Why Australia Is One of Ten Nuclear Horns (Daniel 7:7)

Uranium Sale

ABC Online

 

Australian the Nuclear Horn

TURNING THE FABLES’ CARTOON: Well, here’s my opportunity to become a millionaire! Uranium, I found it! Uranium, I’m rich, rich, rich!

While we’re not sure why a tortoise needs money, this one could be onto a winner with uranium. In the real world it can be worth up to 170-dollars a kilo. Making it a valuable thing to find, but what is it?

Uranium is a natural resource that was discovered back in the 1700s by a German chemist. Uranium is special because it’s radioactive. It naturally gives off energy called radiation. When it’s in the ground, the levels are so low they don’t affect us! But if treated in the right way, uranium can be used to create huge amounts of energy!

Some countries use uranium to produce electricity in nuclear power plants like this. One tonne can produce as much electricity as 16-thousand tonnes of Australia’s most common energy source, coal! We don’t have any of these plants here in Australia. Our government has chosen not to have any because of the radioactive waste they produce and the risk of something going wrong. But while we don’t have any nuclear power plants, we do have plenty of the uranium to run them!

Australia has around a third of all the known uranium in the world behind Kazakhstan and Canada. It’s thought to be worth about 300-billion dollars! We sell it to places like the US, Europe and Japan. But only on one big condition, it can only be used for electricity.

You see, uranium can also be refined and used in nuclear weapons. All of the countries we sell uranium to have signed an international agreement that stops them from building new nuclear weapons. But there is one country that wants to buy uranium from us that hasn’t signed this agreement.

India has just over 1-point-2 billion people, making it the second biggest country in the world and they have a lot of nuclear power plants. They get their uranium from places like Canada and they also have supplies of their own. But they’d like to buy more uranium from somewhere like Australia! For a long time, the Australian Government hasn’t allowed uranium to be sold to India because they haven’t signed the agreement about nuclear weapons. They won’t sign it because they have nuclear weapons and won’t rule out that they’ll make more in the future. But now, the Government is thinking about selling to them anyway.

India says that the uranium will only be used for electricity not for nuclear weapons. But some people say that’s not good enough. They say we should wait until India sign the agreement. Some environmental groups are also against it because of the effect uranium mining has on the land. And others say nuclear energy is dangerous so we shouldn’t supply the uranium that fuels it.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott is expected to formally sign the deal next month when he visits India next. So if all goes to plan, the deal will mean more money for our local mining industry and more protests from those against it.