Australia's uranium agreement with India under attack

Ron Walker, former Chair of the IAEA Board of Governors, wrote in a 2007 paper: "India is a democracy and yes we want to be in their good books, but that is no reason to drop our principles and our interests. To make an exception for them would be crass cronyism. If you make exceptions to your rules for your mates, you weaken your ability to apply them to everyone else. How could we be harder on Japan and South Korea if they acquired nuclear weapons? Could we say Israel is less of a mate than India?"

US-led efforts to open up international nuclear trade with India have already weakened the global non-proliferation and disarmament regime − for example, it has encouraged China to openly and actively support the nuclear program of Pakistan, another nuclear weapons state that has not signed the NPT or the CTBT.

India's Public Accounts Committee said in a report last year that the country's nuclear safety regime is "fraught with grave risks" and that the nuclear regulator is weak and under-resourced. In 2012, India's Auditor-General found that 60 per cent of safety inspections for operating nuclear power plants were either delayed or not undertaken at all.

The pay-off for going down this dangerous path will be negligible. Claims of mega-profits from uranium exports to India ignore readily-available facts. According to the World Nuclear Association, India's uranium demand this year will amount to just 913 tonnes – just 1.4 per cent of world demand. If Australia supplies 20 per cent of that demand, uranium export revenue will increase by 3 per cent.

Likewise, claims that the nuclear cooperation agreement will indirectly boost bilateral trade by fostering trust and goodwill ignore readily-available facts. Bilateral trade grew from $3.3 billion at the turn of the century to more than $20 billion in 2011, despite Australia's ban on uranium exports to India and other countries that have not signed the NPT. Since the uranium policy was overturned in 2011, bilateral trade has gone backwards and now stands at $15 billion.

The nuclear cooperation agreement will be scrutinised by federal parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Treaties. The Committee may rubber-stamp the agreement, but that is not certain. The Committee rejected a similar agreement to sell uranium to Russia when it learnt that IAEA safeguards inspections in Russia are nearly non-existent. The Committee said it is "essential that actual physical inspection by the IAEA occurs at any Russian sites that may handle" Australian uranium and that uranium exports "should be contingent upon such inspections being carried out." That doesn't seem much to ask yet the Labor government −with Coalition support −ignored the Committee's recommendations.

Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth, Australia.