CLAIMS about the potential economic benefits of uranium sales to India are laughable.
Directly or indirectly, Australia will be fuelling a nuclear arms race in South Asia … for a pittance in return.
It is foolish and dangerous to sell uranium to a country that is actively expanding its nuclear weapons arsenal and refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
Opinion: Race to export uranium to India only has a booby prize http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/opinion-race-to-export-uranium-to-india-only-has-a-booby-prize/story-fnihsr9v-1227050580065 JIM GREEN THE COURIER-MAIL SEPTEMBER 08, 2014
- CLAIMS about the potential economic benefits of uranium sales to India are laughable.
Michael Angwin from the Australian Uranium Association claimed that Australia could sell 2500 tonnes of uranium annually to India by 2030, generating export sales of $300 million. A 2011 report in the Fairfax press claimed that uranium sales to India could generate $1.7 billion in annual exports.
Such claims ignore readily available facts.
According to the World Nuclear Association, India’s uranium demand this year will amount to just 913 tonnes – just 1.4 per cent of world demand. If Australia supplies 20 per cent of that demand, uranium export revenue will increase by 3 per cent.
Vanessa Guthrie from Adelaide-based uranium explorer Toro Energy, who is accompanying Prime Minister Tony Abbott on his trip to India, claims that by 2018-19 the uranium industry could generate 10,000 jobs.
But according to the most generous estimate, that of the World Nuclear Association, uranium mining and exploration account for just 1700 jobs in Australia – that’s 0.015 per cent of all jobs. So Guthrie anticipates a sixfold expansion in just five years, at a time when global nuclear power capacity is stagnant?
That’s laughable. Mr Abbott may struggle to keep a straight face as Guthrie dishes up this nonsense in India.
But there’s nothing funny about other aspects of the proposal to sell uranium to India.
It is foolish and dangerous to sell uranium to a country that is actively expanding its nuclear weapons arsenal and refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
And there’s nothing funny about brutal state repression of many thousands of Indian citizens protesting against nuclear projects, including the murder of at least five people.
The hopeless mismanagement of India’s nuclear industry would be funny if it wasn’t so serious.
India’s Public Accounts Committee said in a report last year that the country’s nuclear safety regime is “fraught with grave risks” and that the nuclear regulator is weak and under-resourced. In 2012, India’s Auditor-General found that 60 per cent of safety inspections for operating nuclear power plants were either delayed or not undertaken at all.
And there’s nothing funny about the risks arising from domestic and regional political tensions in India. To give just one example, transport of uranium to the Uranium Corporation of India Ltd processing plant was suspended in May after an ore-laden truck was torched by Maoists.
Prime Minister Abbott is promising “suitable safeguards” to ensure that Australian uranium remains in peaceful use in India. But Australia has no authority or capacity to carry out safeguard inspections in India – we are entirely reliant on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The IAEA−India safeguards agreement is on the public record, if only because it was leaked, and it is clear from the agreement that inspections will be few and far between, if indeed there are any inspections at all.
Even if IAEA inspections do occur in India, another problem looms: Uranium exports freeing up India’s domestic reserves for weapons production. K. Subrahmanyam, former head of the India’s National Security Advisory Board, has said that: “Given India’s uranium ore crunch and the need to build up our minimum credible nuclear deterrent arsenal as fast as possible, it is to India’s advantage to categorise as many power reactors as possible as civilian ones to be refuelled by imported uranium and conserve our native uranium fuel for weapons-grade plutonium production.”
Directly or indirectly, Australia will be fuelling a nuclear arms race in South Asia … for a pittance in return.
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