Brazil Overhauls Ailing Nuclear Power Company

President Jose Sarney liquidated Brazil’s main state-run nuclear energy company Nuclebras on Wednesday as part of a drastic overhaul in the country’s money-losing nuclear power program.

In a series of decrees, Sarney liquidated Nuclebras and turned all its capital over to a new company, Industrias Nucleares do Brasi, or INB, which will come under the direction of a new National Nuclear Energy Council.

The decrees were designed to cut costs in the chronically deficit-ridden nuclear power program and making its finances more accountable to the president, official sources said.

Sole Plant Shut for Repair

Brazil’s nuclear energy program has cost successive governments about $7 billion over the past 10 years but is not currently generating any electricity.

In 1975, Brazil signed an accord with West Germany to build eight nuclear power plants, a uranium enrichment plant and a reprocessing plant, none of which were completed.

The country’s sole finished plant, the Angra I station near Rio de Janeiro, built by the U.S. firm Westinghouse, has been closed for repairs for nearly a year.