Australian U turn on Uranium?

[trackwhack]

Gillard's push for uranium sales to India

Love it when they start fighting among'st themselves. One of the few things I am proud of is the way we stood up to imperialist policies on nuclear trade and slowly we are beating them all.

The US fell in line with the 123 pact, one by one all of them are falling in line.

In 20 years we will become a net exporter of nuclear technology. Talk about karma coming back to bite your nuts off.

Next step is to dismantle the NSG and make it irrelevant. How?
Buy the Rafale from the french on condition that it vetos the recent clause put in by the NSG and signs a bilateral agreement with India on nuclear technology transfer. Set up a joint Indo French next gen reactor research institute with two centers, one in India and one in France. Invite Carlo Rubbia as the Chairman for the first five years. Invite Canadian and UK participation.

China's pet boy Rudd is in India telling us Gillards stand. How he must be squirming. How China must be squirming. Lovely news.

Hope the Congress can quickly sort out Koondakulam.

 

[LETHALFORCE]

With India's thorium prototype coming soon this is a desperation move by Australia to keep India in 100% uranium camp and prevent self sufficiency.

 

[Virendra]

Hail Thorium :thumb:

 

[Dovah]

Noobish question and somewhat unrelated, but How is Thorium safer compared to Uranium?

 

[SHASH2K2]

Noobish question and somewhat unrelated, but How is Thorium safer compared to Uranium?

no radiation from thorium.

 

[trackwhack]

Thorium is not a fissile element. It is a fertile element.
Fissile means it can be fissioned. Fertile means it has to first capture neutrons to become fissile before being fissioned.

In a thorium reactor, the primary fuel is thorium with a trigger fule like plutonium. The fissile plutonium undergoes fission releasing neutrons. Some of the neutrons will continue nuclear fission by hitting other fissile plutonium atoms while other neutrons bombard thorium, coberting it into fissile Uranium 233. The uranium 233 now become fissile and does the job that plutonium was doing. So at any instant, a thorium nuclear reactor has a large quantity of its fuel as fertile thorium that cannot sustain a nuclear chain rection by itself and hence meltdowns are not likely. Thats why they are safer.

btw, thorium is radioactive, just not a strong gamma or beta emitter.

 

[p2prada]

Noobish question and somewhat unrelated, but How is Thorium safer compared to Uranium?

There are a lot of advantages.

Thorium has the potential to deliver more energy than Uranium while releasing 50% less waste products. It is abundant and therefore cheap to obtain. A thorium reactor can also use wasted Uranium from regular uranium based reactors as fuel.

While only less than 1% of available Uranium can be used in reactors, all of available Thorium can be used. Thorium when exposed to air forms Thorium Oxide and is harmless as compared to Uranium. The levels of radioactivity is very less as compared to Uranium or Plutonium.

 

[Yusuf]

Come on, when they don't sell to us we crib and curse them and when they move towards selling to us we say it's a conspiracy to stop us from being self sufficient with thorium. Kya bhai log

 

[trackwhack]

Come on, when they don't sell to us we crib and curse them and when they move towards selling to us we say it's a conspiracy to stop us from being self sufficient with thorium. Kya bhai log

Yeah, there is no conspiracy, the truth is we need uranium and lots of it that has to be used to create reactor grade plutonium. This in turn is what can trigger large scale deployment of Thorium reactors. Which is why Koondakulam is important. And also why the fast breeder is very very important.

 

[Virendra]

Thorium is like a long term infra bond
Although it is very promising but it needs more time and research before becoming a practical option. But our research in thorium is one of the most advanced in the world. This is acknowledged even by the west.
We have plenty of Thorium reserves.

Regards,
Virendra

 

[Rage]

Best bit of news I've heard in a while.


Continuing with the uranium-thorium debate, I also want to add that thorium is a lot faster and easier to extract and process than is uranium. Lot lower temperatures involved, higher concentrations in the ore and far fewer outside materials used. Because thorium also has a longer half-life than uranium, there is about thrice as much thorium than uranium in the earth's crust. And Thorium is also a lot more energy efficient, operating at higher temperatures. With such great advantages you'd ask, why the focus on uranium? It's because thorium has limited use in weapons proliferation. Which, given that we are at the cutting edge of thorium reactor design and are committed to not just a few thorium plants, is just what Indian lobbyists in Ausie have used as their USP.

 

[Tshering22]

I think we should simply stop asking them. We keep asking them as if we're not having enough suppliers; all while Russia, France, Namibia, Kazakhstan are killing each other to get a share of nuclear pie. Come on folks. We don't have to look down under for something when we have it at our face level.

 

[Neil]

I think we should simply stop asking them. We keep asking them as if we're not having enough suppliers; all while Russia, France, Namibia, Kazakhstan are killing each other to get a share of nuclear pie. Come on folks. We don't have to look down under for something when we have it at our face level.

