Brazil will probably scale down its plans for new nuclear plants due to safety concerns following the 2011 radiation leak in Japan and pick up some of the slack with a "revolution" in wind power, the head of the government's energy planning agency said.
Mauricio Tolmasquim, chief of the Energy Research Company, told Reuters it was "unlikely" the government would stick to its plans to build four new nuclear plants by 2030 to meet rising demand for electricity.
He declined to specify how many might be built instead.
Tolmasquim's comments, part of a broad assessment of Brazil's long-term strategic plans for electricity generation, highlighted continued global doubts regarding nuclear power more than two years after an earthquake and tsunami led to an accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan.
"After Japan, things got put on standby," Tolmasquim said in an interview last week. "We haven't abandoned (the plans) ... but they haven't been resumed yet either. It's not a priority for us right now."
Brazil has not begun the tender process for the facilities projected to be finished by 2030. The nuclear facility currently under construction, known as Angra 3, is being built with technology from Germany's Siemens-KWU.
Brazil remains a relatively attractive venue for nuclear power, Tolmasquim said, since it is one of just a few handful of countries that possess all the natural elements needed for its production. The country already has two working nuclear plants in Rio de Janeiro, and is currently building a third, due to come online in 2018.
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