At least we've got Lyn Allison and the Democrats, and the Greens, and some Independents who are using their brains on this issue of uranium to Russia.

Howard and his puppeteers are falling over themselves in this unseemly, quite disgusting rush to flog Australia's uranium to anybody and everybody.

Why such a hurry?

Well it just could be that if Australia doesn't flog the stuff off - FAST - well, our greedy corporations might miss out. The sad reality is that no investors want to touch nuclear power. The sad reality is that the Kyoto Protocol, warts and all, is actually working.

If only people like Lyn Allison were to get into power in this country, there would be what is so badly needed - some brains at the top.
Australia is sitting on magnificent renewable energy resources, and has the well educated scientists, and others - to make energy efficient building and other designs.

What a 21st century economic bonanza, and long-term employment opportunities Australia would have!
Christina Macpherson www.antinuclearaustralia.com

It seems as if History is unable to stop repeating itself. Those of us who remember the epithet bestowed on the founder of John Howard's political party, - Sir Robert Menzies, which party, at that time was entitled to be called the LIBERAL PARTY, but under Howard, I believe is due for a name-change to the U.R.W.party,{easy to decipher} And if John Howard is with Sir Robert in 30 years or still being pushed in a wheelchair to meet visiting Heads of State, "Pig-iron BOB" AND "Atomic John" can compare notes on the influence they made on Planet Earth.

Well Lyn

We must give Hiroshima Johnny full marks for his endeavours to maintain a bouyant economy.

After all, he'll stoop to anything for a fast buck, won't he?

Our little man's unperturbed that his actions have the potential to use the people of this planet as cannon fodder and who cares about the collateral damage when there's a quid to be made?

After the corporate chain-saw wielding maniacs have dug their holes all over our country side, in their delirious rush for uranium, Australia will bear the resemblance of a Swiss cheese!

But then isn't it an election year? Ah......revenge is sweet, is it not?

Oh...by the way: "Sorry Mr Rudd, I regret to inform you, that your application was also unsuccessful!"

GET BACK TO BASIC's. APEC SMALL ECONOMIES NEED MORE FOCUS.

APEC HAS FORGOTTEN VILLAGE FARMERS.

South East Asia an Overlooked Success - Farmers who have given up a source of their livelihood, where governments had succeeded in slashing poppy cultivation are struggling to find subsistance - livilhood - an income.

STOP THE VIOLENCE - alternative economic strategics required

We ALL have the knowledge to help DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS.

We MUST PROBLEM SOLVE!

The border zone between Burma, Thailand and Laos that was once the world's most prolific supplier of opium, is still on conflict on issues of liberty and livilhood.

Farmers have no income. More has to be done to find alternative crops and enterprises to help village farmers and their families.
Burma's "roadmap" is not working. Situation is still extremely fragile... Myanmar's 53 million people wish for support to restore civilian rule. Political roadmap needs to be as inclusive, participatory and transparent as possible.

Displaced People in Burma Call for International Action and Economic Support. HELP APEC FIND FOCUS for VILLAGE FARMERS

http://www.miacat.com/
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I think Australia should control its own uranium, hence a large part of world supply. If the 25 domestic nuclear power stations ever get up that will consume half our production so other countries will have to stand in line, that's if there's much uranium left by then. Some say that Australia doesn't have the capital to do enrichment but ex-ANSTO people talk of a new process and there is the Silex laser method.

Moreover I think Australia should also do reprocessing and intractable waste disposal for several reasons; to accept responsibility since we dug it up in the first place, because we lost our nuclear virginity with the British A-bomb tests and to make a lot of money.

The alternative is more Aussie coal and handing the business to democracy-challenged Khazakstan.

IS IT RIGHT TO FLOG OUR URANIUM TOO EARLY?

Nice to see Senator A. knock the Ruskies around a bit.

Thinking a bit on the lines of Taswegian

If Australia sells too much uranium over the next few years to too many customers rather than limiting production:

- we may sell at a far lower price than we could when the price of competing energy sources (oil, coal, gas) rises sharply over the next 20 years

- we may forego the value added benefits of enriching uranium here to sell it for more. Until we have developed our own enrichment facilities.

If the Australian economy is now running hot selling coal and gas etc do we risk the possibility of blowing another income source (uranium) simultaneously and too early?

Pete

A shame I can't find the link to a transcript of Alexander Downer's justification, this morning on Radio National, for selling uranium to the Russians. what I heard sounded smug and shallow, with a lacing of arrogance.

How very sad to think that AD is the best the government can offer as Minister for Foreign Affairs.

We do not have a responsibility to reprocess nuclear waste or to inter the waste from other countries. We cannot play wet nurse to those also sufficiently imprudent in their pursuit of uranium.

Nor do we have a responsibility due to Britain's actions in dropping bombs off our West Coast and South Australia though Mr Menzies and our then "brilliant" scientists in collusion, have a lot to answer for!

Currently there are more than thirty major and prospective deposits of uranium ready to go. The estimated exploration costs for 2006/2007 is set to exceed $100 million.

Since scientists' consensus reveals that CO2 must start to fall by 2015, nuclear power will be useless. The upsurge in uranium mining will pollute even further and carbon sequestration for "clean" coal to date has been a failure. The trial in the US revealed that the CO2 actually corroded the very minerals which were meant to contain the CO2.

