Report: Australia should end limits - Yahoo! News

CANBERRA, Australia - A government report on Tuesday recommended Australia lift its long-standing restrictions on the export and enrichment of uranium, which it imposed to ensure the mineral is not used to develop nuclear weapons and to allay concerns about radioactive waste disposal.
Australia, which has the world's largest deposits of uranium, only allows three uranium mines to operate in the country, bringing in about $441 million a year.
The report said Australia could add another $1.4 billion annually to its uranium mining industry if federal and state governments lifted restrictions on ore enrichment.
"Consultations revealed support for the expansion of Australian mining and export of uranium," the report said. "Skill shortages and government policies restricting the growth of the industry should be urgently addressed."
"Current legal and regulatory impediments should be removed," the report said.
Prime Minister John Howard commissioned the wide-ranging investigation of uranium in June in what observers said was a bid to soften public opposition to an expansion of the contentious uranium export trade. His center-right coalition, which will attempt to win a fifth three-year term in government next year, is also under fire for refusing to ratify the Kyoto agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Environmental groups pre-empted the release of the report with Greenpeace declaring there was no environmental or economic justification for nuclear energy.
Sales of uranium are expected to soar with a recent agreement to supply the mineral to China's burgeoning energy market. Australia is also considering selling uranium to India to meet its growing energy demands despite New Delhi's refusal to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
The report said expanding uranium mining would also lessen the country's dependence on coal, which it uses to generate most of its electricity, making it the world's worst greenhouse gas polluter per capita.
Though generating nuclear power would be between 20 to 50 percent more expensive than coal- or gas-fired power, the report said costs would come down as the nuclear power industry became more competitive.
Nuclear physicist Ziggy Switkowski, the head of the six-member investigation team that produced the report, said meeting Australia's rising energy demands while significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions would be more expensive without nuclear power.
Australia and the United States are the only industrialized nations to refuse to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Howard has said that committing to carbon pollution reduction targets would unfairly disadvantage Australia because developing countries such as China and India have not been given targets under Kyoto.
However, Howard has said Australia would join a global system of Kyoto-style carbon trading if China and India were also part of it.