On 26 April 1986, a nuclear reactor at Chernobyl in the Ukraine melted down and spewed radioactive materials across Europe and beyond. The human, environmental and economic impacts of the accident were profound and continue.

“Chernobyl literally exploded the myth of the ‘peaceful atom’ and caused many nations to reconsider the risks and costs of nuclear power,” said ACF nuclear free campaigner Dave Sweeney.

“On the anniversary of Chernobyl and in the continuing shadow of Fukushima it is important Australia also reviews and reconsiders the costs and consequences of our involvement in the global nuclear trade as a significant supplier of uranium – the basic fuel for both nuclear power and nuclear weapons.”

Last year it was confirmed in the federal Parliament that Australian uranium was in the failed Fukushima reactor and is now causing contamination in Japan.  However the federal government has failed to act on calls – including from the UN Secretary General – to review the industry.

ACF has called for the federal government to learn from Chernobyl and Fukushima and:

• ·         Commission an independent assessment of the environmental and social impacts of uranium mining in Australia (as recommended in the UN review into the Fukushima crisis)
• ·         Stop selling uranium to nuclear weapon states pending an independent review of importing countries’ compliance with international disarmament obligations
• ·         Strengthen international and multi-lateral initiatives by including specific performance requirements and review mechanisms in new and existing Agreements and contracts

“Uranium is the asbestos of the 21^st Century: like asbestos, the product works, but at too high a cost – and like asbestos Australia will one day stop mining and supplying it. In the meantime we need to step up to our responsibilities and review and address the impacts of the uranium trade. To fail to do so is to fail to learn from the lessons of Chernobyl and Fukushima and to fail to stop the next nuclear disaster,” Mr Sweeney said.

Four Mile uranium mine gets lease Adelaide Now, by: Julian Swallow  April 27, 2012 ALLIANCE Resources and its joint venture partner Quasar Resources have been granted a 10-year mineral lease over their Four Mile project, ending months of negotiations. Mineral Resources minister Tom Koutsantonis said on Friday that South Australia was a step closer to its next major uranium mining development. However, no timetable or funding commitment has as yet been made by the venture partners, who remain locked in a legal dispute……
The minister said that the mineral lease in the state’s far north
allowed the venture partners to develop a mining and rehabilitation
program for the Four Mile project…..

Environmental disturbance would be minimised, he said, by processing
the resource at the nearby Beverley uranium mine which is owned by
Quasar’s affiliate, Heathgate Resources.

The Four Mile project has been beset by legal disputes between
Alliance, which has a 25 per cent stake through its  wholly-owned
subsidiary, Alliance Craton Explorer, and  Quasar.

In March Alliance Resources expressed disappointment when the Federal
Court denied it the access it sought to documents held by Quasar.

It wanted to see books, records and agreements relating to the Four
Mile venture.

In the middle of February the venture partners settled their legal
dispute over a native-title mining agreement covering Four  Mile.

The dispute was about whether Quasar had the right to enter into a
native title agreement for the project that would be binding on
Alliance Resources…..
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/business/mining/four-mile-uranium-mine-gets-lease/story-e6fredhu-1226341077336

Anne Harrington, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s nonproliferation chief, said that since Obama’s April 2009 speech in Prague announcing his plans, the U.S. has helped remove enough material from about a dozen countries to make almost 30 warheads. She added that several global leaders are expected to use a nuclear security summit in Seoul, South Korea, which starts Sunday, to announce similar advances.

Arms control experts say the most difficult part of building an atomic bomb is acquiring the weapons-grade uranium or plutonium needed for the explosive core of the weapon. Locking up or eliminating these materials is crucial to preventing nuclear-armed terror.
Harrington said that’s the administration’s top national security concern: “Issue No. 1 … above anything else, keeping this material out of the hands of terrorists,” she said.
Over the past three years, officials say, the U.S. has helped Romania,
Libya, Turkey, Chile and Serbia completely clear out their stockpiles
of weapons-usable uranium. They join 13 other nations that did so
previously — Brazil, Bulgaria, Colombia, Denmark, Greece, Latvia, the
Philippines, Portugal, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and
Thailand.
For the most part, this has meant shutting down civilian research
reactors fueled by weapons-grade uranium, or converting those reactors
to use low-enriched uranium…..
http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/us-says-5-nations-clear-out-weapons-grade-uranium-1.3617219

South Asia is a dangerous nuclear minefield. All the more so in the wake of the US-India agreement, and all the more so in the wake of Labor’s decision to sell uranium to India with no conditions which would curb its weapons program or de-escalate the South Asian nuclear arms race. 

