Jim Green
An SBS-commissioned Newspoll of 1200 Australians last September found that 53% were opposed to uranium exports to China, with just 31% in favour. Nevertheless, on January 17 the federal government began negotiating a bilateral uranium export agreement with a Chinese delegation in Canberra and the negotiations will continue in the coming months.
What would happen to a whistleblower raising concerns about the diversion of materials from China's nuclear power program to its weapons of mass destruction program? Most likely the same fate as befell Sun Xiaodi, who was concerned about environmental contamination at a uranium mine in north-west China. The non-government organisation Human Rights in China reports that Sun Xiaodi was sacked and harassed, and in April 2005, immediately after speaking to a foreign journalist, he was abducted by state authorities and has not been heard from since.
Beijing's record of media censorship is equally deplorable. According to Reporters Without Borders, at least 27 journalists were being held in prison at the start of last year, making China the world's largest prison for journalists.
Uranium sales to China would set a poor precedent. Will we now sell uranium to all repressive, secretive, military states, or just some, or just China?
IAEA 'safeguards'
For information about any diversion of Australian uranium for nuclear weapons production we would be completely reliant on the inspection system of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the provisions of the bilateral export agreement.
As a nuclear weapons state, China is not subject to full-scope IAEA safeguards. Facilities using Australian uranium would be subject to inspections, but "our" uranium would be mixed with, and indistinguishable from, uranium sourced elsewhere. Further, because the IAEA's inspection program is chronically under-resourced, inspections would not be sufficiently frequent and rigorous to provide confidence - let alone certainty - that Australian uranium was not being diverted.
As for the bilateral agreement currently being negotiated, PM John Howard said on January 13 that the conditions for these agreements were laid down at the time of the Fraser government. But the conditions spelt out by Malcolm Fraser in May 1977 were being weakened literally within weeks of their creation.
Taken alone, none of the numerous "adjustments" to bilateral agreement provisions since May 1977 amount to a fundamental departure, but overall there has been a clear downgrading of safeguards. Reflecting these concerns, West Australian Acting Premier Eric Ripper recently said that there should be no exports of uranium to China or any other country because of the limitations of the safeguards.
Key provisions in bilateral agreements have never been invoked. It is commendable that Australian consent is required before uranium is enriched beyond 20% uranium-235 (highly enriched uranium can be used in nuclear weapons), but no customer country has ever sought consent to enrich beyond 20%. More importantly, numerous requests to reprocess spent nuclear fuel produced from Australian uranium have been received, but they have never once been rejected, even when this leads to the stockpiling of plutonium.
Given that bilateral agreement provisions have been repeatedly watered down, and some key remaining provisions have never been invoked, it cannot truthfully be claimed that Australia's uranium export safeguards are better than any in the world.
Weakening export scrutiny
Freedom of Information documents released last year reveal that Beijing wants to further weaken provisions contained in bilateral agreements, though the detail remains unclear. Does China want a free hand to enrich uranium or to separate plutonium from spent fuel without seeking Australian consent?
Currently, China claims that it is not producing fissile material for its weapons program, but there is no independent verification of the claim. It is generally believed that China has sufficient fissile material for a modest upgrade of its nuclear arsenal, but would need to produce more fissile material for a significant upgrade.
The most likely driving force for a significant upgrade is China's concern about the United States' missile defence program. By supporting the US program, Australia may be encouraging China to expand its nuclear arsenal, and through uranium exports we may provide the raw materials.
Certainly the US regards China's nuclear program with concern. The US Nuclear Posture Review, leaked in 2002, refers to China's "ongoing modernisation of its nuclear and non-nuclear forces" and envisages nuclear attacks on China in the event of a confrontation over Taiwan. China has not ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
It is not difficult to envisage a scenario whereby the IAEA inspection regime and the bilateral agreement would count for nothing - the most obvious being escalating tension over Taiwan. Beijing promises military action in the event that Taipei declares independence, and Washington promises a military reaction in which Australia could become embroiled. The bilateral agreement would not be worth the paper it's written on.
There are other serious concerns in addition to the potential use of Australian uranium in Chinese nuclear weapons. Wang Yi, a nuclear energy expert at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, told the New York Times in January last year: "We don't have a very good plan for dealing with spent fuel, and we don't have very good emergency plans for dealing with catastrophe."
The argument that China will simply source uranium from elsewhere if we do not supply it is morally bankrupt. By the same logic, we might just as well export illegal and dangerous drugs.
The nuclear lobby wants to have it both ways. On the one hand they argue we have a moral responsibility to export our uranium because it is a "clean" energy source and/or because Australian safeguards are stronger than other uranium exporting countries (no matter that both claims are false). On the other hand they argue that it won't make the slightest bit of difference if Australia doesn't export uranium.
Other customers
The potential use of Australian uranium in weapons of mass destruction is clearly of public concern. Last year, an IAEA survey of 1020 Australians found that 56% of respondents considered the IAEA's "safeguards" inspection system to be ineffective. A Morgan poll last year found that 70% of Australians oppose an expansion of the Australian uranium mining industry.
According to John Carlson, head of the federal government's so-called Australian Safeguards and Non-proliferation Office, Australia sells uranium only to countries with an "impeccable" record on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament.
While uranium sales to China would set a new low, few if any of Australia's uranium customer countries have an impeccable record.
The US, France and the UK are uranium customers, but also nuclear weapons states that evidently have no intention of complying with their disarmament obligations under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
Japan, a major customer of Australian uranium, has developed a nuclear "threshold" or "breakout" capability - it could produce nuclear weapons within months of a decision to do so, relying heavily on facilities, materials and expertise from its civil nuclear program.
An obvious source of fissile material for a weapons program in Japan would be its stockpile of plutonium - including plutonium produced using Australian uranium. In April 2002, the then leader of Japan's Liberal Party, Ichiro Ozawa, said Japan should consider building nuclear weapons to counter China and suggested a source of fissile material: "It would be so easy for us to produce nuclear warheads; we have plutonium at nuclear power plants in Japan, enough to make several thousand such warheads."
South Korea is another major customer of Australian uranium with less than impeccable credentials. In 2004, South Korea disclosed information about a range of activities that violated its nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty commitments - uranium enrichment from 1979-81, the separation of small quantities of plutonium in 1982, uranium enrichment experiments in 2000 and the production of depleted uranium munitions from 1983-87.
Australia has supplied South Korea with uranium since 1986. It is not known, and may never be known, whether Australian-sourced nuclear materials were used in any of the illicit research. South Korea has acknowledged using both indigenous and imported nuclear materials in the tests, but denies that any Australian uranium was used.
[Jim Green is an anti-nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth.]
From Green Left Weekly, February 1, 2006.
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