9 Realising Australias uranium potential In 2007 then South Australian Premier Mike Rann told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that if uranium is the fuel for the future were not the T exas were the Saudi Arabia of it in our state 1 1 Introduction But neither South Australia nor Australia is realising the full potential of its substantial uranium resources Uranium as a substance is plentiful however only a handful of countries have large enough deposits to make mining uranium economically viable It is something of a paradox that Australia has the largest economic endowment of uranium yet supplies only a small fraction of total world supply This paradox is particularly poignant when the major supplier is Kazakhstan a land locked nation bordering several countries such as Russia and China Many of the 32 economies that employ uranium to generate electricity are Australias major trading partners including China Japan K orea and the United States Opponents of uranium mining point to the minerals current poor economics to justify prohibitions on exploration and mining Indeed uranium mining remains banned in several Australian states depriving Australia of potential wealth There is a real need for reform W ithout reform the Australian uranium industry can never aspire to reach its full potential If Australia is to continue being a reliable provider of energy commodities the industry should be permitted to responsibly service the worlds growing energy demand to the best of its capability The structure of this paper is as follows Section 2 addresses the uranium challenge The sector has a strong record in managing those aspects of community concern unique to it yet remains shackled with prohibitions and regulatory duplication This is a theme explored further in section 6 Section 3 assesses Australia in the global uranium market Standard economic analytics suggest that given its resources the Australian economy is disadvantaged in the production of uranium Section 4 examines the inter relationship between uranium and the broader Australian economy The uranium industry is estimated to directly account for 2000 jobs and a further 1000 indirectly in 2013 The over arching message of section 4 is there is potential for thousands more jobs in the uranium industry in the years ahead with appropriate policy reform Those employment opportunities do not include the additional jobs that would be created were Australia to participate more actively in the nuclear economy ie conversion fuel enrichment power generation and waste management Section 5 examines International Energy Agency scenarios for nuclear energy in 2040 and the consequent demand for uranium It estimates the employment consequences of each scenario In order to fully beneft from its uranium endowment A u s t r a l i a s h o u l d seek to grow its global market share in a c c o r d a n c e w i t h i t s resource endowment