Nuclear Strain: Looking Back at Brazil-US Nuclear Diplomatic Relations

This year is the 200th anniversary of US-Brazilian diplomatic relations. Perhaps no issue has put that relationship to the test more than Brazil’s nuclear energy development. For decades, Brazil and the United States have sometimes collaborated and occasionally disagreed over Brazil’s approach to nuclear energy. From Brazil’s efforts to acquire a commercial reactor in the 1950s and 1960s and its agreement with Germany to develop nuclear technology in 1975 to Brazil’s policy toward Iran’s nuclear weapons program in the 2000s, the nuclear issue has been a source of partnership and tension. Since a 2010 agreement, however, nuclear cooperation has helped strengthen ties between the two largest countries in the Americas.