Antinuclear

India is not accountable for what uses it has for Australia’s uranium

Undermining Nuclear Non-Proliferation: Energy and Security Politics in the Australia-India-Japan-U.S. Nuclear Nexus 核不拡散の土台崩し　オーストラリア·インド·日本·米国間におけるエネルギーと安全保障政策 The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 12, Issue 46, No. 2, November 1, 2014 Adam Broinowski 

“……….Ten of India’s twenty nuclear facilities are beyond the regulatory authority of the IAEA and India only selectively recognises IAEA safeguards for specific foreign supplied reactors and facilities. India also refuses to submit to suppliers inventory reports and accounting processes for nuclear material flowing through the nuclear cycle. As the IAEA is not able to fully inspect India’s dual-purpose (civilian and military) indigenous reactors and facilities for reprocessing, enrichment, retransfers to third countries, research and development or the production of tritium (used as a trigger for weapons), India is not fully accountable to either the IAEA or the supplier nation with which it has a bilateral agreement with in-built IAEA norms.

“…….despite PM Abbott’s assurances that ‘suitable safeguards’ were in place to guarantee that Australian uranium would be used for ‘peaceful purposes’ and for ‘civilian use only’, as the former Director General of the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office John Carlson points out, the Agreement departs from two principles of Australia’s 1987 Safeguards Act (section 51):⁴⁰ the acquirement of ‘consent to reprocessing’ from the Australian government prior to the separation of plutonium from spent fuel; and the ‘right of return’ of nuclear materials supplied in the event of a breach of the agreement.⁴¹ Instead, the Agreement defers to the US-India nuclear cooperation agreement in which India would reprocess in facilities built with the assistance of US companies, and leaves open the question of how separated plutonium would be used or how arbitration would apply to settle disputes.

So even if India adheres to Australia’s requirements that its uranium be used solely to supply civil nuclear reactors for electricity generation that may be inspected by IAEA as per the nuclear safeguards agreement, Australia’s (or any other NPT members’) uranium export to India effectively supplements or liberates limited supplies of Indian uranium for military uses.⁴² Nor could, in the unlikely discovery of the ‘misallocation’ of some Australian origin uranium toward military use, the IAEA force compliance. In fact, whether or not India accounts for the flows of Australian material in its nuclear fuel cycle, it is impossible to verify whether it has actually adhered to the safeguards.

In sum, the contingent or ‘strategic’ approach to nuclear non-proliferation as led by the United States and the former Soviet Union has undermined the credibility of the IAEA safeguards as part of the NPT regulatory regime.⁴³

The costs of boosting India’s rise All of Australia’s three currently operational mines – Ranger, Olympic Dam and Beverley – are known to have caused environmental problems by seepage and dispersal from their tailings dams into the surrounding ecosystem. From 80 possible uranium sites in Queensland, the new demand from India for Australian uranium will likely draw from the Mary Kathleen mine which has re-opened despite its negative environmental impact on surrounding lands, and the Ben Lomond mine near Mt Isa in Queensland. Uranium will likely be shipped from Townsville Port, which has applied to become the state’s yellowcake gateway.

Together with coal mined from the gargantuan Carmichael Coal and Rail project in the Galilee Basin, which has been approved by the Queensland government (owned by Indian coal giant Adani, Australia-India combine GVK Hancock, and Palmer’s Waratah project), the uranium will be shipped from a new export terminal at Abbot Point. Unless plans are halted, ships will depart from these ports and pass through a newly dredged channel through the world heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef. Alternatively, the material could be freighted by road to Darwin or Adelaide ports (which hold uranium licenses).⁴⁴Environmentalists in both India (Conservation Action Trust) and Australia (Greenpeace/Environmental Justice Australia) mounted a campaign against the Carmichael mine arguing that it threatens the health and livelihood of poor rural people in India while not delivering the benefits promised, and is contrary to the principles of ecologically sustainable development

Adam Broinowski is an ARC postdoctoral research fellow at the School of Pacific and Asian History, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University. His recent work includes a chapter, ‘Sovereign Power Ambition and the Realities of the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster’ in Nadesan/Boys/McKillop/Wilcox (eds.), Fukushima: Dispossession or Denuclearization?, The Dispossesion Publishing Group, 2014, and a forthcoming article, ‘Conflicting Immunities: Priorities of Life and Sovereignty amid the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster’,European Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies, December 2014. His book, Cultural Responses to Occupation in Japan: The Performing Body during and after the Cold War is forthcoming in 2015.http://japanfocus.org/-Adam-Broinowski/4226

February 25, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | General News