The Senate approved today (7) Provisional Measure 1,133/2022, which allows private investment in the activity of extracting nuclear ores in the country. Until then, this was an exclusive attribution of Indústrias Nucleares do Brasil SA (INB), a public company founded in 1988 and linked to the Ministry of Mines and Energy. The text goes to presidential sanction.
The MP was edited by the government to streamline the activity and, according to him, provide greater legal certainty to these activities. The government understands that the MP strengthens regulation, nuclear safety, protection of the environment and the population.
The text also changes the job and salary plan of the National Mining Agency (ANM), also dealt with in the text and demarcates the agency’s limits of action, in relation to nuclear ores in the country. “This demarcation is opportune, insofar as it reduces potential legal uncertainties in dealing with the issues involved by inputs and products of a nuclear nature,” said the rapporteur for the matter, Vandelan Cardoso (PSD-GO)
The rapporteur alleges that the salary adjustment for civil servants provided for in his report is due to a necessary update to enable the hiring of new professionals. “We are correcting these distortions that come from many, many years at the agency. Nobody wants to be an ANM manager in a state today with a salary of 8,000 reais, with the qualifications that are required, taking care of the mineral and nuclear issue”
Cardoso says that the MP does not remove any attribution from the federal government regarding the control of the nuclear issue. “It is simply opening up for private companies to participate as well [da atividade]?? Today, only the federal government owns it. We could be exporting much more uranium than if this issue had already been regulated”.
Voting on the MP was closed after the conclusion of the voting, in two shifts, on the Transition PEC. The president of the Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD/MG) also voted, at the end of the session, a draft resolution that authorizes the state of Rio de Janeiro to contract an external credit operation in the amount of up to US$ 135.23 million for financing of a sustainable development project, which is to be enacted, and a bill authored by the Chamber that regulates the profession of surgical instruments, which will be sanctioned.