The argument that we must mine uranium and we must have nuclear due to climate change is the dupe of the century. Already we could be using gas in an interim period, prior to renewables, where gas fired power plants would cut greenhouse gases by more than 30 percent.

This week in Australia, the very courageous Russian journalist, Grigory Pasko warned Australia not to trust Mr Putin and to refrain from any deals over uranium with Russia.

I sincerely trust Mr Pasko is not next in line for the Polonium 210 treatment!

Have you seen A.C.Valdez's 1929 vision or A.A.Allens 1954 vision? If they rattle you up, take it to The Lord. When I got saved, all fear vanished. "Everyone who calls on the Name of The Lord will be saved"...Romans 10:13.
Selling uranium to Russia is madness. The old commie flame hasnt gone out. It still wants to conquer because the evil spirit realm is behind it. Its not a man ethic is communism but an evil spirit ethic. As far as satan is concerned...the more bombs the merrier. Read Ephesians 6:12-18 about the great spirit war in the Heavenlies. Its true.
Be warned about those two visions: you need a strong heart to read them.

John Howard has finally achieved what no other leading lunatic has in Australia for a very long time- he has finally cracked into the wild arms race in our region.

While others have tried with Nomad aircraft, styr rifles, all sorts of crazy ideas about maritime vessels from patrol boats to flash clunky subs (and the soon to be touted Aussie AWACS) as exports to the arms race- Johnny has finally hit it with uranium.

Why else do his double quick shift converting to the global warming cause while proposing nuke power (well the North Koreans helped a bit)

He must be proud as punch too, given that without even selling an gram of yellow cake, he has already cause a falling out with Pakistan!

Pig iron is nothing compared to what may come back to us next time!

And Putin's response about not selling Aussie uranium to nasty folks was a hoot wasn't it- "I wont have to on-sell Australian uranium to countries who have nasty intentions- Russia has enough of its own for that".

bloody hell!

As widely known, circa 2015 Russia will establish industrial mining of nuke resources at and supply from the Moon.

The question remains what is a KIND of benefit supposed to be achieved by giving away national resources at the very start of a nuclear era on the Earth?

Dickie,

you you have a reference to the report or website which says the CO2 sequestration is a failure??

MichaelK,

there are a number of options of obtaining uranium more cheaply than getting it from the moon. As an example, the Japanese have been developing polymer braids that are floated in the ocean to collect uranium at costs of approx US$53/lb, or close to the highest cost mining sources. (jolisfukyu.tokai-sc.jaea.go.jp/fukyu/mirai-en/4_5.html) There is a huge resource of uranium in the worlds ocean's, estimated at 4.6 billion tonnes.

To compare with getting it from the moon, you would have to get the mining technology to the moon, mine the uranium, then return it to earth for (using a 10t payload as an example) less than US$1.2M. I'm not sure what it costs to lauch a spaceship to the moon then get it back to earth, but I would bet both of 'em (and my son's) that it is a lot more than US$1.2M. This link has some capital costs for lauching space vehicles and space programs and they are talking about billions.

http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/tech/space/launch.pdf

Miner

The following URL(treehugger) though not the original one, refers to the Houston sequestration project.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/07/carbon_sequestration2.php

http://global-warming.accuweather.com/2007/08/can_nations_bury_their_carbon_1.html#comments

http://www.energybulletin.net/newswire.php?id=5220

It now appears that the EU Energy Commissioner has recently given a tick to the ongoing Sleipner project for CO2 sequestration in the North Sea. The carbon dioxide appears to have remained stable, however, due to limited data and insufficient experience in monitoring CCS projects, there is not yet any guarantee for the ocean sea-beds long-term potential to contain the CO2.

Some experts express concern over a possibility of very large volumes of CO2 reaching the ocean surface and also express concern over the potential impact on marine organisms due to acidification.

Capture, storage and transport of CO2 are also energy intensive.

Apparently the projects, proposed or functioning, are not yet commercialy viable and continue to operate with government support.

And while our Australian government is committing hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to pollutant industries for sequestration projects and "clean" coal research, there appears to be little in comparison pledged towards renewable energies, with the exception of the $75m for the Victorian solar power plant.

I trust the geo-sequestrations and "clean" coal projects work for it's obvious, that in the event of a catastrophe, we won't have renewable energies to fall back on.

In any event - coal or nuclear, Hiroshima John is determined to endow us with a more radioactive planet.

I thought the Indian deal was questionable. The Russia deal is just a step too far. And lets face it - how much influence do we really have once the sale has gone through.

As others noted... there's no hurry. If uranium will sell ok now - I'm sure it'll have a higher price in the future.

Lets stick to stable democracies. Democracies that ideally have no nuclear weapons or which are participating in an arms reduction.

Lyn Allison's article is spot on. My heart sinks to hear that Australia is to sell uranium to Russia. This is unbelievable. As I understand it, uranium sources will be depleted in a few years, so once it's all dug up, what then? There is no solution to disposing of the waste. I would dearly love to see an even stronger push for the development of geothermal energy from hot fractured rock. Keep uranium in the ground where it belongs. Are you listening Labor?