Australia eyes uranium sales to Indonesia
Australia eyes uranium sales to Indonesia
CANBERRA (Reuter): Australia's new conservative government said yesterday it was ending 13 years of curbs on uranium exports, angering environmentalists and a key political party which said it would seek to block sales in parliament.
The Liberal-National coalition, which won power in March 2 elections, said Australia had to take advantage of its 30 percent share of the world's uranium reserves and was looking to Asia for sales of the controversial nuclear fuel.
Resources Minister Warwick Parer said Australia was keen to sell to Indonesia for its planned nuclear power plants and would also look to Asian countries like Japan or South Korea who already have or plan to build nuclear power stations.
"If they (Indonesia) are going to build a nuclear power station, it's important that Australia is able to tap into that (uranium) market," Parer told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio.
Parer said Australia needed to increase its 10 percent share of the world market.
"It doesn't make sense that Australia sits on 30 percent of the world's resources and gets 10 percent of the market while Canada has 10 percent of the reserves and gets 30 percent of the market," he added.
The coalition, which ended 13 years of Labor government, said before the polls it would look at opening new uranium mines but Parer's comments drew an angry response from the Australian Democrats.
The party, which with other minor political parties control the upper house of parliament, said it would renew efforts to ban uranium exports when parliament resumes next month.
"I will reintroduce a Democrats' private member's bill which calls for a ban on uranium exports," Democrat environment spokeswoman Meg Lees said in a statement.
The government's plans to expand uranium mining and exports do not have to go through parliament but the Democrats hope the Labor opposition will support their planned legislation to block mining, the spokeswoman said.
Neither the government nor the opposition holds a majority in the Senate (upper house). "We won't accept the spurious argument that Australia should sell it because if we don't, some other country will," Lees said.
The former Labor government, bowing to the anti-nuclear lobby of its own left wing, operated a three mine uranium policy, but currently only two are operating - Energy Resources of Australia Ltd's Ranger mine in the Northern Territory and WMC Ltd's Olympic Dam mine in South Australia.
ERA, WMC and CRA Ltd have all said they are considering opening new uranium mines now the coalition has been elected.
Indonesia's National Atomic Agency said last month it hoped to start building nuclear power plants within two to three years with foreign help.
It said a site 440 kilometers east of Jakarta at Mount Muria in Central Java had been chosen for the first plant, which is estimated to cost US$2.1 billion.
But environmental critics attacked the plan as dangerous because the area is earthquake prone and said a recent opinion poll showed a majority of Indonesians against the planned plant.
Environmentalists here plan to use the April 26 10th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster to stage a national day of action to focus on uranium sales.
Eleven environmentalist groups have written to Prime Minister John Howard saying increased uranium exports would be a betrayal of environmental and non-proliferation commitments.