Australia's nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation efforts are to be subject to a wide-ranging parliamentary review.

ICAN badges and stickers proved popular when ICAN volunteers ran workshops and a stall for 350 students at the 2008 the Youth Action Conference held in Melbourne.

The international community must wake up to the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation, the Australian chairman of a new disarmament body says.

"The scale of the havoc and the devastation that can be wreaked by one major nuclear weapon alone puts 9/11 and almost everything else into the category of insignificance." - Gareth Evans.

ICAN partner Japanese for Peace held a screening in Melbourne of the new film White Light, Black Rain - The Destruction Of Hiroshima And Nagasaki, directed by Steven Okazaki.

ICAN supporters have descended on Melbourne's iconic Flinders Street station for a Japanese TV crew during a busy city afternoon.

With kangaroos, a Geisha, umbrellas and ICAN materials for the public, ICAN calls on Australia and Japan to get out from under the USA's "nuclear umbrella" if these nations are to remain serious about nuclear disarmament.

Today marks the anniversary of the first British nuclear bomb test. Operation 'Hurricane' was detonated on Oct 3 1952 off the Monte Bello islands, Western Australia, with an explosive yield of 25 kilotons (the Hiroshima bomb yield was approximately 14 kT).

ICAN Australia marked the International Day of Peace with a toy gun burial at a church in Melbourne, organised by Jessica Morrison, Australian director of ICAN.

MEDIA RELEASE

Today's recommendation by a key Parliamentary Committee that Australia postpone and put conditions on plans to sell uranium to Russia has been welcomed by disarmament groups as a dose of good sense for Australia, Russia and the world.

"This recommendation puts front and centre the obligation of nuclear states to disarm" said Associate Professor Tilman Ruff, chair of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. "The Committee has recognised the risks in continuing business as usual in the nuclear industry".

Pressure is mounting on the Rudd Government to dump a uranium export treaty with Moscow after the White House yesterday set aside a US-Russia deal to share nuclear technology.

"Uranium's long-term radioactivity will long outlast current politics, even another Cold War, if world leaders take us again on this path," said Tilman Ruff, of the Australian (sic) Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.