India and Australia opened a new chapter in their clean-energy trade on Thursday, signing an administrative arrangement in Melbourne that clears the way for regular shipments of Australian uranium to India after more than a decade of delay.
"We have signed an important agreement today on nuclear energy," Prime Minister Narendra Modi said after talks with his Australian counterpart, Anthony Albanese. "This will pave the way for uranium supplies from Australia to India and give our clean energy objectives fresh momentum."
A joint statement said the deal permits long-term uranium exports for "exclusively peaceful purposes," with the material subject to safeguards set by the International Atomic Energy Agency and a separation of India's civilian and military nuclear programmes. The two governments first agreed to trade uranium in 2014, but regular shipments never followed amid concerns the fuel could be diverted to weapons.
For India, the arrangement addresses a practical bottleneck. The country aims to install 100 gigawatts of nuclear capacity by 2047 — enough, by one estimate, to power nearly 60 million homes a year — yet nuclear still accounts for just 3 percent of its electricity, even after doubling over the past decade. Australia holds the world's largest known uranium reserves, roughly 28 percent of global supply, but uses no nuclear power itself and exports all that it mines.
A wider partnership
The uranium arrangement sat within a broader package. Modi and Albanese pledged to deepen cooperation on critical minerals, defence and Indo-Pacific security, language the joint statement described as "a step-change in the depth and ambition" of the relationship. The two sides also agreed to build a temporary space-tracking terminal on Australia's Cocos (Keeling) Islands to support Indian space flights.
"The arrangement facilitates Australian uranium exports to India to help increase the share of non-fossil-fuel power capacity," Albanese told reporters, adding that ties between the countries had "never been stronger."
India is Australia's fifth-largest trading partner, with two-way trade in goods and services worth 54.4 billion Australian dollars (about US$37.7 billion) in 2024-2025. The Melbourne talks, part of an annual leaders' summit, came during a regional tour that also took Modi to Indonesia and, on Friday, on to New Zealand.