Brazil Moves to Mine More Uranium and Become an Exporter

BRAZIL · ENERGY

Brazil sits on some of the world’s largest uranium reserves yet barely mines them. A new push led by the national development bank aims to change that, with an eye on both energy security and exports.

A development bank steps into uranium

Brazil’s National Bank for Economic and Social Development, the state lender known as the BNDES, has taken another step toward expanding the country’s uranium output. It has partnered with the nuclear holding company ENBPar and with Indústrias Nucleares do Brasil, the state company known as INB that holds a monopoly over the country’s nuclear materials, to structure mineral-exploration projects across several regions.

The effort sits within the Pró-Urânio program, created in 2024 to accelerate the search for new deposits and lift national production. The bank’s role is to design the business model that would let INB go to market and find partners to develop mining, an unusual move for a sector long run entirely by the state.

Where the mining would happen

The plan calls for exploration studies in five areas spread across the states of Goiás, Bahia, Paraná, Paraíba and Tocantins. The stated aim is to significantly raise national production to meet the growth in nuclear-energy demand expected in the coming years.

The backdrop is striking. Brazil holds among the largest uranium reserves on the planet, on the order of 210,000 tonnes, yet has only one operating mine, at Caetité in Bahia, after decades of minimal exploration. The country has effectively left much of its resource in the ground.

From self-sufficiency to exports

The near-term goal is to guarantee fuel for Brazil’s nuclear plants, the Angra reactors near Rio de Janeiro, with domestic uranium rather than imports. Beyond that lies a more ambitious prize: becoming an exporter of a metal whose value has climbed as countries turn back to nuclear power.

A flagship project points the way. The Santa Quitéria venture in Ceará, a partnership between INB and fertilizer producer Galvani, would extract uranium alongside phosphate and could begin production around 2028 at roughly 2,300 tonnes a year, a volume that on its own could tip Brazil into export territory once its reactors’ needs are covered.

Why uranium, and why now

The timing tracks a global shift. Nuclear power has returned to favor because it emits no carbon and supplies steady electricity, unlike intermittent solar and wind, which has made it a preferred source for the data centers behind the artificial-intelligence boom. That renewed appetite has pushed uranium prices higher and revived interest in untapped reserves.

Brazil is also one of the few countries that master the full nuclear-fuel cycle, from mining through enrichment, which gives the expansion strategic weight beyond simple commodity sales. Producing more of its own uranium would reduce external dependence and add value at home.

The bottleneck that remains

The biggest obstacle is regulatory, not geological. A law signed in late 2022 authorized INB to partner with private companies across the fuel chain, but the federal decree spelling out how those partnerships should work has been stuck for years, with draft after draft failing to advance. Without it, formalizing deals with private miners risks legal uncertainty.

That is why the BNDES structuring matters: it builds the framework in advance, so projects are ready to move once the rules are clear. Whether Brazil can turn vast reserves into actual exports will depend less on the ore than on the paperwork finally catching up with the ambition.