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Australia was once reluctant to fully exploit its bountiful uranium supply, but during last year's APEC Summit in Sydney, former Prime Minister John Howard and Russian President Vladimir Putin reached a deal on uranium exports.

The Russian government sees the move as a step forward for the nation's economic future, but not all its citizens are as keen.

Nick Lazaredes travels to Russian nuclear facilities with Maxim Shingarkin, a former Army Major in the nuclear directorate who has since become an environmental activist. Shingarkin has a number of concerns about Russia's nuclear industry - including lax security standards and radiation leaks. Together they visit the Mayak plant which is most famous for a fatal accident in 1957 which killed 200 people and released huge amounts of radioactivity. In the past 45 years, almost half a million people in the region have been irradiated, exposing some residents to more than 20 times the radiation suffered by the Chernobyl victims.

Kabirov wants Australia to impose strict conditions on Russia in any uranium export contract. "You can't get income and money at the expense of health of my relatives, at the expense of my health, at the expense of future generations," he says.

Also in this episode, an interview with indigenous Canadian leader and AFN National Chief, Phil Fontaine about his response to Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's apology to the Stolen Generation of aboriginal children, and a segment on Indian schoolkids who get to experience air travel without leaving the ground.

Watch these segments online at SBS:

Exporting Trouble?
Interview with Phil Fontaine
Plane to Nowhere

About International Dateline 

SBS Dateline, which began in 1984, is Australia's longest-running international current affairs program. It has a well-earned reputation for authoritative and incisive reporting. Dateline has taken the traditional way of producing TV current affairs and turned it on its head. Reporters who used to travel with a cameraperson and sound recordist now travel alone and have the responsibility of both filming and reporting their stories. The reporters became video-journalists, gaining access to people and places that the conventional camera crews cannot.