BHP Billiton Makes Submissions to the Prime Minister's Nuclear Energy Inquiry and the Parliamentary Treaties Committee (October 5, 2006)

    While the submission it has made to the Parliamentary Treaties Committee was behind closed doors that to Prime Minister John Howard's nuclear inquiry is public.

The Treaties Committee inquiry  is examining the contingencies of selling Australian uranium to China.

The ABC reports that the committee's chairman, Liberal Andrew Southcott, says the company requested the private hearing. "My view is you know we want as much information as possible and we don't always have companies coming before the committee. Sometimes they're reluctant to come so I'm very happy to get the information and I'm very happy to hear from them."

On the other hand the company was forthright in its submission to the Prime Minister's inquiry.

The company owns Australia's largest uranium deposit at Olympic Dam in South Australia. In its submission it stated that there was no case for developing Australian conversion or enrichment facilities.

In a remarkably unambiguous couple of sentences the company says, "We do not believe that conversion and enrichment would be commercially viable in Australia for the foreseeable future. BHP Billiton believes that there is neither a commercial nor a non-proliferation case for it to become involved in front-end processing or the development of fuel leasing services in Australia.." A position diametrically opposite to the  suggestive assessments of the Prime Minister, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane.

According to a report in  The Age, so far the nuclear inquiry has failed to find a major mining company interested in expanding into manufacturing.

And it also reports that a report to be released next month by CSIRO will examine the costs and benefits of several energy policy changes driven by the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Options being considered range from boosting the use of renewable energy, to orchestrating a deep unilateral cut in Australia's greenhouse emissions. The CSIRO says preliminary work indicates that nuclear power is not a viable option for Australia before 2050 unless Australia imposes a new carbon tax. Under two scenarios contemplating the use of nuclear energy and renewables, energy prices are forecast to double in Australia by 2050.

"The work," says The Age, "Is being done by the CSIRO-led Energy Futures Forum, which has Government and industry players, including Woodside, Alcoa and Rio Tinto, as well as conservation group WWF Australia," which may give some with a cynical, or perhaps even a not so cynical bent, pause.

On June 7, 2006, TFW wrote:

Senior mining industry figures told The Australian they believed the inquiry was about increasing the number of uranium mines and encouraging the creation of an enrichment industry rather than ushering in nuclear power plants.

"This is classic John Howard," said a senior mining industry figure. "He wants to open up the three-mines policy and create a justification for a value-adding industry and at the same time open up the discussion about the safe storage of nuclear waste."

But he described the immediate-term prospect of nuclear power plants as a "furphy". "They are at least 25 years away," he said.