Foreign Minister Julie Bishop provided little detail about the inaugural sale, saying only that it was subject to commercial negotiations.
The supply deal with India, signed in 2014, is the first of its kind Australia has made with a country not party to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
At the time, then-prime minister Tony Abbott said Australian uranium could play a reliable long-term role in supplying India’s growing energy needs.
But it was not until last night, in a brief and low key announcement, that Ms Bishop said the first shipment was finally en route.
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Parliament only passed the final legislation enabling sales last December, following years of debate about supplying uranium to a country with a strategic nuclear weapons program and that refuses to sign the non-proliferation treaty.
Parliamentary hearings to ratify the supply treaty in 2014 heard the International Atomic Energy Agency still had concerns about India’s safeguards.
Ongoing tensions between India and its neighbour Pakistan, which also has not signed the non-proliferation treaty, have raised the spectre of armed confrontation in the past.
But Ms Bishop said the Government was confident Australian uranium would not be misused.
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