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