Labor Signs Up To The Arms Race, New Matilda, 5 Dec 11, Paul Howes might think the Cold War is over but the nuclear arms race hasn’t slowed. South Asia is a nuclear minefield and Labor’s decision to sell uranium to India makes it more dangerous, writes JimGreen….. Of all the idiotic, asinine contributions to Labor’s faux-debate on uranium sales to India, Howes trumped the lot with his assertion that ”The Cold War is over and it’s time for Labor to embrace that fact”.

Since the end of the Cold War the existing weapons states have been busily “modernising” their nuclear arsenals:

Pakistan and North Korea joined the nuclear weapons club by testing nuclear bombs for the first time. France, India, the US and Russia have also tested weapons. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty remains in limbo, with the culprits
including India and some of Australia’s existing uranium customers. Pakistan has spread weapons technology (originally stolen from a European consortium) to Iran, North Korea, Libya and probably elsewhere.
The tradition of bombing nuclear plants in the Middle East is alive
and well with strikes on nuclear plants in Iraq in 1991 and 2003 and
Israel’s attack on a suspected secret reactor in Syria in 2007.
South Korea (one of Australia’s uranium customers) ‘fessed up to a
secret nuclear weapons research program.
Japan continues to separate and stockpile obscene amounts of plutonium
(some of it produced from Australian uranium).
The International Atomic Energy Agency still doesn’t have reliable
“core” funding even for its basic inspection program let alone a
rigorous safeguards program; and so on.
No point trying to explain any of that to Howes — as an AWU member
said of him, he’s quicker to send than to receive. And he deals in Bob
Katter-like revelations (“the Cold War is over”) and straw-man
inanities (“working people have a right to speak out”; “Indians have a
right to power”) rather than conventional, logical argument. All the
better to paper over the breadth and depth of his ignorance and
indifference…….
A reliable source — well, a journo — tells me Kevin Rudd is filthy
with Prime Minister Gillard’s uranium decision and thinks India ought
to have been forced to make some concessions in return for uranium
sales, such as ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. If so,
Rudd ought to say so publicly…..
The US-India agreement contains no requirement for India to curb its
weapons program. The consequences have been predictable. Pakistan is
citing the US-India agreement to justify its intransigent attitude
towards a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty. China is using the
precedent of the US-India agreement to justify plans to sell more
reactors to Pakistan.

Both India and Pakistan continue to develop nuclear-capable missiles;
both are expanding their capacity to produce fissile material; both
refuse to sign or ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; both are
estimated to have increased the size of their weapons arsenals by
25-35 per cent over the past year alone.

US cables released by Wikileaks warn of the potential for incidents
such as the Mumbai terror attacks to escalate into warfare and for
warfare to escalate into nuclear warfare. Scientists warn that a
“limited” nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan could cause
catastrophic climate change in addition to the direct impacts.
Wikileaks cables reveal Kevin Rudd privately urging the US to ignore
its NPT disarmament obligations and to maintain a ”reliable” and
”credible” nuclear arsenal, and to be prepared to use force against
China.

South Asia is a dangerous nuclear minefield. All the more so in the
wake of the US-India agreement, and all the more so in the wake of
Labor’s decision to sell uranium to India with no conditions which
would curb its weapons program or de-escalate the South Asian nuclear
arms race. It is spineless, cringeworthy sycophancy which puts
Australia to shame and makes the world a more dangerous place.
http://newmatilda.com/2011/12/05/labor-signs-up-arms-race

At the Australian Labor Party’s national conference this weekend, one of the pre-eminent agenda items is a motion to end the ban on selling uranium to India.

 a new market offering high-grade uranium ore for India’s civilian reactors frees up the country’s limited indigenous supplies for boosting its military program.

