Australian uranium output could jump 20% by 2012

Australia’s uranium industry could lift output by about 20 percent in three years, government and industry officials said on Monday, as the nation gears up for its first major expansion of uranium mining in a decade.

Australia’s uranium industry has been hamstrung since the early 1980s by political hostility to the nuclear fuel, but long-standing bans on new mines by various state governments are gradually being lifted in the face of economic crisis.
A state-government minister and an industry executive told a conference that Australia could boost annual output of uranium oxide to 12,460 tonnes by 2012 from new mines in South Australia and Western Australia and from expansion of existing mines.

Australia produced 10,101 tonnes last year from its three existing mines, two of which are in South Australia and the other in the Northern Territory. Western Australia lifted its ban on new mines last year and Queensland may also lift its ban soon.

Reuters