Australia will begin exporting uranium to India for peaceful purposes after the two countries on Thursday finalised the administrative arrangements needed to implement a civil nuclear cooperation agreement that had been stalled since 2014.
The announcement was made on Thursday when Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Prime Minister Narendra Modi met in Melbourne.
In a joint statement, the countries said they had “finalised the administrative arrangements necessary to enable the export of Australian uranium to India for exclusively peaceful purposes and under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards”, as provided for under a 2015 nuclear cooperation agreement.
However, the leaders did not announce how much uranium Australia would export or when shipments would begin.
Australia agreed in 2014 to allow uranium exports to India despite New Delhi not being a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. However, the implementation of the agreement was delayed because of concerns that the material could be diverted for weapons use, AP reported.
Australia has the world’s largest known uranium reserves.
India plans to install 100 gigawatts of nuclear power capacity by 2047 as part of its long-term sustainable energy strategy. Presently, the country has 8,780 megawatts of nuclear power capacity.
India has argued that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is discriminatory because it recognises only countries that tested nuclear weapons before January 1967 as nuclear-weapon states. After India conducted nuclear tests in 1998, it faced…
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