India to test new missile  dubbed ‘the China killer’, The Age 3 Dec 11, Given the incendiary moniker ”the China killer” by the more sensationalist press, India’s newest nuclear-capable missile will be its most powerful yet, and an unmistakable signal to its neighbours.

We could take a principled rather than an unprincipled approach. We could lead rather than follow. 

Safeguarding uranium exports to India Online Opinion , Dr Jim Green, 1 Dec 11 A big part of the PR pitch for uranium sales to nuclear-armed India is the assertion that ‘strict’ safeguards will ‘ensure’ peaceful use of Australian uranium. Sadly, it’s just PR.

New Uranium Enrichment Technology Alarms,  Aviation Week, By Kristin Majcher Washington 23 Nov 11 General Electric says it has successfully tested a faster, cheaper way to produce nuclear reactor fuel, and is planning to commercialize the technology by building a facility in Wilmington, N.C. While the prospect of saving resources to generate energy at a lower price sounds like a breakthrough, scientists are concerned that the top-secret method of enrichment that GE is using will indirectly elevate proliferation risks around the world, thus inspiring rogue states to develop their own laser enrichment facilities for nuclear
weapons.
The enrichment technology is the Separation of Isotopes by Laser Excitation (Silex). It was developed by Silex of Australia in 1992. The technology company USEC funded early research on Silex, but abandoned it in favor of focusing on centrifuge enrichment. In 2006, GE signed an exclusive agreement to commercialize and license the technology and spearhead further research and development.
Although Silex is the only known method of laser enrichment that works and could be commercially viable, scientists are concerned because many countries have funded laser-enrichment projects. According to the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, more than 20 countries have researched laser isotope separation techniques, including China, India, Iraq, Russia, Japan and Pakistan. Although they were unsuccessful, scientists say that putting Silex back into the public eye, regardless of the safeguards GE promises, poses a problem. Showing that it works could renew efforts by countries to develop the process.

“Once you popularize the technology, you draw attention to it and have
people out there that have bits and pieces, and may talk to other
people,” says a scientist knowledgeable about Silex, who asked to
remain anonymous. “Anyone who has tried it, plus anyone who thinks
this is a promising way forward” may try to use Silex if they see that
it works.
“The people who were not able to do it in the past because they were
using older styles of laser enrichment will say ‘this is what we’re
doing wrong,’” the scientist adds. “In every country, there is a
bureaucracy or interest section that may find this as an obvious and
natural research agenda for them.”…..

security concerns about what happens to the material
that is created at GLE’s site are irrelevant. Instead, the debate is
that if GLE proves that this once-dormant and powerful technology
works, other countries may be inspired to try again.

One big concern about Silex is that it requires significantly less
electricity, resources and facility space than gas centrifuge
enrichment. Also, while governments are familiar with means for
detecting gas centrifuge plants, the same methods do not exist for
laser enrichment because it is so new.
A study group from the American Physical Society (APS) says in a
report titled “Technical Steps to Support Nuclear Arsenal Downsizing,”
that many of the good things GE is using to make a case about
Silex—less use of resources and electricity and increased
efficiency—are actually negatives that make it easier for rogue states
to hide clandestine plants. GE says Silex needs a 25% smaller
footprint than enrichment centrifuge technology.

“The study group found that some of the new enrichment and
reprocessing technologies could represent proliferation
‘game-changers’ since they would lead to smaller, more efficient and
possibly less expensive methods for the production and use of nuclear
materials that would be more difficult to detect,” the report
states………
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=defense&id=news/dti/2011/11/01/DT_11_01_2011_p23-382620.xml&headline=New%20Uranium%20Enrichment%20Technology%20Alarms

Inevitably, if Labor moves to sell uranium to India then Pakistan will make a political and diplomatic point of being the next cab in the radioactive rank. 

