Australia and China sign deal on uranium trade
AUSTRALIA: Australia and China signed a nuclear safeguards deal on
Monday to allow Beijing to import Australian uranium for power
generation, but an Australian minister said exports were unlikely to
start for some years.
The deal was signed in the presence of visiting Chinese Premier Wen
Jiabao and Australian Prime Minister John Howard.
China is expected to build 40 to 50 nuclear power plants over the
next 20 years and needs steady supplies of uranium.
Australia has about 40 percent of the world's known uranium reserves,
but it only allows sales to countries which have signed the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) who also agree to a separate bilateral
safeguards deal.
But it has only three operating uranium mines, owned by BHP Billiton,
Rio Tinto and General Atomics of the United States, and Resources
Minister Ian Macfarlane said big uranium exports to China were unlikely
to start until 2010.
"Australia is already fully committed in terms of uranium production
through until about 2008, bearing in mind that the signing of this
agreement means that this is really only the start of the process,"
Macfarlane told Australian radio.
He said once the safeguards deal was signed, China would then need to
begin commercial negotiations with uranium producers in Australia, and
new mines would probably need to be developed that would require
licensing by the government.
"Realistically in terms of any significant quantity we are probably
looking at some time past 2010," said Macfarlane, who met Wen in the
Western Australian state capital Perth on Sunday. Canberra, Monday,
Reuters |