for disposal in deep geological formations, such as Yucca Mountain, where it has to be shielded and packaged to prevent its migration to mankind's immediate environment for thousands if not millions of yearsâ¦.
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â¦Conclusion
It is imperative that the Brazilian government renationalize Petrobras immediately and use this amazing source of funding to fund the enclosed economic development plan to plant the seeds for Brazil to be able to develop the new economy of the future and to help it to blossom and create millions of new jobs for the Brazilian population.
When the Brazilian government takes action to make official the renationalization of Petrobras, they should also tie it together with the implementation of the enclosed economic development plan; otherwise many people would start wasting away the new money resources on their pet projects and corruption could get completely out of control in Brazil.
This economic plan would place Brazil on a path of economic diversification and the economy of the future. If there is one thing that I don't want to happen in Brazil, it is for the Brazilian economy to start getting dependent only on oil exports as its major source of income at the expense of developing a new economy for the 21st century.
The enclosed plan is a solid plan in every sense, and there is a strong connection binding all the parts of this economic plan together. Some people might question why I included in this plan USUS$ 30 billion for high-speed broadband infrastructure. But that is a major part of the plan because it would help connect Brazil with that type of technology and in turn people and businesses would be able to flourish in communities from around the country and people would be able to find jobs in the areas where they currently live.
The high-speed broadband infrastructure would also serve as the foundation and would play a major part in helping in the development of the new educational system of the future that will bring good education to communities around the country through the Internet.
The high-speed broadband infrastructure would also help to speed up economic development around the country, and local communities would be able to develop local businesses that would be able to sell their goods through the Internet, and people could stay where they live in Brazil today instead of having to go to the big cities to be able to find a job or locate a new business venture.
I used to think that the free market would help solve many of the problems of society including education, infrastructure, and so on...But today I know better and I know that running a country based only on free market principles and the profit motive can take your country in the wrong path and you don't have to look further than the United States to see all kinds of problems getting completely out of control because at the end of the day a system based on greed and wishful thinking can't deliver the best services required by its citizens.
The US economy is in complete disarray today and it does not matter where you look at the system; it is in a massive mess and Americans can't figure out how to fix any problems related to its energy area, healthcare system, educational system, crumbling and obsolete infrastructure, its collapsing financial system, its under funded pension system, and so on...
The free market capitalist system makes the wrong decisions all the time that cost people trillions of US dollars with terrible future consequences for the population, and the sub-prime mess represents only the latest chapter of a massive misallocation of resources.
Here is what I wrote a few years ago on that subject. Quoting from my article published in September 2002 - I said the following: "Countdown to Armageddon".
"...Until recently, I used to believe in a completely free market economy. Today I know there is a place for government regulations and government protection of its industrial base against foreign competition. Deregulation has been a disaster in the U.S. to the airline, the energy, and the telecommunications industries. For example; many airlines are on the brink of bankruptcy in the United States.
Business Week magazine of August 5, 2002 reported that since the Telecommunications Act was passed in 1996 to deregulate the telephone industry, investors have lost over US$ 2 trillion as the stock prices tumbled 95 percent or more from their highs. The crisis could relegate the U.S. to second-class status in the communications industry in the future.
I used to think that governments at all levels usually wasted lots of money, and that they were a very poor allocator of resources. I used to think that the free open market system was the best allocator of resources. Today I have my doubts about unregulated and a savage and destructive type of capitalism I have seen in operation since the mid-80's. It started with the savings & loan scandals and debacle of that industry in the 1980's and culminated with the latest string of company scandals on Wall Street. I believe that the government has a role in stabilizing the economy.
For years, an overvalued financial market built on misleading and false information sent highly misleading signals to investors who eventually lost trillions of valuable national savings, which were misallocated to unneeded and wasteful investments. Investors lost over US$ 2 trillion in the telecommunications industry and over US$ 1 trillion in the dot.com fiasco. These investments are gone and will have an impact on many people's retirement plans in the future, since a lot of their pension money was invested in these promising areas."
I wrote the above before the latest fiasco of the sub-prime mess and now you can add to the list another major financial scandal that has been cooked up as a new financial innovation, but at the end of the day after the dust settles it looks more like a massive financial scam than anything else.
In my opinion government has the responsibility to invest in some key infrastructure to make sure that the infrastructure is available to help in the economic development of the country. There are many reasons why the private sector would not make these important investments on a timely basis and the state has to fill that void.
Brazil has a very short window of opportunity to implement the renationalization of Petrobras and also implement the enclosed economic development plan since competition from other countries it would make impossible for Brazil to find the necessary technical people and the materials available to build the nuclear reactors and the other parts of this plan.
Today there is major economic development of all kinds of infrastructure that is going on in many countries around the world as never seen before in countries such as Saudi Arabia, China, India, and so on, and there is not enough know how and materials to go around to meet the needs of all these economic development projects. It takes years to build all these new infrastructures around the world, and the countries with the smartest people and with the deepest pockets are the ones that are going to be able to implement their plans on a timely basis.
I hope that we have enough people in the Brazilian government with vision of the future and they have the foresight to see what is ahead of us in the coming years. Otherwise if Brazil is too slow to act then Brazil will continue to be just the country of the future - and that future will never materialize. Brazil has to start moving at the speed of light almost immediately to be able to stay ahead of the pack and achieve these economic development goals.
Ricardo C. Amaral is a writer and economist. He can be reached at
brazilamaral@yahoo.com
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