Campo de Provas Brigadeiro Velloso – CPBV (English: Brigadeiro Velloso Testing Range) (ICAO: SBCC) is a large complex of the Brazilian Armed Forces located in Serra do Cachimbo (English: Smoking Pipe Mountains), in the southern part of Pará, Brazil.
Campo de Provas Brigadeiro Velloso has an area of 21,588 km2 and perimeter of 653 km within the limits of four municipalities: Altamira, Itaituba, Jacareacanga, and Novo Progresso The complex has its origins on an airfield opened on January 20, 1954 when the Brazilian Government saw the need for a support facility for aircraft flying between the Northern Region (such as to the Amazon Rainforest) and the Southeast Region of Brazil (and to Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo).
Rumored to have been carried out with technological aid from the Iraqi government, [3] it was initially ordered by military dictator Ernesto Geisel and ran from 1975 to 1990.
At its conclusion, the work was characterized by the New York Times as such, "Brazilian physicists have concluded that the military was one or two years away from having the materials - 20 to 35 pounds of weapons-grade enriched uranium - to make a Hiroshima-type bomb.
[4] A week later Fernando Collor de Mello had this to say to the United Nations General Assembly, "Brazil today rejects the idea of any test that implies nuclear explosions, even for peaceful ends''.