Olympic Dam ready to carry Australia’s uranium trade with India
South Australia’s Olympic Dam holds more than enough uranium to supply India’s nuclear power plans, according to Federal Minister for Resources Madeleine King, and the way is now clear for shipments to begin.
“It opens up opportunities for this export to India,” Minister King told the ABC.
“We’ve got to a point with a lot of work with our friends in India to make sure that those administrative arrangements are well in place that will now allow for that export to commence.”
The deal was struck during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Melbourne in July, where he and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese agreed to build on Australia’s uranium export trade.
Australia and India signed a civil nuclear cooperation agreement in 2014, and the detail settled since then locks Australian uranium into peaceful use only, with international oversight of where it ends up in India’s power system.
India has plenty of demand waiting, with plans for 18 new nuclear reactors by 2032 to keep up with its growing economy.
“It cements the relationship, but also it makes sure Australia and India maintain that connection through energy security, and that’s exactly what we want to do,” she said.
The uranium itself is set to come out of BHP’s Olympic Dam.
“I’ll have to leave that to BHP to work with their customers through the Indian Government, so to speak, to see what those volumes will be,” she said.
Uranium is the latest Australian commodity to find a buyer in India, following Arafura’s Nolans rare earths offtake with an Indian magnet manufacturer and record copper exports.
More could follow, with the two countries’ government geoscience agencies, Geoscience Australia and the Geological Survey of India, working together on exploration to find new deposits of critical minerals and other resources.
Minister King, who met Modi for the second time during the visit, described India as “the powerhouse” closing in on becoming the world’s third-largest economy.
“What we want for Australia to be and remain is a reliable partner in the energy security of our region,” she said.
“That means we’re a reliable guarantor of energy security into the most populous nation on the face of the Earth, whilst we also have these really important safeguards of the use of that commodity that will only go into energy.”