Jim Green
From the corporate media reports of the uranium export agreement struck between Canberra and Beijing last week, you could be forgiven for not knowing that China need not subject a single gram of Australian uranium to safeguards inspections. Further, the uranium can be used in nuclear weapons without breaching the terms of the agreement.
The Chinese regime can, if it wants, accept Australian uranium at a uranium conversion plant not subject to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). To meet the terms of the agreement, it would need to transfer an equivalent amount of nuclear material to a safeguarded facility at some other stage of the nuclear fuel cycle (e.g. an enrichment plant). In theory then, there would not be a net transfer of nuclear material to un-safeguarded facilities (and potentially to weapons' production).
However, even if such transfers did take place, Australian uranium could easily find its way into Chinese weapons. Assuming exports of 4000 tonnes per year, Australian uranium could be converted into 800 nuclear weapons each year.
This directly contradicts foreign minister Alexander Downer's claim on April 3 that the agreements "establish strict safeguards arrangements and conditions to ensure Australian uranium supplied to China ... is used exclusively for peaceful purposes".
It is far from certain that there will be a transfer of nuclear materials such that there is no net contribution to China's stockpile of non-safeguarded nuclear materials.
For starters, it would be naive to take the secretive, militaristic and murderous Chinese regime on good faith. It is also doubtful that IAEA inspections could ensure that a transfer to a safeguarded facility took place, or that it was not subsequently transferred to military use. The April 5 Australian reported that less than $1 million of the IAEA's $510 million annual budget is spent safeguarding China's nuclear facilities.
As a nuclear weapons state, China can choose which of its facilities are safeguarded and which are not. It can also decide — on "national security" grounds — to remove facilities from safeguards. Even if IAEA inspections take place, accounting errors and uncertainties are inevitable and provide a loophole for the diversion of nuclear material.
China could decide at any time to pull out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and no longer subject any of its facilities to IAEA inspections. By then, the Australian government may be permitting uranium sales to India — not a NPT signatory — providing a rationale for continuing uranium sales to China.
The uranium export agreement contains no provision for Australian government representatives to inspect and monitor exported uranium or the facilities in which it is used. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) can be expected to be as negligent in tracking uranium exports to China as it has been with wheat sales to Iraq.
In any case, DFAT's monitoring of exported uranium (and by-products such as plutonium) amounts to nothing more than checking the sums in records compiled by China and the IAEA. There are almost always discrepancies in nuclear accounting processes, called "material unaccounted for" (MUF). According to DFAT, none of the MUF arising from Australia's uranium exports around the world could possibly have been diverted for weapons production because, well, just because.
One theme of the rabidly pro-nuclear media coverage of recent weeks is that new uranium mines will be required to satisfy China's demand for "clean, green, Aussie uranium". This has added momentum to the wave of financial speculation in companies that have an interest in uranium exploration and mining. PM John Howard has gone so far as to threaten to seize control of uranium mining powers from the states.
China's current demand for uranium is just 1500 tonnes annually. With its planned nuclear power expansion, this could rise to 10,000 tonnes annually by 2020, and Australian companies could hope to secure about 30-40% of that market.
Australian uranium production is already more than 10,000 tonnes annually and will increase with the expansion of the Roxby Downs mine in South Australia. Clearly, no new mines would be required to satisfy China's demand.
[Jim Green is an anti-nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth.]
From Green Left Weekly, April 12, 2006.
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