Australia will begin selling uranium to India for peaceful purposes after the two countries' leaders signed an administrative agreement on Thursday, clearing the way for exports of the material that had been delayed for years over concerns about its potential use in weapons.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made the joint announcement after a meeting in Melbourne.
The leaders did not immediately provide details on the quantity of uranium to be sold or when exports would begin. Shipments of Australian uranium to India had remained stalled after a 2014 agreement due to concerns that the material could be diverted for weapons production.
Australia has the world's largest known uranium reserves, but it does not use nuclear power or nuclear weapons and exports all of the uranium it produces. India, with a population of 1.4 billion and a growing middle class, aims to develop 100 gigawatts of nuclear power capacity by 2047 — enough to supply electricity to nearly 60 million Indian homes annually. However, securing uranium supplies has remained a challenge.
India has doubled its installed nuclear power capacity over the past decade, but nuclear energy still accounts for only around 3% of the country's electricity generation.
India is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which recognises only the United States, China, Britain, France and Russia as nuclear weapon states. Australia, as an NPT signatory, has traditionally refused to sell uranium to countries that are not party to the treaty.
New Delhi has criticised the treaty as discriminatory, arguing that it permanently excludes India from recognition as a legitimate nuclear weapons state because it only recognises countries that tested nuclear devices before January 1967. India faced international technology sanctions and uranium trade restrictions after conducting nuclear tests in 1998.
The Nuclear Suppliers Group, a coalition of countries including the United States, granted India a waiver in 2008 allowing it to purchase uranium from member states. Since then, New Delhi has pursued bilateral agreements to facilitate uranium imports, including a deal with Canada signed in March.
Australia had historically ruled out uranium sales to India unless it joined the NPT. However, Canberra changed its position and agreed in 2014 to allow exports, subject to International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards and the “separation of the Indian civilian and military nuclear programmes”, according to the Australian government website.
Thursday's administrative agreement is expected to remove remaining hurdles to implementing the earlier deal.
Modi is visiting Australia for an annual leaders' summit between the two countries. In a joint statement, Modi and Albanese also pledged to strengthen defence and security cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, describing it as a “step-change in the depth and ambition” of bilateral ties.
The commitment to closer regional security cooperation came days after Australia criticised China for test-firing a long-range ballistic missile from one of its nuclear-powered submarines into the South Pacific Ocean, an area covered by an anti-nuclear treaty.
The two leaders did not mention China while announcing the strengthened strategic partnership and did not take questions from reporters after their statements on Thursday. Thousands of people gathered in Melbourne hoping to catch a glimpse of Modi during his visit.
India is Australia's fifth-largest trading partner, with two-way trade in goods and services worth A$54.4 billion ($37.7 billion) in the 2024-25 financial year, according to Australian government figures.
Earlier this week, Modi visited Indonesia, and on Friday he will travel to New Zealand for his first visit to the country. India and New Zealand signed a free trade agreement in April.