Antinuclear

Australia’s uranium companies put on a bold face, but their prospects are not good

The uranium price tanked after the Fukushima disaster and so far there is no sign of a bounce. Current prices are too low to allow the smaller uranium wannabes to proceed with any confidence.

Uranium flashpoint in the wild West,    The Drum, Jim Green, 22 May 12,  Interesting times in the uranium sector. The mining companies have had a few wins in the 14 months since the Fukushima disaster, but they’ve had more losses.

Bill Repard, organiser of the Paydirt Uranium Conference held in Adelaide in February, put on a brave face with this claim: The sector’s hiccups in the wake of Fukushima are now over with, the global development of new nuclear power stations continues unabated, and the Australian sector has literally commenced a U-turn in every sense.

Yet for all the hype, uranium accounts for a lousy 0.03 per cent of Australian export revenue and a negligible 0.02 per cent of Australian jobs. The industry’s future depends on the nuclear power ‘renaissance’, but global nuclear power capacity has been stagnant for the past 20 years, and if there is any growth at all in the next 20 years, it will be modest.

The uranium price tanked after the Fukushima disaster and so far there is no sign of a bounce. Current prices are too low to allow the smaller uranium wannabes to proceed with any confidence.

In South Australia, BHP Billiton’s plan for a massive expansion of the Olympic Dam copper/uranium mine has yet to be approved by the company board, with recent rumblings that the project may be put on the slow-track.

Japanese company Mitsui recently pulled out of the Honeymoon uranium mine as it “could not foresee sufficient economic return from the project”. Marathon Resources’ plan to mine uranium has been terminated by a state government decision to protect the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary – a decision made all the easier by the company’s licence breaches     during exploration.
The industry also has problems in the Northern Territory. A traditional owner veto has put an end to plans to mine Koongarra , and plans are in train to incorporate the mining lease into Kakadu National Park.

Energy Resources of Australia has abandoned plans to use heap leach mining at the Ranger mine, though an exploratory drilling program has recently commenced. Water management problems continue to plague the mining and milling of uranium at Ranger.

At various times in recent years, both the NT Country Liberal Party and the Labor Party have opposed plans to build a mine at Angela Pamela, a short distance from Alice Springs and an even shorter distance from the town’s water supply.

In Queensland, the new Liberal National Party Government has so far stuck to its pre-election promise to prohibit uranium mining. That may change, but in any case Queensland is home to no more than around 3 per cent of Australia’s uranium reserves. The NSW Liberal Party government has recently passed legislation to permit uranium exploration, but exploration in earlier decades yielded little of interest.
Western Australia is now the key uranium battleground. The Liberal Party State Government supports uranium mining. State Labor policy is to oppose uranium mining, but party leader Mark McGowan says that any mines that have received state government approvals would not be stopped by an incoming Labor Government.

As elsewhere, it has been a miserable year for the uranium mining wannabes in WA. At least two projects have been put on hold. The only company with any chance of receiving government approvals before the 2013 state election is Toro Energy, which is pursuing plans to mine about 12,000 tonnes of uranium at Wiluna in the Goldfields.

You’d think that Toro Energy might keep a low profile given the political sensitivities. Not so. The company has been loudly defending TEPCO , the notorious operator of the crippled Fukushima plant – even in the face of overwhelming evidence  of TEPCO’s record of safety breaches and cover-ups.

Still more controversially, Toro Energy has paid for a number of speaking tours by fringe scientists who claim that exposure to low-level radiation is harmless or even beneficial to human health. Forty-five Australian medical doctors recently signed a statement  calling on Toro Energy to stop promoting junk science and noting that recent scientific research has heightened concern about exposure to radon, the main source of radiation exposure to uranium miners.

The WA Conservation Council is leading the battle to stop Toro Energy opening up the state’s first uranium mining, and has established a website  to challenge the company’s claims. The Conservation Council has also produced a detailed ‘Alternative Annual Report ‘, raising a host of concerns about Toro Energy and its plan to mine at Wiluna….. http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4026082.html

May 23, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, spinbuster, uranium