page_title: Brazilian submarine Álvaro Alberto
section_title: Main reasons
hierarchical_section_title: Brazilian submarine Álvaro Alberto / Main reasons
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Carte en portugais du plateau continental, de la Zone économique exclusive (ZEE) et de la Zone de pêche exclusive (ZPE) du Brésil.
context_page_description: The Brazilian submarine Álvaro Alberto is a nuclear-powered attack submarine under construction for the Brazilian Navy, by the Itaguaí Construções Navais. The construction is part of the strategic partnership signed between France and Brazil in 2008, which also included the total transfer of technology and support for the construction of four enlarged conventionally-powered Scorpène-class submarines.
  The namesake of the submarine will be a tribute to the Brazilian Navy vice admiral and scientist Álvaro Alberto da Mota e Silva, who is primarily responsible for the implementation of the Brazilian Nuclear Program. He was also Brazil's representative on the UN Atomic Energy Commission and President of Brazilian Academy of Sciences for two terms, from 1935–1937 and 1949–1951.
  Brazil is only the seventh country in the world, and the first in Latin America and the Southern Hemisphere, to acquire the technology for the construction of nuclear submarines.
context_section_description: The Brazilian Navy modernization program plans the development and construction of six nuclear attack submarines, as part of the national defense strategy that says that any effort to build or acquire nuclear submarines will be to develop strategic deterrence capability against "any hostile force" to the national land or sea territory.
  Brazil says that its future nuclear powered submarines capacity will serve as a "peaceful deterrent" and not "a weapon of war". The country adopts the policy of "no first use", also understands that with its future fleet, at least some of its weapons will be able to survive the first strike (nuclear or non-nuclear) of an enemy and prevent further attempts at aggression.
  Another main reason is the defense of the so-called Blue Amazon (Portuguese: A Amazônia Azul), a resource-rich area covering about 4.5 million square kilometers off the Brazilian coast. This area is the country's exclusive economic zone, home to a huge diversity of marine species, valuable metallic minerals and other mineral resources, petroleum, and the world's second largest rare-earth reserve.
caption: Brazilian exclusive economic zone, the "Blue Amazon"
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