Australian environmental groups say it is inevitable that Australian uranium, if exported to China, will fuel Chinese nuclear weapons.
China is poised to sign a safeguards agreement paving the way for uranium exports in Canberra on Monday.
The Australian Prime Minister John Howard and Chinese premier Wen Jiabao say safeguards will guarentee that Australian uranium exported to China is used only to generate electricity.
But the associations Friends of Earth Australia, People for Nuclear Disarmament, both in New South Wales and in Western Australia, and the Australian Peace Committee say China's uranium reprocessing and enrichment infrastructure is entirely military.
A spokesman for People For Nuclear Disarmament in New South Wales, Cameron Shraner, says once Australian uranium goes to China, there is no way of stopping it from being used to make nuclear weapons.
"China's facilites, because they are totally integrated, you cannot make a distinction between the power program, and the weapons program", Mr Shraner says.
"The Chinese program is also enormously secretive. I mean, all that we have been able to learn about the Chinese program has been learnt clandestinely or from defectors", he has added.
Meanwhile, the Federal Industry and Resources Minister Ian Macfarlane says says it could still be years before the first shipments arrive in China.
He says commercial negotiations need to be completed and Australia's uranium mining needs to be expanded to meet China's demands.