re: ##new uranium article - feel the heat, its on!
Reuters Finance News, Australia - Financial News Finance News - Yahoo! News
Australia opens remote north for uranium mining
Friday August 5, 2005, 12:04 pm
CANBERRA, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Australia's remote north will be opened up to new uranium mining after the Northern Territory handed control of the mineral to the federal government, allowing Australia to exploit strong demand for the fuel used in most of the world's nuclear power plants.
A new uranium mine could be operating in five years, Australian Resources Minister Ian Macfarlane said on Friday, although any such projects would still require environmental approval and the go-ahead from traditional Aboriginal landowners.
"There are around A$12 billion ($9.1 billion) worth of uranium deposits still sitting in the ground in the Northern Territory ... there are literally billions of dollars to be earnt in export income," Macfarlane told Australian radio.
Uranium prices have more than tripled in the last five years to record highs, in step with higher oil prices CLc1, as nuclear energy emerges as an alternative source to fossil fuels.
Australia holds about 40 percent of the world's uranium but only produces a fraction of the metal after mining was restricted to three operating projects in the early 1980s by the then federal centre-left Labor government.
This policy was abandoned when Prime Minister John Howard's conservative Liberal/National party was first elected in 1996, but five of the country's six state and its two territory Labor governments remained opposed to further uranium mining.
"The practical result of the Northern Territory surrendering any involvement in the mining approval process means that the Commonwealth will now adopt that role," Macfarlane said.
Only the South Australian government to date has favoured uranium mining. The state is home to the world's largest uranium deposit, Olympic Dam, which was recently acquired by BHP Billiton Plc./Ltd. (ASX: BHP.ax) BLT.L when it took over WMC Resources Ltd.
The country's other two operating mines are Ranger, owned by Rio Tinto Plc./Ltd. (ASX: RIO.ax) RIO.L-controlled Energy Resources of Australia Ltd. (ASX: ERA.ax) and the Beverley mine, owned by General Atomics.
However, Northern Territory Chief Minister Clare Martin said the territory had not given up control of uranium mining, saying it didn't have any control to begin with.
"The federal government ... has full control over uranium mining because we are not a state," said Martin, whose Labor government campaigned in the lead-up to its June 18 re-election on a "no new mines" policy.
A spokeswoman for Macfarlane said the federal government had received legal advice that Canberra could take control of uranium mining in the Northern Territory. But she added the federal government does not have such a legal avenue over the states.
Australia's federal government controls uranium exports and restricts exports to 36 countries that have signed bilateral nuclear safeguards that ensure the uranium is not used to build weapons.
Canada produces 11,000 to 12,000 tonnes a year of the world's primary uranium, followed by Australia with about 8,000 tonnes and Russia, Kazakhstan, Niger and Namibia, which each produce about 3,000 tonnes a year.
Australia exported 7,765 tonnes of uranium in 2004, worth more than A$410 million ($311 million). ($1=A$1.32)
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