Forgotten nuclear dreams

last updated 8 January 2015

Rio de Janeiro

A former Brazilian president admitted this week that his country had tried for years to build an atomic bomb. José Sarney said that the military dictatorship that ran the country from 1964 to 1985 had even dug a deep well in a remote area to use for a test explosion. But Sarney, whose election put an end to the dictatorship, had the well sealed and ordered the nuclear program to be scrapped. Sarney said that he always denied the existence of the program to avoid sparking a nuclear arms race with neighboring Argentina. The military there had also been pursuing nuclear weapons, he said, “but they also denied it, the same as we did.”