Uranium industry slumps, nuclear power dead in the water

Perhaps a uranium price increase is on the way but it will do little to salvage Australia's uranium industry. Apart from BHP's Olympic Dam mine in SA, the only other operating uranium mine in Australia is Beverley Four Mile in SA. At Ranger in the NT, mining has ceased, stockpiles of ore are being processed, and ERA is planning a $500 million project to decommission and rehabilitate the mine site.

Meanwhile, Mirarr Traditional Owners in the NT and their many supporters are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the mass movement that defeated the plan to mine the Jabiluka uranium deposit. South Australians are celebrating the successful campaign to stop the state being turned into the world's high-level nuclear waste dump. The Aboriginal-led Australian Nuclear Free Alliancerecently celebrated 20 years of 'radioactive resistance'.

And with the cost of a single power reactor climbing to as much as $20 billion, proposals to introduce nuclear power to Australia seem more and more quixotic and are now largely limited to the far right ‒ in particular, Australians Conservatives' luminary Senator Cory Bernardi and the Minerals Council of Australia.

Even Dr Ziggy Switkowski ‒ who used to be nuclear power's head cheerleader in Australia and was appointed to lead the Howard government's review of nuclear power ‒ recently said that "the window for gigawatt-scale nuclear has closed". He said nuclear power is no longer cheaper than renewables and the levelised cost of electricity is rapidly diverging in favour of renewables.