Australia's uranium miners face competition

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia can expect more international competition to sell uranium as demand grows for nuclear-generated power and more "uranium friendly" nations dig new mines, the Australian Uranium Association said on Tuesday.

Parts of Africa and Eastern Europe in particular were emerging as willing suppliers of uranium oxide to the world's nuclear reactors, numbering around 440 and growing, the association's executive director Michael Angwin said.

"The projections are for at least a 50 percent increase in uranium for nuclear power reactors by 2030, and that's before real efforts to tackle climate change are factored in," he told Reuters as part of the Global Mining Summit.

The world's growing preoccupation with climate change is making it possible for alternative fuel sources, including uranium for nuclear power, to play a much wider role in climate management, said Angwin, whose association is funded by uranium mining companies.

Australia, with no nuclear power industry of its own but sitting on the world's single largest source -- BHP Billiton's (BHP.AX)(BLT.L) Olympic Dam deposit -- now mines about 10,000 tons of uranium oxide a year.

Uranium mining is allowed in South Australia state and the Northern Territory, but is banned in mineral-rich Western Australia and Queensland under a decades-old policy of the left-leaning Labor Party, the governing party in the two states.

The opposition to uranium mining has its roots in the anti-nuclear movement in the 1970s.

With its vast reserves, Australia could easily supply around 36 percent of the world's uranium needs, though a long-running ban on new mines in most states has reduced that to about 23 percent, Angwin said.

"That's telling us there's a fair bit of scope for Australia to increase its share of world demand," Angwin said. "There is an international competitive issue for Australia here."

Australia's national government supports uranium mining but only controls mining in the Northern Territory, while state governments oversee mining within their borders.

In total, there are three operating uranium mines in Australia.

With post-Cold War stockpiles of weapons-grade uranium being worked down, the supply and demand cycle is tipping in favor of suppliers, Angwin said.

"The thing to bear in mind is that other countries are moving much faster," Angwin said.

"Like Kazakhstan, which is aiming to show a large increase in production and exports by the middle of the next decade, and in parts of Africa, where they are much more friendly to uranium than some Australian states."

(For Summit blog: summitnotebook.reuters.com/)

(Editing by Ian Geoghegan)