habitat magazine - Australian Conservation Foundation

Feature
Passage to India
Dave Sweeney looks at the plan to fuel
the sub-continent’s sub-standard nuclear
industry with Australian uranium.
Peoples’ Movement
Against Nuclear
Energy (India).
28
In December 2011 the Australian Labor
Party narrowly voted to open the door to uranium
sales to India. The issue remains deeply
divisive in both federal Labor and the wider
community as it overturns a long-standing policy
of not selling uranium to countries that have
not signed up to the global Nuclear Non Proliferation
Treaty.
In mid-October 2012 Prime Minister Julia
Gillard made a highly publicised visit to India
and Australia’s uranium sales plan was heavily
promoted. But there is growing concern both
here and in India about the implications of the
move and fast tracking a nuclear-armed India
into the global atomic club.
Recent months have seen a sharp rise in community
resistance to plans to expand India’s
nuclear industry. A flashpoint for this debate
has been the push to start a nuclear reactor at
Koodankulum in Tamil Nadu. Tens of thousands
of fisher-folk and residents are continuing
the proud Indian tradition of non-violent
civil disobedience.
Having seen the Fukushima nuclear crisis unfold they are deeply
troubled about plans to turn the switch on this long-contested
reactor and are literally digging into the sand in an attempt to stop
access. But this is no beach game — protestors have been shot dead
by police, beatings and arrests are routine, and civil rights and legal
groups have condemned the heavy-handed state response.
These people are not celebrating the planned uranium sales
deal and the debates demarcation line is clear: nuclear critics are
burying their bodies in the sand while the industry promoters
prefer to bury their heads.
Community concerns were vindicated with the release of a detailed
report from the Indian Auditor-General into the nation’s
troubled nuclear sector. The report, which made national news
during the PM’s visit, highlighted severe safety and regulatory
deficiencies and described the sector as disorganised, under-regulated
and dangerously unsafe. It was also highly critical of India’s
nuclear regulator describing the agency as bureaucratic,
ineffective and negligent.
The report should sound alarm bells in Canberra as it details
the yawning gap between the industry’s promise and the performance
and shows that there can be no confidence in safeguard
arrangements and assurances.
Uranium sales to India are not only risky they are illegal. Australia
is a signatory to the Treaty of Raratonga, the South Pacific
Nuclear Free Zone Treaty, which places clear constraints on a
range of nuclear activities, including the export of uranium.
The treaty requires that comprehensive ‘full-scope’ safeguards
cover any uranium sales and that the receiver nation open all its