By Anthony Brown
The resumption of French nuclear weapons testing in the South Pacific has once again drawn public attention to the issue of Australian uranium exports to France.
Although the federal government announced that it had placed a ban on new contracts for uranium sales to French power utilities until France signed the proposed comprehensive ban on nuclear tests, this did not apply to existing ones.
According to recent media reports, contracts for the supply of uranium to France have several years to run, and Australian company Energy Resources of Australia (ERA) will continue exporting to French power utilities.
But who gets Australia's uranium in France? Why is one of France's largest companies buying up Australia's non-producing uranium mines? And what connections has this company with the French military?
The main French player in uranium in Australia is the Compagnie Generale des Matieres Nucleaires (Cogema). Cogema is recognised as one of the world's largest uranium companies, supplying about 160 nuclear power stations worldwide.
In 1990 Cogema accounted for about 86% of total French uranium production.
According to the Financial Times International Yearbook 1994 on Mining, Cogema's main activities are in uranium and gold exploration, production and concentration, uranium enrichment services, fuel assembly fabrication, spent fuel reprocessing, uranium and plutonium recycling and waste conditioning.
In Australia, it has a small but significant interest in ERA. ERA owns Australia's only major producing uranium site, Ranger in the Northern Territory.
Since 1983 the federal government, in line with Labor Party policy, has allowed only three mines to negotiate export contracts for the sale of uranium.
These are Ranger, considered to be the world's fourth largest uranium producer; Nabarlek, also in the Northern Territory; and Western Mining Corporation's Olympic Dam in South Australia.
Nabarlek went out of production in 1989, and Olympic Dam's uranium operations were scaled down in 1994 in response to depressed prices in world markets.
However, federal government restrictions relate only to exports, not to exploration or the readying of mines for future production. In fact, Australia has 37 potential uranium mines waiting for a change in federal government policy.
Of these, Cogema has interests, either directly or through its subsidiaries Afmeco Pty Ltd and Urangesellschaft, in eight.
These are at Alligator Rivers, Koongarra, Mount Permain and Twin Rivers in the Northern Territory, Ben Lomond and Chillagoe in Queensland, and Manyingee and Yeelirrie in Western Australia.
The Register of Australian Mining 1994/95 notes that most of these mines are being maintained in good standing by Cogema in anticipation of a change in the government's "three mines" policy.
Cogema itself is 100% owned by another French giant, the French government-controlled Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). CEA produces nuclear fuels and builds and maintains nuclear power plants.
According to Michael T. Hatch, in his book Politics and Nuclear Power (1986), the French government created CEA just after the second world war to develop nuclear energy in France.
But he points out that this development was dictated largely by military considerations. The French were wary of US influence in Western Europe after the war and, not wishing to be dependent on the United States for their defence, they decided to produce their own nuclear weapons.
So from the start, France's nuclear industry was tied to military ambitions.
In 1976, CEA formed Cogema, as Hatch writes, to provide firmer state control over the nuclear fuel cycle.
In their book, The Nuclear Barons (1982), Peter Pringle and James Spigelman write that CEA has complete control over all aspects of France's nuclear fuel cycle.
Basically, the cycle begins with the exploration and mining of uranium. The uranium is then enriched and fashioned into fuel rods for nuclear reactors. After the rods have been spent, and now containing plutonium, they are recycled and used in light-water and breeder reactors or as material for the production of nuclear weapons.
Pringle and Spigelman point out CEA's interest in the French nuclear industry is more than merely civilian. It also runs an enrichment plant for producing bomb-grade material and operates a military reprocessing plant.
Within the CEA there is a section called the Directorate of Military Applications (DAM).It is responsible for researching, developing, producing and maintaining nuclear warheads for the French military.
The plutonium, tritium, lithium and highly enriched uranium which the military needs are all produced by Cogema.
Among Cogema's directors is a representative from the French Ministry of Defence.