13 Aug (NucNet): Australia has a great opportunity to expand uranium mining in the coming two decades, but reforms are needed to form the bedrock of industry development at both state and national level, the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) has said.
In a submission to a royal commission examining the potential for an expansion of South Australia’s role in the nuclear industry, the MCA said the country’s uranium industry wants to take advantage of continuing strong uranium demand stemming from forecasted growth for low emissions nuclear energy, “especially in our region”.
The MCA said Australia has the best uranium resource base in the world, most of it in South Australia.
But the MCA said laws need to be amended to ensure uranium projects are treated as any other resource project for environmental assessment purposes.
New federal legislation is needed to provide a streamlined environmental assessment and approvals process, the MCA said.
And developing consistent policies towards the treatment of uranium exploration, extraction and milling across states and territories would provide investor confidence.
The MCA said the uranium industry should have access to “the most appropriate” transport routes and ports across states and territories in order to secure the most competitive access to markets.
It called for the removal of legislative and regulatory impediments to the establishment of nuclear fuel cycle industries.
“Australia has underperformed in recent years,” the MCA said. “Australia’s share of global production lags dramatically behind its share of global resources. This is a reflection of the historical impediments to development of the industry.
“These reforms would improve the uranium industry’s competitiveness and investment attractiveness and put us on a path towards increasing our share of global production. This translates into thousands more jobs and a dramatically larger uranium economy.”
In a separate submission the MCA said it “strongly supports” the consideration of nuclear energy as part of South Australia’s and Australia’s electricity mix. “Nuclear power is a well-established, globally deployed technology capable of providing low emissions, reliable electricity supply in the decades ahead.”
The MCA said that although nuclear energy is well established, it remains an industry with tremendous scope for innovation and additional research and development. While large Generation III reactors are the main reactor designs being constructed today, enormous potential exists in the area of small modular reactors and Generation IV fast reactors.
The royal commission, expected to report around March 2016, will consider whether there is any potential for expansion of exploration, extraction or milling of minerals containing radioactive materials in South Australia. It will also look into the feasibility of the state becoming involved in conversion, enrichment, fuel fabrication or reprocessing; the generation of electricity from nuclear fuels; and the management, storage and disposal of non-military nuclear and radioactive waste.
The MCA submissions to the royal commission are online: http://bit.ly/1P8DKf8
