Australia -- with the world's largest deposits of uranium -- should quickly lift restrictions on export and enrichment of the radioactive fuel to boost the multimillion dollar nuclear industry and help reduce the nation's reliance on polluting fossil fuels, a government report found yesterday.
The report into the uranium industry said federal and state governments should lift a long-standing restriction on opening more than the current three uranium mines in the nation.
"Skill shortages and government policies restricting the growth of the industry should be urgently addressed," the report said.
The report -- commissioned by the government in June -- said enrichment of uranium ore in Australia could add A$1.8 billion (US$1.4 billion) to the A$573 million a year uranium export industry.
"Current legal and regulatory impediments should be removed," the report said.
The report found 25 reactors could be supplying a third of Australia's energy needs by 2050.
The opposition center-left Labor Party, which introduced a ban on any new uranium mines while in power in 1983, called on Prime Minister John Howard to explain where the nuclear reactors would be built and where the radioactive waste would be dumped.
"If John Howard is re-elected, we will go down an inexorable course for 25 nuclear reactors in this country and tens of thousands of tonnes of nuclear waste," Labor Leader Kim Beazley told reporters, referring to elections due next year.
Howard refused to speculate on how many nuclear power plants could be built in Australia or where they would be located.
"It's too early for me as the leader of the government to start speculating about numbers and dates but the economics are obvious and compelling," Howard told reporters in Vietnam where he attended a weekend summit of APEC leaders.
"My approach will protect the coal industry. The approach of others will undermine it because they see the coal industry as the cause of the problem," Howard said, referring to Labor.
"I see the coal industry as part of the solution, as I see nuclear power, as I see renewables," he added.
Australia, which holds almost 40 percent of the world's known uranium reserves, imposes strict rules on its uranium sales to ensure that the fuel is not put to military use.
But sales are expected to soar with a recent agreement to supply uranium 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.
Australia, the world's largest coal exporter, uses the fossil fuel to generate most of its electricity. The nation's dependence on coal makes it the world's worst greenhouse gas polluter per capita, according to the World Resources Institute.
Generating nuclear power would be between 20 and 50 percent more expensive than coal or gas-fired power, the report said.
"Nuclear power and renewable energy sources will only become competitive in Australia in a system where the costs of greenhouse gas emissions are explicitly recognized," the report said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS