Sales of uranium.
Well the respondents may not trust the word of China or the safeguards the Commonwealth has placed on the sale. We all or a majority, trust Johnny so why not the Chinese after all politicians are so honest.
The precautionary principle or indeed morality has no place in trade!
We need the money. It will help balance our current account deficit, though we are assured that something or other has changed and such is an amenable problem,different from pre 1996. So why not, after all many countries now obtain uranium for peaceful purposes? Even Israel has been well supplied and though not party to NPT and similar has many nuclear devices. Still Israel is a democracy and thus no problem and of course still necessary in maintaining hegemony in the Middle East, US and the West hegemonmy that is even if the 'safeguard' is now directed at oil.

The problem of the residue has of course been solved! Any failure will of course not be our fault, after all a commercial transaction is done in good faith.The consequences will be China’s , at least until the back ground radiation builds to a level affecting others. Chernobyl. Still the nuclear industry assures us that plants such as pebble reactors are fail safe but there is still the residue of the reaction. Deep storage for even 10,000 yeasr is geologically a miniscule not even thinking about variabilty of human behaviour.
Doubtless money will enable rapid solution of this problem. The niggling thought arises have not industrial enterprises negated any responsibilities in favour of profit?

Let us take a moment to savour the utter hypocrisy of those who advocate "hold back" on uranium exports to China.

Would they propose that we avoid all trade with that country? I doubt it. They would also have to make a decision about a swag of other countries who, in their view, might fall short of their ideals on human rights. Or whose military capability they would like to curtail somehow. Or whose tendency to undercut our labour rates they disapprove of.

Would they perhaps propose that we only sell them our products if they promise to mend their ways, and treat their people "nicely"? Who would be the arbiter of "niceness"? Taiwan?

The fact that the export under consideration here is uranium provides an excuse to pontificate about human rights in China. However, the only honest response is that if it is human rights you care about, what is so different about uranium?

Who are these people, who sit back in their armchairs sipping chai latte and pontificate about what other countries should, or should not do?

Exporting nuclear fuel is clearly different to importing Chinese textile goods, otherwise we wouldn't need a new agreement.

It might be possible to argue that these are equivalent trades, however I have not yet seen that argument made.

Down the track, if China resolves it's border disputes, opens up it's government process to greater outside scrutiny, improves it's workplace safety (explosions, mines..etc), and management of environmental effects - I might support the sale.

At this time, I would be inclined to protest strongly.

Go for it China.

If we dont give it to them, joe bloggs down the road will.

There is no such thing as moral high ground, if you cant get drugs from one dealer, you will go to another, by us not exporting to them it just means someone else has been hit up the arse with a rainbow, and can benefit their country.

We are not the parents of the developing nations, especially not a powerhouse like China. What gives us the right to determine another countries direction?

Give the waste back to us and this would be even better. Yes they are underdone on things, but if there ever was a country to solve an issue, it would be the growing and improving Chinese. We dont need to play big brother, just sell the stuff

Pericles said: 'Who are these people, who sit back in their armchairs sipping chai latte and pontificate about what other countries should, or should not do?'

I believe they're called 'Popes'. This is about uranium, not religion. The main question is not whether we should sell it to China, but whether or not to use or encourage uranium for power generation or weapons manufacture at all.

The following is an excerpt from a speech made by Professor Ian Lowe:

'The first point is that the economics of nuclear power just don't stack up. The real cost of nuclear electricity is certainly more than for wind power, energy from bio-wastes and some forms of solar energy. Geothermal energy from hot dry rocks - a resource of huge potential in Australia - also promises to be less costly than nuclear. In the USA, direct subsidies to nuclear energy totalled $115 billion between 1947 and 1999, with a further $145 billion in indirect subsidies. In contrast, subsidies to wind and solar during the same period amounted to only $5.5 billion. That's wind and solar together. During the first 15 years of development, nuclear subsidies amounted to $15.30 per kWh generated. The comparable figure for wind energy was 46 cents per kWh during its first 15 years of development.

We are 50 years into the best funded development of any energy technology, and yet nuclear energy is still beset with problems. Reactors go over budget by billions, decommissioning plants is so difficult and expensive that power stations are kept operating past their useful life, and there is still no solution for radioactive waste. So there is no economic case for nuclear power.'

(ref: http://www.acfonline.org.au/news.asp?news_id=582 paragraphs 17&18)

I don't think that China is too concerned with producing more nuclear weapons.There are enough nuclear weapons in our world to destroy it six times over.

China will achieve world dominance through the power of their intelligence and sheer numbers.Currently we are doing trading with China in a one way street.China has no tarrifs on raw materials but has more than 100% tarrifs on any value added goods.

China will not have to use military force to take over Australia.Under our current economic policies,it will be far cheaper for them just simply to buy what they want.Money will be no obstacle.

The price of Uranium has quadrupled in the last decade and will only go up as we run out of oil and gas.

Leaving it in the ground for a few more decades makes economic sense and leaves something for our grandchidren to sell.

Ev, whatever the arguments for the economic benefits of nuclear power, surely it is up to the individual countries to determine?

>>The main question is not whether we should sell it to China, but whether or not to use or encourage uranium for power generation or weapons manufacture at all<<

You go on to provide some data on comparative energy costs - one analysis among many, I should point out - and use that as a reason to protect China from making a big mistake by buying uranium from us.

How patronizing.

I made no judgement in my post about the desirability of nuclear fuel. What I pointed out is the hypocritical use of one particular form of trade to highlight human rights abuse, when we are quite happy to turn a blind eye when they buy our iron ore, or coal, or whatever.

But you add gratuitous advice to the hypocrisy. Who are we to lecture another sovereign nation on what might or might not be good for them?

According to uranium Information Centre briefing paper, updated in February 2005, there are 440 commercial power reactors operating in 32 counties and 284 research reactors in 56 counties.

Dr. Green is a severe critic of all aspects of the nuclear power industry as well as many applications of nuclear material in industry, medicine, research and so on.

In the paper under discussion he singles out sale of Australian uranium to China. Is this an unlikely major mind change on his part? Is the export uranium to all other foreign and/or domestic users now to be encouraged? Or is the Chinese trade being used as a possible anti-nuclear “stalking horse.”

The reality is that, the community level for radio-phobia is dropping. Thus, I can safely prognosticate, that even more counties including Australia will be adopt nuclear power in the future.

I agree with Pericles, the uranium trade with China is little different from trading in any other commodity.

In a post by EV reference is made to the views of Professor Ian Lowe. Given that Professor Lowe is from the “Australian Conservation Foundation” and Dr. Green is a spokesman for the “Friends of the Earth,” neither can be considered as unbiased commentators.

Is this story about security? The gist seems to be that exporting uranium to China could result in the production of weapons-grade plutonium by China and that could produce a security threat for other nations in the future. But China seems to already have adequate supplies of plutonium and nuclear weapons and already is a considerable potential security threat. It has made no threatening posture to other nations except towards Taiwan, which is probably legitimately seen as Chinese territory that will one day be reunited with mainland China. China has been threatening Taiwan for decades and has been nuclear armed most of that time. It would not seem that exporting Australian uranium to China increases security risks. The US and its allies such as Australia might have to bite the bullet one day and assist in the peaceful reunification of China and Taiwan.

The posts of Pericles and others are all about Chinese self-determination. I don't think that is relevant to the story at all. World security is not a matter for China's self-determination.

The last possible is the 'pig-iron to Japan' argument used in the 1930s. Possibly some ammunition made in Japan from Australian iron was used against Australian troops. How much did that matter?

Here is a photo essay put together by an 'unbiased commentator' from Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, 20 years after the Chernobyl reactor meltdown. (This year is the 20th anniversary of the disaster).

'radio phobia' indeed..

http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/chapter2.html

Here is another quote from the same speech by Professor Ian Lowe I quoted earlier:

'Nuclear power also inevitably produces radioactive waste that will have to be stored safely for hundreds of thousands of years. After nearly fifty years of the nuclear power experiment, nobody has yet demonstrated a solution to this problem.

The Swedes, who have probably the best system in the world for waste storage, calculate that the entire exercise to deal with the waste, the temporary storage and the deep rock laboratory, for all the fuel used by their existing reactors will cost around $12 billion.

In the absence of a proven viable solution, expanding the rate of waste production is just irresponsible. This is not just a huge technical challenge to develop systems that will isolate high-level waste for over 200,000 years. It is also a huge challenge to our social institutions. We are talking about a time scale around a hundred times longer than any human societies have endured, of the same order of magnitude as our entire existence as a species.'

ref: (http://www.acfonline.org.au/news.asp?news_id=582 paragraphs 32-34)

China is planning to build 30 reactors, which if they each generate 1000 MW will require 6,000 tonnes of uranium per annum. Primary world uranium production is only 39,000 tonnes, the demand of 68,000 tonnes being made up from secondary sources of ex-weapons material, re-worked mine tailings and inventories, which are only expected to last for ten years or so.

Australia supplies Western nuclear power economies with 9,000 tonnes of uranium per annum and could only supply China's needs at the expense of its current partners. The Chinese have failed to negotiate long-term contracts to supply their nuclear programme with uranium and have even offered to prospect and open their own mine in Australia.

The current world interest in an untenable expansion of nuclear power is a sign of desperation as energy-hungry economies face their nemesis. The price of uranium will rise, but so will the imported oil needed to mine ever decreasing ore grades. A reality check is timely.