Miners talk up uranium safeguards - Business - Business - smh.com.au

AUSTRALIAN officials will ask China to agree to strict safeguards on uranium sales, and an industry group says Australia's chief negotiator will take a tough line on the issue.
But the Australian Conservation Foundation doubts China has the means to ensure safeguards are followed through.
Talks will be held tomorrow on a deal the industry-funded Uranium Information Centre says will be a significant step forward as China plans a huge expansion in nuclear energy plants.
But China must agree to use the resource for peaceful purposes only, and critics of the deal believe China's nuclear energy program has links with its weapons program. There have also been concerns about China's threats to use nuclear force in staking its claim to Taiwan, and its poor environmental record.
The uranium centre manager, Ian Hore-Lacy, said: "I think all Australians would support a firm line on that [safeguards]."
He said the industry was trusting the professionalism of Australia's chief negotiator, John Carlson, the director-general of the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office, a division of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
"He's a very meticulous person and not the sort of person you can pull wool over his eyes," Mr Hore-Lacy said.
Australia has up to two-fifths of the world's uranium deposits and exports 11,500 tonnes of the resource annually.
Mr Hore-Lacy said China was unlikely to buy all its extra uranium from Australia and, at its peak, Chinese demand would represent only one-third of current exports, or one-sixth after BHP Billiton's expansion of its Olympic Dam mine in South Australia.
Australia only sells uranium to nations that have signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and a bilateral agreement. The agreement stipulates purchasing nations must not enrich the uranium for weapons, must separate military and civil processing, must show that the resource can be accounted for and must submit to International Atomic Energy Agency inspections.
However, the anti-nuclear campaigner for the Australian Conservation Foundation, Dave Sweeney, said he was sceptical.
"The key things which have been so important in improving the nuclear industry in the West - the independent trade unions, rigorous media, independent regulators, green groups and environmental watchdogs - these don't exist in China."
Mr Sweeney said a uranium deal with China would give Rio Tinto more reasons to stick with its troubled Ranger mine in the Northern Territory's Kakadu National Park and hold out for the traditional owners of the nearby Jabiluka site to reverse their opposition to development of a mine.
The deal would also put "wind in the sails" of uranium exploration companies.
Mr Hore-Lacy said it was inevitable Australia would get more uranium mines; it was just a matter of waiting for state government policies to change. The states remain opposed to expanding uranium mining, but Federal Government is not.
"There is a high world demand for clean energy and the wisdom of meeting that demand will prevail over ideological considerations," Mr Hore-Lacy said.
Australia already sells uranium to other nuclear powers, including Britain, the US and France.