Tokyo, March 20: Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard says Canberra is not having second thoughts about mining and exporting its uranium despite the nuclear crisis in quake-hit Japan.
Gillard said on Sunday that although the perception of the nuclear industry has been seriously hit since the Fukushima No. 1 plant was crippled by the massive earthquake and tsunami, it would not affect Australian uranium sales, AFP reported.
“What is happening in Japan doesn’t have any impact on my thinking about uranium exports. We do export uranium and we will continue to export uranium… Countries around the world will make their own choices about how they source their energy,” she went on to say.
Although Australia consumes no nuclear power, it is the world’s third uranium producer after Kazakhstan and Canada.
According to the World Nuclear Association, Australia holds the world’s largest uranium reserves, with 23 percent of the total. It exports about 9,600 tons of oxide concentrate annually worth over $1.09 billion.
Japan and China are important customers of Australia.
China currently operates 13 nuclear plants and is building more than two dozen others. Other major buyers of Australian uranium oxide include the US and the European Union.
In the early hours of Sunday, Japan resumed dousing its crippled nuclear power plant after an overnight break of several hours, pushing on with an effort to avert an atomic catastrophe.
On Saturday, the Japanese government said a sample of tap water from the Japanese capital, Tokto, contained 1.5 becquerels per kilogram of iodine 131, well below the tolerable limit for food and drink of 300 becquerels per kilogram.
On March 11, a 9-magnitude earthquake, off the northeast coast of Japan’s main island, unleashed a 23-foot (7-meter) tsunami and was followed by more than 50 aftershocks for hours.
A week after the disaster devastated the northeast coast, Japan’s police agency said on Saturday that 7,197 people died and 10,905 were missing.
With hundreds of bodies washed ashore, the death toll is expected to rise much higher, possibly as high as 10,000.
——–Agencies