Nuclear dead end
Richard Broinowski - [ dead end Dick ]

WE can only hope the crucial link between uranium exports and nuclear weapons proliferation receives due attention from the ALP this weekend.
The party will be debating its policy of opposition to new uranium mines at its national conference.
The erosion of our safety standards has increased the likelihood that Australian uranium will find its way into nuclear weapons in a world where such weapons have increasing appeal to more and more countries.
There is a claim that our bilateral safeguards are among the best in the world, and that together with an effective international safeguards system, they will prevent Australian uranium from being diverted into nuclear weapons programs.
In July 1975, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam commissioned Mr Justice Fox to conduct what remains Australia's most comprehensive environmental report.
The Fox Report concluded: "The nuclear power industry is unintentionally contributing to an increased risk of nuclear war.
"This is the most serious hazard associated with the industry."
Fox gave highly conditional approval for mining and sales, subject to the strictest safeguards.
In August 1977, Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser announced these safeguards.
They included:
BUYING states must be signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
GOVERNMENT-to-government safeguard agreements must be finalised before commercial contracts are worked out.
AUSTRALIAN uranium must be in a form to attract the fullest International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards by the time it leaves Australian ownership. All places using Australian uranium must be accessible to IAEA and Australian inspectors.
THERE must be no transfer, enrichment beyond 20 per cent uranium-235, or reprocessing of any uranium without Australian government consent.
EVERY commercial contract must acknowledge that the transaction is subject to the bilateral safeguards agreement.
Because of commercial considerations, Fraser's package was gutted over the following 10 years.
To give just one example, in June 1977 sales were allowed to France, which had not signed the NPT.
Mike Rann, now SA Premier, summed up the problem in his 1982 book, Uranium: Play It Safe.
"Again and again, it has been demonstrated here and overseas that when problems over safeguards prove difficult, commercial considerations will come first," he wrote.
The Hawke Labor government further relaxed the original system through a series of complex, cynical manoeuvres.
In May 1986, Hawke introduced the principle of "equivalence".
This meant Australian uranium could in practice be used in unauthorised ways, provided that an amount of uranium equivalent to the original shipment from Australia could be seen to be used in approved activities.
Thousands of tonnes of Australian uranium are now held around the world in various enriched and unenriched forms, and with various degrees of security.
Still more worrying is the 80 tonnes of weapons-useable plutonium produced from the irradiation of Australian uranium, again held in various degrees of security.
We rely entirely on the IAEA to guard Australian uranium and its by-products.
Yet the IAEA Director General, Dr Mohamed El Baradei, has noted that the IAEA's basic rights of inspection are "fairly limited".
He says the system suffers from "vulnerabilities", that the safeguards system "clearly needs reinforcement", that efforts to improve the system have been "half-hearted", and that the safeguards system operates on a "shoestring budget".
Worse still, the safeguards system is in danger of collapsing altogether.
The 2004 report of the UN Secretary-General's high level panel on threats, challenges and change noted that we were approaching a point at which the erosion of the non-proliferation regime could become irreversible and result in "a cascade of proliferation".
These are very dangerous times to flood the international market with fresh supplies of uranium. But like the Fraser, Hawke and Keating governments before it, the Howard Government, and some elements in the parliamentary Labor Party, seem seduced by the expectation of vast profits from uranium exports.
Such expectations have fallen flat in the past.
We have had waves of uranium exploration akin to the gold rushes, but they have done little to improve the national economy.
Figures on export revenue in 2005 show that uranium accounted for less than one-third of 1 per cent of Australia's export revenue, a paltry return given the serious proliferation risks associated with the uranium export industry.
Prof RICHARD BROINOWSKI is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Sydney and a former Australian ambassador to Vietnam, Republic of Korea, Mexico, the Central American Republics and Cuba