BRASILIA, (Reuters) – Brazil advanced yesterday toward its target of joining the small club of nations that have nuclear-powered submarines with the opening of a naval shipyard installation that will build French-designed submarines.
President Dilma Rousseff inaugurated the factory that will make metal hull structures for four conventional diesel-electric Scorpene attack submarines and eventually a fifth submarine powered by a nuclear reactor developed entirely by Brazil.
She said Brazil, one of the BRICS group of leading emerging nations and Latin America’s largest nation, was a peaceful country but a defense industry was needed to deter and prevent violent conflict.
“This facility allows our country to affirm itself on the world stage and, above all, develop in an independent sovereign way,” Rousseff said.
The submarines will be made by French shipbuilder DCNS in a joint venture with Brazil’s Odebrecht at the Brazilian Navy base on Sepetiba Bay south of Rio de Janeiro.
The 7.8 billion reais ($3.95 billion) programme will turn out the first conventional submarine in 2015 and the nuclear-powered submarine will be commissioned in 2023 and enter operation in 2025, the Brazilian Navy said in a statement.
The submarines are a key part of Brazil’s effort to build a modern navy that can defend its oil and trade interests in the South Atlantic, a region long dominated by the British and U.S. navies. It is also a revival of nuclear development by the Brazilian military that was halted in 1990 with the end of the country’s nuclear bomb program.
If successful, Brazil will join the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China – the five members of the permanent U.N. Security Council, a club Brazil aspires to join – as a country with a home-grown nuclear submarine capability.
The Indian Navy has a nuclear-powered attack submarine, the INS Chakra, that was leased from Russia, and India is building a nuclear submarine with its own technology that is expected to be in service by 2015.
The commander of the Brazilian Navy, Admiral Julio Soares de Moura Neto, said the purpose of building a nuclear-powered submarine was “deterrence” and stressed that the nuclear propulsion system will be built with entirely home-grown technology that was not transferred by France.