T22 the only reason we keep asking them is because we have more options at are disposals plus more a country depended on us less likely they will vote against us in crap organisation like NSG

also being one of the worlds biggest uranium deposits its all the cheapest way to transport and stuff...coz all major producer of uranium are far located compared to australia...so if they wanna do business why not...

 

[pmaitra]

If the Kazakhs are willing to sell us Uranium, we should take them. If the Aussies are willing to sell us Uranium, we should take them. We should also continue research with Thorium reactors. What's latest on KAMINI? Also, our nukes are Plutonium based, so we definitely need lots and lots of Uranium so that (1) we can produce more Plutonium and consequently more nukes from domestically sourced Uranium and (2) irradiate domestic Thorium using imported Uranium and reuse them for power generation.

So, my take would be, keep talking to all who have Uranium and if they are willing to export it to us, we should gobble them up.

 

[The Messiah]

Everyone will fall in line if we continue on our path.

Falling in line in the face of strength is natural order of things.

 

[SHASH2K2]

I never thought that there will be a facebook page for this as well .
Say No to Australian Uranium exports to India | Facebook

dont give a like to them by mistake .

 

[KS]

Gillard's push for uranium sales to India

Love it when they start fighting among'st themselves. One of the few things I am proud of is the way we stood up to imperialist policies on nuclear trade and slowly we are beating them all.

The US fell in line with the 123 pact, one by one all of them are falling in line.

In 20 years we will become a net exporter of nuclear technology. Talk about karma coming back to bite your nuts off.

Next step is to dismantle the NSG and make it irrelevant. How?
Buy the Rafale from the french on condition that it vetos the recent clause put in by the NSG and signs a bilateral agreement with India on nuclear technology transfer. Set up a joint Indo French next gen reactor research institute with two centers, one in India and one in France. Invite Carlo Rubbia as the Chairman for the first five years. Invite Canadian and UK participation.

China's pet boy Rudd is in India telling us Gillards stand. How he must be squirming. How China must be squirming. Lovely news.

Hope the Congress can quickly sort out Koondakulam.

Two of the best ironies in recent times I just loved -

• An Indian buying out the East Indian company
• An organization that was formed to keep India out of the global nuclear trade giving a special exemption to India to trade with them.

 

[ejazr]

There is still strong opposition to this within Australia. But the numbers from the Right and part of the Left faction should be enough to overturn the ban in the parliament. The Greens and independant are against it as well as minority of the Left faction.
We will know this in a few months.

Recently, Vice President Ansari was in Australia and also lobbied for the same The Hindu : News / National : India lobbies for Australian uranium


Left concedes Gillard will succeed in bid to allow uranium sales to India | The Australian
THE Labor Left has conceded Julia Gillard is likely to get the greenlight at next month's ALP conference to allow uranium sales to India.

But the Left, together with the Greens, remain vehemently opposed to the proposal, saying it will allow uranium to be diverted to weapons programs, encouraging nuclear proliferation in the region.

Senior ministers today backed the prime minister's bid to end the party's ban on uranium sales to India, arguing the sub-continental super-power was a responsible global citizen.

"India is not a rogue state," resources minister Martin Ferguson said.

"It's one of the 10 largest economies in the world with huge purchasing power.

"They are focused on extending access to electricity to their huge population of 1.1 billion, with 40 per cent having access to fewer than 12 hours of electricity per day."

Ms Gillard says the ban on uranium sales is damaging trade ties with India and no longer makes sense, as other nations are selling uranium to India.

She will take the position to the December 2-4 ALP national conference where Left faction convenor Doug Cameron said she was likely to get her way.

"I don't know what the numbers will be, but the Prime Minister has put her stamp on this. That makes it very difficult," he said.

Senator Cameron said he would argue strongly that India should not be allowed to circumvent existing rules requiring buyers of Australian uranium to have signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

"We argued strongly that China had to be a signatory to nuclear non-proliferation treaty and we enforced that," he said.

"We then put other obligations on top of that. One of the key arguments was that China had its own uranium, they didn't need our uranium for weapons.

"But in India it's clear that our uranium will make it easier for India to divert uranium to its weapons programs."

Greens leader Bob Brown said the policy shift would "add to the nuclear arms race".

"There is no doubt that uranium through this process will end up in the stockpile of nuclear weapons in India," he told the ABC.

But opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop backed the position, saying it amounted to an admission that Labor should have not imposed the ban four years ago.

"This is long overdue recognition that Labor got it wrong when it reversed the Coalition's position to allow sales, with appropriate safe guards," she said.

"Julia Gillard should explain what is driving this monumental backflip, she has argued for years against uranium sales to India."

Ms Bishop said India had an excellent record of non-proliferation and Senator Cameron's warning was "an outrageous slur on India".

 

[Yusuf]

I never thought that there will be a facebook page for this as well .
Say No to Australian Uranium exports to India | Facebook

dont give a like to them by mistake .

Let me guess before I see it, page started by Paki?

 

[Yusuf]

The Aussies forget India makes plutonium based bombs not uranium. We just use the by-products of a power plant!!