If Australia sells uranium to India, will Pakistan be next?, November 18, 2011   Crikey ,  Dave Sweeney   Uranium is both common and controversial in resource rich Australia. It is tricky stuff as it can be used to produce electricity or to fuel nuclear bombs. And India has both…….

A recent high level UN report makes the nuclear power and weapons connection clear and has a special relevance against the current backdrop of pro-sales positioning.
In the shadow of the continuing Fukushima nuclear crisis the September 2011 UN report plainly states: “Nuclear science and technology can also be used to develop nuclear weapons. Compliance with international legal instruments, such as the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, other bilateral and multilateral non-proliferation agreements and safeguards agreements with the IAEA, is therefore an essential element of the responsible use of nuclear power.”

Australia, as a significant global uranium supplier, has a responsibility to act responsibly. Different rules should apply to uranium supply than to other less destructive and divisive exports.

A first step would be to drop the pretence that the Indian nuclear track record is “exemplary” and instead acknowledge that India is a nuclear-armed state that obtained its weapons capacity in breach of international commitments via the misuse of Canadian supplied research reactors…….

Like Dr Strangelove, those Labor figures like Resource Minister Martin Ferguson and Paul Howes who support sales to India are straddling a time bomb.

India’s nuclear armed neighbour Pakistan is hardly likely to be happy with any such policy change. They will be aware of the remarkably candid policy assessment provided to the Times of India by the former chair of India’s National Security Advisory Board, Mr. K Subrahmanyam, in 2005 that “..it is to India’s advantage to categorize as many power reactors as possible as civilian ones to be refuelled by imported uranium and conserve our native uranium fuel for weapons grade uranium production.”

Like India, Pakistan is a nuclear armed state that refuses to sign the NPT. There is no doubt the Islamabad will be keeping a close eye Canberra and on Darling Harbour come Labor’s National Conference in December.

Inevitably, if Labor moves to sell uranium to India then Pakistan will make a political and diplomatic point of being the next cab in the radioactive rank. Hot on the heels of the PM’s comments was a call from Pakistan’s High Commissioner to Australia confirming that Pakistan would now seek to access Australian uranium and Julia Gillard’s defence that India is a special case is hardly likely to cut much ice in Islamabad.

The choice for Australia is clear: we can stand with the vast majority of nations in upholding and attempting to strengthen the fragile nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament regime, or we can join with those whose actions actively undermine it…. http://blogs.crikey.com.au/rooted/2011/11/18/if-australia-sells-uranium-to-india-will-

Option #1 is to leave uranium in the ground. It’s not as radical an idea as it might sound. Uranium accounts for a paltry 0.3 per cent of national export revenue and 0.03 per cent of Australian jobs. Few would notice if the industry vanished and still fewer would miss it.

Option #2 is to apply current government policy – restricting supply to countries that have signed the NPT. A variation of that option would be to restrict supply to NPT signatories that are serious about their non-proliferation and disarmament obligations – that would require a rethink of supply to, for example, the US and China since they have not ratified the CTBT.

Option #3 would be to insist on meaningful concessions from India as a
condition of uranium supply.

One condition would be an immediate, verified cessation of the
production of fissile material for weapons and agreement that uranium
supply would cease immediately if India resumed the production of
fissile material for weapons.

A second, important condition would be for India to sign and ratify
the CTBT along with a bilateral treaty provision making it clear that
uranium supply would cease if India resumed weapons testing. (By way
of stark contrast, the US-India agreement contains mind-boggling
clauses about the steps to be taken to ensure ongoing nuclear trade
even if India does resume weapons testing.)

A third condition would be an end to India’s development and testing
of nuclear-capable missiles. Julia Gillard didn’t forewarn Kevin Rudd
about her announcement on Wednesday but it’s likely that India was
forewarned – and duly celebrated by testing an intermediate-range
missile.

Option #4 is to sell uranium to India with no meaningful conditions
whatsoever. That is the path that Gillard and Rudd are set upon. There
will be some theatre but the intention is to pursue the one and only
option that is completely irresponsible and indefensible…
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3680602.html