AUST-INDIA URANIUM DEAL WILL FUEL SUBCONTINENTAL NUCLEAR ARMS RACE

Friday, 05 September 2014 15:09 John Hallam
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PEOPLE FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT

AUST-INDIA URANIUM DEAL WILL FUEL SUBCONTINENTAL NUCLEAR ARMS RACE




Veteran nuclear disarmament campaigner John Hallam of People for Nuclear
Disarmament and the Human Survival Project has labeled claims that
Australian uranium will not fuel or help fuel a nuclear arms race in
the Indian subcontinent as ridiculous and divorced from reality.

According to Mr Hallam,
“Blind Freddie can see that no matter what safeguards we may nominally place
on Australian uranium that is sold to India, it will simply free up
unsafeguarded Indian uranium – mined in the worlds worst and most
unsafe uranium mines at Jaduguda – for weapons use.”

“The facts are that India has very limited uranium resources of its own,
and to date it has had to use those for BOTH nuclear weapons use, and
at the same time for use in its own indigenous nuclear reactors. This
is one reason India wants our uranium so much.  This shortage  has
placed considerable pressure on India's own production capacity,
leading it to take safety shortcuts in an attempt to produce
sufficient. It has also limited to some extent, India's ability to
produce nuclear warheads.”

“However, if Australian uranium is now used in the just over 50% of India's
reactors that are now subject to IAEA safeguards and designated as
'civil', unsafeguarded Indian uranium still produced in places like
Jaduguda, can be reserved for use in India's nuclear weapons program,
removing one limiting factor to the growth of Indian nuclear
warheads.”

“India and Pakistan are currently engaged in a nuclear arms race, with
Pakistan having somewhere between 110 and 120 warheads, and India
just behind that number, somewhere between 100 and 110.”

“India and Pakistan have already come close to nuclear war at least twice,
most recently in 2002-2003 in a year – long crisis that both
governments later acknowledged as a close call.”

“An India-Pakistan nuclear war would create a prompt body – count of
somewhere around 150 million, and could put as many as 2 billion
people worldwide at risk of starvation in the 'nuclear autumn' that
would follow from the burning of Indian and Pakistani cities.”

“Is this really the kind of trade Australia wants to make with a
neighbor?”

John Hallam
61-2-9810-2598
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Last Updated on Sunday, 08 February 2015 22:20