Australia, like the United States and Canada, is not only a former British colony, with consequent privilege, but also home to the second largest known uranium reserves in the world.  So its nuclear politics are essential to understanding the global maneuvers of the rest of the world's major nuclear players.

(However, anyone who cares to search the Web for "known world uranium reserves" will find that this is a subject of enormous controversy.  Some even suggest that the uranium content of the world's oceans could somehow be filtered out, though I must say that desalination plants to create more fresh water would be a far greater contribution to collective self-care.) 

Much of Australia seems to have been settled by British convicts granted both freedom from prison and white skin privilege in exchange for advancing the claims of the British Empire, which decimated the native, "aboriginal" Australian population, by, according to the WIkipedia, as much as 90%, by disease, by theft of the land that they'd lived on sustainably, and by direct violence, between 1788 and 1900. (http://tinyurl.com/5dssux )

Now, uranium mining, like so much mining in Australia and so much of the rest of the world, takes place on the lands of indigenous survivors' of European conquest.

And, according to the U.S. Department of Energy's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), which Australia has joined, nuclear waste---meaning spent uranium---is now slated to be "repatriated," returned to Australians and other surviving indigenous peoples and the lands contaminated where it was mined.(http://tinyurl.com/44cggk )

The GNEP, if truly enacted, will thus grant uranium "the right to return" denied Palestinians, Black residents of New Orleans, 10,000 Navajo displaced from Big Mountain/Black Mesa by Peabody Coal, and mist of the rest of the world's displaced and dislocated populations. 

Australian bans on uranium mining?

Though the State of Western Australia hasnever had a legal ban on uranium mining, the Labor Party of the State of Western Australia has long opposed and prevented uranium mining in that state, unlike new Australian Prime Minister KevinRudd and the rest of Australia's Labor Party.

The Green Party of the State of Western Australia has attempted but not yet succeeded in legally codifying a ban on uranium mining in the State of Western Australia, http://www.mp.wa.gov.au/giz-watson/speeches/2007/report_april07.html.

The Australian State of Queensland,however, has had a longstanding legal ban on uranium mining, whichis now under extreme pressure, amidst the global nuclear weapons race, as are the uranium mining bans on the Navajo Nation and in the U.S.A.'s State of Virginia.

Australian nuclear power or nuclear weapons?

Australia has never had a commercial nuclear power plant nor nuclear weapons of its own, though this has been the subject of controversy since the end of World War II and the dawn of the nuclear age.

(See http://tinyurl.com/6o75r3 ,  http://tinyurl.com/5vaqgg .)

Despite voices urging that Australia needsits own nuclear power plants and weapons, it has continued to rely on the protection of its close ally, the United States, and its unparalleled nuclear arsenal.

This U.S.-Australian alliance seems to bebased on both racism, visible signs of recent European ancestry,and on Australia's agreement to export large amounts of its vast uranium reserves to U.S. nuclear power and weapons industries.

This U.S.-Australian alliance has been so constant since the end of WWII, and the consequent dawn of the nuclear age, that Australia is sometimes called the 51st state---or perhaps the 52nd---since it vies with our northern neighbor, Canada, for that dubious honor.

Canada is the U.S.A.'s largest trading partner; its military is essentially integrated with that of theU.S., perhaps even more so than Australia's, although Australia was, until John Howard's ouster, one of the U.S.A.'s most loyal allies in the Coalition of the 41 Coerced into the Iraq War.   One other plausible explanation for Australia's participation in the Iraq War is that, despite its vast uranium and coal reserves, Australia has very little oil of its own.

Canada's known uranium reserves are even larger than those of Australia, ranked nationally, but Australia's known reserves seem to be a close second, sometimes estimated at 40% of known world reserves.  

In any case, whether Australia is the 51st or 52nd U.S. state is unimportant; the question simply illustrates that Australia and Canada's relationships to the U.S.A. are essentially the same, based on uranium exports to the U.S., on the nuclear weapons protection of the U.S., and on military collaboration in the exploitation of the rest of the world still subject to ongoing European conquest, including its own, internally colonized population of aboriginal Australian survivors.

Australia's relationship to the U.S. could well change, given its new Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's close ties to China, and his commitment to sustain large uranium exports to China, but, nevertheless  Australia still seems certain to remain securely protected by one of the five official nuclear weapons states, which are coincident with the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. (Britain, the U.S., France, China, and Russia.)

Or, at least, until Australia's non-renewable uranium reserves are depleted, whenever that might be.

Australia's scientific, "experimental"nuclear reactors.

Australia's only nuclear reactor at thispoint in time is the scientific experimental OPAL reactor in theLucas Heights neighborhood of Sydney, capitol of the Australian State of New South Wales. The OPAL reactor began operating in April, 2007, replacing the HIgh Flux Australian Reactor, (HIFAR),which also operated in Lucas Heights, from 1958 to 2007.

However, officials closed the OPAL nuclear reactor in June 2007, just three months after its opening, in April, 2007, because its uranium fuel plates had begun to "come loose."   (http://tinyurl.com/58v3ru , http://tinyurl.com/5unvpu.)

On May 1, 2008, however, the Lucas Heights reactor was reported very close to reopening. (http://tinyurl.com/5unvpu , http://tinyurl.com/5kxsmt.)

Many anti-nuclear activists questionAustralian politicians' real motivation for maintaining thesescientific experimental reactors, even though they arescientifically renowned and much visited by physicists from theworld round. Some, including the Anti-Nuclear Alliance of WesternAustralia, believe that these "experimental" reactors are reallyAustralia's way of holding onto its option of becoming a nuclear weapons power in itself. (http://tinyurl.com/55c4vf.)

These are the basics I've learned aboutNuclear Australia, but here are a few more key links that I foundworth noting. There are far more all oer the Web, including amountain of propaganda by self-interested nuclear industrialistsand enthusiasts, but I'll let anyone who wants to sift through those do so on their own:

Kevin Rudd All the Way with China,04/28/2008

Nuclear Veterans ask Kevin Rudd for Help,03/16/2008:

Katter urges Queensland Government to rethinkuranium mining ban, 02/26/2008 

Howard focuses on nuclear, climate issues at APEC,09/06/2007

Putin and Howard sign uranium deal,09/07/2007

Canada silent as nuclear energy partnership with US,Australia, others takes shape, 09/2007

Journeyman Pictures: Who's Afraid of NuclearPower?, 01/18/2006

Anti-Nuclear Australia

And here, lastly, are a few of the many impressive, anti-nuclear organizations and efforts in Australia,where nuclear seems to have become the new "n-word," (http://tinyurl.com/6fh27p ).

Medical Association for the Prevention ofWar

Anti-Nuclear Alliance of Western Australia 

Nuclear Free Australia

John Howard Memorial Page