Jim Green
The federal Coalition government's push for uranium sales to China sets a new low in Australian uranium export policy.
The Australia-China negotiations provoked an angry editorial in the January 21 Taipei Times: "One can almost hear the Australian Government's saliva collecting in its mouth at the prospect of selling billions of dollars of uranium from its huge reserves to an eager customer for decades to come. Never mind that the customer is an unstable Third World despot with a big chip on its shoulder...
"We can expect to hear a lot of highfalutin language from Australia ... about the need to modernize China and the role 'clean' nuclear energy can play in a country desperate for fuel. Such 'global citizen' shtick won't wash. All of this is happening as evidence emerges of tawdry connections between [the department of foreign affairs] and the Australian Wheat Board, which is under investigation for feeding massive bribes to Iraqi officials while former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was still in power."
Would the Australian government be any more transparent about the uranium supply conditions in China than it has been in the Iraq wheat scandal? China has recently demonstrated in relation to iron ore import prices that it is willing to flout international agreements, including those it has signed. Would the regime take uranium supply conditions any more seriously?
The arguments against allowing uranium sales to China are compelling. Chief among the reasons is China's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs, including its nuclear weapons program. The regime pays lip service to its disarmament obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and refuses to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. It also has a history of exporting WMD technology.
Since the flaws in the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) inspection system were exposed in the 1980s and '90s, NPT member states have been encouraged to agree to a strengthened safeguards program - but the Australian government is not insisting that China subscribe to strengthened safeguards as a condition of uranium sales.
As a nuclear weapons state, China is not subject to full-scope IAEA safeguards. Nuclear facilities using Australian uranium would be subject only to voluntary inspections, and even that is no simple matter since Australian uranium is indistinguishable from, and mixed with, uranium from elsewhere.
Further, the "safeguards" actually permit the use of Australian uranium in nuclear weapons. All that is required is that an equivalent amount of uranium is set aside for non-military uses. Verifying this is easier said than done.
Nuclear war
In the event of military conflict between China and Taiwan - or even just escalating tensions - it would become even more difficult to prevent the use of Australian uranium in Chinese weapons. The 2002 US Nuclear Posture Review envisages nuclear strikes on China in the event of war between China and Taiwan. Last year, Zhu Chenghu, a People's Liberation Army general, said: "If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition onto the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons. We Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all the cities east of Xian. Of course, the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese."
China has insufficient uranium for both its civil and military nuclear programs, as the Chinese ambassador to Australia acknowledged last December. Australian uranium sales would free up China's limited domestic reserves for the production of nuclear weapons.
There are other good reasons to oppose uranium sales to China, in addition to the unacceptable risk of contributing to nuclear weapons proliferation. It is doubtful whether the Chinese nuclear industry is operated with any more caution than its notorious coalmining industry. Wang Yi, a nuclear energy expert at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, told the New York Times in January last year: "We don't have a very good plan for dealing with spent fuel, and we don't have very good emergency plans for dealing with catastrophe."
China's government has a horrendous record on human rights and labour protection, and whistle-blower protections are absent. It rates in the bottom 10 countries in the world for press freedom. If diversion of Australian uranium to China's nuclear weapons program took place, it is highly unlikely that the media would investigate and report on it.
On March 23, ALP leader Kim Beazley said a Labor government would strengthen uranium safeguards. Uranium customer countries would: need to be NPT signatory states and be "living by" their NPT disarmament and non-proliferation commitments, demonstrate "practical and continuing commitment to non-proliferation policies" and ratify international and bilateral nuclear safeguards agreements; be required to "join in a new diplomatic caucus of like-minded countries ... which will be the basis for a major new push to put non-proliferation at the centre of international politics"; and "accept the world's strictest safeguards on the peaceful use of uranium".
Given China's record, how then could the ALP possibly support uranium sales to that government? There's no answer, but Labor is supporting it anyway.
Exporting to India?
The Howard government is considering allowing uranium sales to India. The government is investigating the detail of a nuclear cooperation agreement recently struck between the United States and India, and is currently in the illogical position of supporting the US-India agreement while refusing to allow Australian uranium sales to India.
The government disingenuously claims that the US-India agreement is positive because it places some of India's facilities under safeguards inspections. But the main effect of the deal is that India now has a free hand to upgrade its nuclear WMD arsenal while enjoying nuclear technology transfers from the US.
Proposed uranium exports to India must be rejected because India is a nuclear weapons state and is one of just three nations which has not ratified the NPT. The sales would undoubtedly weaken the international non-proliferation regime and would increase the risk of other countries pulling out of the NPT and developing arsenals of nuclear WMD - and doing so with the expectation that uranium could still be obtained.
As retired diplomat Professor Richard Broinowski notes: "The sale of Australian uranium to India would not just weaken our non-proliferation credentials - it would also signal to some of our major uranium customers, such as Japan and South Korea, that we do not take too seriously their own adherence to the NPT. They may as a result walk away from the treaty and develop nuclear weapons - against North Korea, China or perhaps Russia - without necessarily fearing a cut-off of Australian supplies."
India and Pakistan both tested nuclear weapons in 1998. It is irresponsible to be supplying WMD feedstock in the form of uranium to a subcontinent wracked by tension and given the active nuclear weapons programs in India and Pakistan.
As with China, India has limited domestic reserves of uranium, so in addition to the risk of Australian uranium being used in Indian nuclear weapons, Australian uranium sales could free up India's limited domestic reserves for the production of weapons.
End all uranium exports!
According to John Carlson, head of the federal government's so-called Australian Safeguards and Non-proliferation Office, Australia sells uranium only to countries with an "impeccable" record on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, yet few if any of Australia's uranium customer countries have an impeccable record.
The US, France and Britain are uranium customers, but also nuclear weapons states that evidently have no intention of complying with their disarmament obligations under the NPT. Japan, a major customer of Australian uranium, has developed a nuclear "threshold" or "breakout" capability - it could produce nuclear weapons within months of a decision to do so, relying heavily on facilities, materials and expertise from its civil nuclear program. An obvious source of fissile material for a weapons program in Japan would be its stockpile of plutonium - including plutonium produced using Australian uranium.
South Korea has been a customer for Australian uranium since 1986. In 2004, it disclosed information about a range of activities that violated its NPT commitments - uranium enrichment from 1979-81, the separation of small quantities of plutonium in 1982, uranium enrichment experiments in 2000 and the production of depleted uranium munitions from 1983-87. It is not known whether Australian-sourced nuclear materials were used in any of the illicit research.
[Jim Green is an anti-nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth.]
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, April 5, 2006.
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