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CANBERRA - Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane has admitted the federal government has started discussions on building a nuclear enrichment plant in Australia, but said the plans are in their infancy.
ABC TV has reported that a proposal is being prepared for the government on building a uranium enrichment plant.
A company called Nuclear Fuel Australia was believed to be studying the feasibility of a A$2.5 billion ($2.81 billion) plant which could be operational by 2015.
Mr Macfarlane said the discussions were only at the initial stage.
"They're not advanced at all, I mean companies are expressing their interests, I've had discussions with one or two companies about their ideas on it," the minister told ABC Radio today.
"But as I've said, I've made it very plain in those discussions that there needs to be a public debate on the future of nuclear power in Australia before we do anything further."
Mr Macfarlane said if the federal government does decide to go ahead with a nuclear enrichment plant, it would not eventuate for some time and a decision would not be made before the federal election.
"We are literally years away from this happening and what we need to see is a sensible fact-based debate rather than the usual scare campaign from the Labor party," he said.
There have been suggestions that the plant could be built in Caboolture near Brisbane and Redcliffe near Port Pirie in South Australia, but Mr Macfarlane said it was inappropriate to speculate on a site.
"That's not really a question that anyone can answer until you have a commercial proponent," the minister said.
"It's not something the government envisages being involved in and it's certainly not something that you would allow to happen until you'd had this debate with the Australian people about what their thoughts were on nuclear energy in Australia."
Mr Macfarlane said nuclear enrichment was not something Australians should be scared about.
"Uranium enrichment is not a nuclear reaction - it is not part of the nuclear cycle so to speak.
"It is a very difficult, highly technical, industrial process which produces toxic waste not dissimilar to that waste which we produce in other manufacturing processes in Australia that we've managed for literally decades."
But, he said, it was a process that produced enriched uranium so it could be used in a nuclear power station.
"It's something that needs to be part of the debate that we need to have in Australia about moving forward with nuclear energy," he said.
- AAP
